There are entire countries that are following the thin-client model
on a national basis – for a limited range of 'school kids'.

At other levels of education, 'classroom hours' (or 'lab hours') are
a small part of the 'education time' the student is involved in.
Think of the one hour lecture that takes a week's work to complete
the resulting assignment.
That student's machine has to travel along with their class
materials, not remain behind in the lecture hall.

But for school kids I think it makes much more sense to have thin clients (we installed some using Edubuntu w. LTSP at my friends sunday school. 1 server for the 10 kids who each have their own station.) instead than the wasteful way we are doing it now in most schools.

Is the custom version of Mandriva the Mandriva Mini that they anouncedin the fall?
Mandriva 2009 is an awesome KDE distro and works well on the netbooks I tried it on but the Mini was their official remixed version for the form factor. Unfortunately I think they havent released it to the public.

I wish Mandriva the best of luck.
They were along with the old Suse the first distros to cater to consumers and ease of use and not just enterprise. They are a publicly traded company which showed that it is possible to be a Linux distro, be easy and make money. (Well, until Canonical came around and decided that there is no market all and the only business model worth following is the 'find a sugar daddy who is willing to invest”.)
For Linux to work on the desktop, we need many more distros like Mandriva who have found a business plan selling Linux that is sustainable. Handouts to financial sinkholes might be a short term victory in terms of popularity but its not a workable business plan.

Industry analysts had project 8 million Net-Book sales for 2008;
more recent reports make the number look closer to 10 million.
Sounds like a lot.

But the California Community College system has millions of students;
the manufacturer that caters to the needs of the education
market will change their own sales figures in 2009.

Most Net-Book OEM's would smile at anyone wanting to order 100,000
units under their own brand name – - -
But that is hardly even a 'sample' order for some organization the size
of the California College system.

Even at $200 each, we are talking a noticeable amount of money here.

There are entire countries that are following the thin-client model
on a national basis – for a limited range of 'school kids'.

At other levels of education, 'classroom hours' (or 'lab hours') are
a small part of the 'education time' the student is involved in.
Think of the one hour lecture that takes a week's work to complete
the resulting assignment.
That student's machine has to travel along with their class
materials, not remain behind in the lecture hall.

But for school kids I think it makes much more sense to have thin clients (we installed some using Edubuntu w. LTSP at my friends sunday school. 1 server for the 10 kids who each have their own station.) instead than the wasteful way we are doing it now in most schools.

Is the custom version of Mandriva the Mandriva Mini that they anouncedin the fall?
Mandriva 2009 is an awesome KDE distro and works well on the netbooks I tried it on but the Mini was their official remixed version for the form factor. Unfortunately I think they havent released it to the public.

I wish Mandriva the best of luck.
They were along with the old Suse the first distros to cater to consumers and ease of use and not just enterprise. They are a publicly traded company which showed that it is possible to be a Linux distro, be easy and make money. (Well, until Canonical came around and decided that there is no market all and the only business model worth following is the 'find a sugar daddy who is willing to invest”.)
For Linux to work on the desktop, we need many more distros like Mandriva who have found a business plan selling Linux that is sustainable. Handouts to financial sinkholes might be a short term victory in terms of popularity but its not a workable business plan.

Industry analysts had project 8 million Net-Book sales for 2008;
more recent reports make the number look closer to 10 million.
Sounds like a lot.

But the California Community College system has millions of students;
the manufacturer that caters to the needs of the education
market will change their own sales figures in 2009.

Most Net-Book OEM's would smile at anyone wanting to order 100,000
units under their own brand name – - -
But that is hardly even a 'sample' order for some organization the size
of the California College system.

Even at $200 each, we are talking a noticeable amount of money here.

The early production machines are scheduled to begin shipping
to developers today.

The developers' portion of the web-site is scheduled to go up 1/19.
(Summarized from the Gdium developer news release.)

This is an important point in the Educational Market place – -
Even a small community college can easily be spending Millions of dollars
in MS-tax – - It is a big deal to be able to drop the MS-tax for them.

Having machines that are cheap enough for the college to loan out also
reduces the direct cost to the student.
Plus the ability to replace printed textbooks with electronic textbooks – -
This is indeed a “big deal” and it looks like Gdium is in the lead.

I know that Dr. Lew is watching and reading along with all of this news,
he is running a grant funded study of just these use cases.