The first thing that strikes me about using a laptop as a drivers station instead of the blue box is that you can use any computer device to control the robot (not just standard USB joystick interfaces). This means you could set the robot up as a servo, using a mouse on a scale model of the field, or something similar.
The specific example I'd be most excited about is something I've been thinking about on and off over the past couple years; the
Emotiv headset. The only problem there being the speed of the computer you're allowed to use.
If they do decide to use the Classmate as the drivers station, I wouldn't be too worried about I/O. There are lots of breakout boards for computer I/O (only prohibition being cost, but this is FIRST, and as has been mentioned, NI is one of the vendors of such products). And if they don't, you can always get a cheap USB joystick from Goodwill, crack it open, and tear all the wires off the board. Voila, instant I/O expansion board. If you get a gamepad, you might even have some digital outs between the LED's and the vibrating motors.
I think it would be a very interesting use of the computer if they blacked out all the windows in front of the drivers and you had to use the camera
