[Gdeaver]

Whoa, such negative vibes in this post. A net book being a commercially mass produced and Supported product makes a whole lot of sense. May be First should be praised for this move. Intel is the 800 Lb gorilla in the semi conductor world and now they will be supporting First. Is this a bad thing?
One concern I have is the custom IO beak out board. Is it full protected so that students can't do some thing stupid and fry the netbook? Is it capable of being a conduit of static into the net book?
I like the big E-stop button. For to many years the enable - disable and E-stop implementation has been less than ideal. These robots are dangerous and there has to be a quick reliable method for killing them. How is the E-stop implemented? Is it fault tolerant. What happens if the USB cable is pulled out? What if the switch in the E-button is defective or fails? I still have the vivid memory from 2 years ago when the robot went berserk and the fumbling of the kludged up dongle all most resulted in what could have been a serious mangling.
Scared the hell out of me. For 2010 let the E-stop be done write.