Richard Crowley wrote:

"tom williams" wrote ...

I am advising a grassroots non profit that is planning to use laptops
for poor students to help them work on their audio presentation
skills.


What was the reasoning for choosing laptops (of whatever
vintage) over plain old cassette recorders?

Unless there's more to the story, this sounds wierd.


You beat me to it. One could probably pass out a recorder to every
student for the price of a single laptop.

I am advising a grassroots non profit that is planning to use laptops
for poor students to help them work on their audio presentation
skills.

They want to have the students practice by using a laptop for
recording their presentations, which are expected to be 2-3 minutes
long each; expecting to have 3-4 repetitions for each presention's
preparation.

Appreciate advice on the least expensive used laptop windows or mac
solutions - their budget is quite limited right now. Hoping to be able
to buy laptops that can be used for this purpose, plus reasonable
ability to access the web on dial up modems.


Why computers? There are much cheaper and more robust solutions.