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Comment by pontifk8r | Hacker News Reader

After my daughter went through two laptops in high school (1st: "I closed a pen in it and broke the hinge" 2nd: "Dad! Someone ELSE knocked it off my desk") I found an ex-state-police toughbook, it even had a carrying handle. Plasma monochrome screen. Slow. But it ran all of the applications necessary for school.

Turns out it had a cool factor all it's own, and she really liked that laptop. She figured out she could neglect and abuse it. I even left the "property of " stickers from the state police on the thing, which gave it extra... something. It was still working when she gave it back to me before she went to college. I think I sold it for $100.

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My son's first computer, back when he was 5 years old, was an old Panasonic CF-18 Toughbook that I bought from eBay for that purpose. The smaller keyboard was perfect for his little hands, and the computer survived countless drops, spills, and other incidents.

That was more than 10 years ago. He still has the laptop, the battery is long dead but it runs fine on AC power. Most of the time, it's used as a doorstop.

How could a monochrome screen work for a student? They typically have to look at assignments which often include color-coded graphs, data legends, etc.

I'm sure color blind people are capable of learning too

Colour blind doesn't mean someone sees in black and white. It means they have difficulty differentiating between two colours. Often red / green, but not always.

That is most common, but a tiny minority see no colors.

One in 40,000. Being completely blind is VASTLY more common.

So that's still somewhere between 6600 to 11000 people in the US alone. Assuming a range of 1/300000 to 1/400000 out of 331 million US Citizens...

So while rare, its not impossible to run in to.

That just proves one struggles with a lot of not well thought out assignments, not with all of them. That still means a badly designed book.

I grew up, as most of my friends, using a lot of xeroed exercise books and exercises notebooks. Monochrome copies, of course.

Never saw anyone having issues with that, weather 7 or 19 years old. If a kid struggles with monochrome computer screen, it means his learning materials are designed worse than post-soviet era 25 year old textbook.

BTW. I am eagerly waiting for better availability of eink monitors.

also, they're not the same colour to me in bright sunlight - one is light murky brown and the other is dark murky brown. under fluorescent lighting they are both the same shade of murky brown.

Red green does not mean that you ONLY have problem with those 2 colors. Means you will have problems with ANY color which is composed of some of the 2. Also there are Red/Blue Green/Blue... basically any combination. So relying in only colors is just bad design.

Turns out that this isn’t the critical ability required to do well in school. I take your point, I’m sure the monochrome screen would be a challenge sometimes, but literally never the difference between success and failure at the high school level.

my TI-84 screen took me pretty far

Relying excessively on colour is an accessibility no-go, and it also makes life harder for roughly 10% of colour blind people. Just dont be that stupid teacher and find better methods.

No, only the teacher’s book had colors. The rest of us were looking at the monochrome photocopies ;)

If anything is based solely in color for interpretation, it is not accessible. And has no place in a classroom. In Europe 10% of males have problems with colors. I figure there must be similar in the US.

I guess it depends on the school district. My kids were doing video and photo editing, using and creating spread sheets, using other software and accessing science web sites that I'm sure would be nearly impossible or extremely difficult to run on a monochrome screen.

Your daughter is stronger than most grown adult male laptop reviewers, who would dutifully complain about the weight.

Sure it will always be a boat anchor compared to a macbook air or a small chromebook but given his daughter laptop had a handle weight is less a factor if it removes the point of a protective sleeve + a backpack and you compare it with an entry level 15.6" laptop.

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