It’s not unusual for college students to bring laptops to class to take notes. But not only has the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation in Indiana decided to allow the use of laptops in high school classrooms, the schools will rent netbooks to students for $70 per year on top of their existing annual textbook fee. Students from low income families who qualify for free or reduced lunch prices won’t have to pay the fee.

Students will be assigned a netbook that’s theirs to keep until they graduate. They’ll come with a one-year warranty, but students will be expected to pay for repairs or replacement if the netbooks are damaged after the warranty expires.

The school has ordered 7,200 netbooks from HP and teachers are expected to star training with the machines soon. It’s not clear from the article which netbook model the school has ordered, but given the fact that these things are supposed to last at least 4 years, I’m hoping they went with the HP Mini 2140 or the yet-to-be-released HP Mini 5101, both of which are a bit more durable than your typical netbook.

Netbooks may be popular around the world. But apparently they’re selling like hot cakes in Australia (do people like hot cakes in Australia?), because the Sydney Morning Herald reports that 1 in 10 computers sold in the country are netbooks. That’s largely due to the low cost of modern mini-laptops. But another factor is a tax refund that allows parents to claim between $375 and $750 in education expenses for each child in elementary or secondary school.

In other words, the tax refund should easily cover the cost of a netbook and maybe some pens, paper and schoolbooks too.

Netbooks are also well designed for students because they’re small and light, which means they’re not going to break your kids back when you slip them in a backpack. And the tiny keyboards that might seem to small for adult fingers are just right for kids. But the Morning Herald does erroneously claim that netbooks might be better than full sized laptops because students can’t use them to play video games or watch YouTube videos during class. While most netbooks aren’t going to handle Crysis very well, I dare say a student could find just as many ways to slack off using a netbook as a larger laptop.

What do you think? Have you bought a netbook for a vertically challenged person in your life? Or do you see mini-laptops as productivitiy tools for full grown adults?