David Neal

The other day, I attended a breakfast briefing at a rather posh London restaurant where the main subject of discussion was why the Asus Eee PC may just be the saviour of our future generations.

Whitney Houston famously sang, “Children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way . . .”. Frankly, I found this advice to be insultingly obvious ­ even when I was a child.

So, Whitney, you think children are our future, do you? Well, so do the rest of us. What makes you so special that you have to bother my ears about it, and what have you got to do with it anyway?

To be fair, between alternating bouts of rehab and career comebacks, Houston has possibly done a lot for the world’s deprived ankle-biters. I considered looking up her charitable contributions on Wikipedia, but then it dawned on me that I couldn’t really be bothered.

For the sake of a lawsuit-free existence, I’m going to assume that she has done a huge amount to bring succour to kids everywhere. But one thing she definitely hasn’t done, is launch a cheap, ultra-portable Windows-based laptop that appeals to both teachers and students. Despite banging on about the need “to teach them well”, she never had the foresight to develop a powerful yet affordable teaching tool like the Eee PC. Oh, Whitney. Was it all just words?

Well, step aside Houston, because Asus and RM are here “to lead the way”. Having played around with it for a few days, I can attest that the Eee PC is an impressive bit of kit that should appeal to mobile workers and students alike.

But it was the needs of the education market that dominated all the videos and speeches that took place as I gorged myself on eggs and bacon. As I sunk my teeth into my last grilled mushroom, RM chief executive Tim Pearson opined, “IT skills will be more important to children than hand writing skills.” At this point a video of some kids in school kicked in ­ a wise move bearing in mind that at 8.30 in the morning, most journalists need all the help they can get to grasp a concept. “Kids at school now will still be at work in 2070,” he added. The horror.

Pearson described how he had travelled extensively, looking at schools and discovering how children learned, and what facilities they had available to them. He had been to schools that had experimented with PDAs and laptops, and found that neither students nor teachers had really enjoyed the experience. But in those schools that are currently using Asus machines, headteachers talk about how much enjoyment students get out of using the machines, while the students themselves praise the devices for helping them to get the most out of their studies ­ at this point I nearly choked on my sausage.

It wasn’t like that in my day. I remember vividly that time at university when my friends and I once trapped a PC in a box and tried to feed it. When that failed, we attempted to skin it and nearly burned down the common room. Hardly anyone I knew had a clue about computers, nor how to use them.

Now, thanks to the sterling efforts of companies such as Asus and RM, tomorrow’s school leavers will enjoy relationships with computing technology of Hawking-esque intimacy.

For IT managers, this could mean an opportunity to free up helpdesk resources to focus on more valuable tasks. Stupid support requests will be a thing of the past as most users will be tech-savvy enough to perform most administrative tasks. Indeed, there may well come a day when IT chiefs simply stand back and “let users lead the way”. We could call it “doing a Whitney”.