I am an art teacher and all my students had to buy a netbook. most of them bought the samsung NC10. Now, the head wants me to buy one myself, as he has scraped the computer that was in my classroom. (I have got a MacBook Pro but am reluctant to take it to school as the last time I took my Powerbook along, a student broke its screen…)
I don't really want to buy another notebook just for school and am wondering whether a netbook would be enough. Also, if the students' computers can't process said programs (see title), then I can't teach them and it wouldn't make any sense for me to buy one just for powerpoints.

I have heard that all laptops with Windows 7 are in fact not netbooks i.e. designed for using mainly the net, but hybrids, as this OS uses much more memory than Vista or XP. Does this mean, I would have to look for a "netbook" with Windows 7? I find this quite confusing as I have seen the same computers with XP or 7 installed.
Could I use a netbook with those programs? What requirements would it have to have? RAM, Processor, Graphic card?

Thank you for your help everyone

Does your employer not have to supply one for you? Or have I misunderstood?

Not all win7 machines are netbooks.
Some netbooks have win7.

Win7 has no bearing on the type of machine.

The above programs will work on a netbook, but be slow. Too slow? I dunno. I suspect doing graphical work on a netbook my main issue would be the lack of screen space more than anything else (10" 1024×600 or similar on most).

Oh also, even at student prices, the cost of all the above software will be more than the machine! Unless the school buys licenses for the students?

It does run photoshop so i presume it can run other adobe software with no problems.
Do you plug it into a projector or monitor though? Wouldn't imagine 30 kids rounds a 10" screen is much fun..

Try and get one with the most ram that you can, it will really hep with the speed of photoshop. I imagine they can take up to 4gb? but I'm not 100% sure on that. Also when using photoshop, I'd make sure no other programs were open as it'd probably have quite a big impact on performance.

Well, I would use mine withe an interactive whiteboard.
My school is loaded.. I have been refusing to buy a computer for a year now as I also think that they should provide me one. All software at school is ripped. Oh, and if a teacher needs a film for class, there is one teacher in charge of downloading them….
That's good isn't it?! I guess that is why the school got a prize last year as small company with the best return…

I am not so much worried about photoshop than about using after effects and flash with a netbook. As I wrote, if the students all have a Samsung NC10 and can't use those programs on there, then I don't see the point in me buying one as I would not be able to teach them anything interesting anyway. All the other teachers are only using their computers and the whiteboard to put on presentations.

All software at school is ripped. Oh, and if a teacher needs a film for class, there is one teacher in charge of downloading them….

Where is the school, China?

Photoshop would be OK as long as you are sensible with resolutions. AE would be about the worst prgram you could pick for a netbook. But, you would probaby get away with it if you stuck with short web resolutions too.

If you do hit perfomance problems just try using some older version software, brought out when the netbook specs were cutting edge – 4 to 5 years ago?

Surely though you need the kids netbooks to the the common denominator – no point you speccing a machine to run a programme if theirs won't run it, or run it well enough, otherwise what are you going to teach them?

Edit .. sorry, missed your second paragraph up there

My school is loaded.. I have been refusing to buy a computer for a year now as I also think that they should provide me one. All software at school is ripped. Oh, and if a teacher needs a film for class, there is one teacher in charge of downloading them….

wow, that's really shit

It's not even like the software is expensive for educational establishments.. they practically give it away.

Broadly speaking, netbooks are at about the performance of a mainstream laptop from 3-4 years ago. They'll run all that software within limits, but will get very slow working on huge images in Photoshop, for instance.

The explosion of netbooks with XP was partly down to Microsoft offering a cheaper version for manufacturers as long as it stayed within hardware limits – hence why they're all 10" screens, single core 1.6Ghz Atom CPUs, 1Gb RAM, 160GB HD. If they went over that, the price for Windows would add another £30-40 on to the price straight away.

They're doing similar for Windows 7 – allowing a bit more hard disk and slightly faster processors. Windows 7 actually runs great on these sort of machines, it's not massively resource hungry.

What's interesting are the machines that are filling the gap between the netbooks and conventional laptops – lots of cheap, light 12" machines with more powerful processors that make a great choice if you have a little bit more to spend and need to do things that go beyond basic web/email/word use.