The nearly 10,000 HP mini-laptops headed for the Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) in California this fall confirm the trend: K-12 schools are eager to put technology into the hands of every student, and a growing number of schools are bypassing full-sized--and more expensive--laptop computers in favor of scaled-down, low-cost machines designed specifically for kids.

Advocates of the trend say these "mini" notebook computers are the only genuinely affordable, and sustainable, one-to-one computing option for schools, especially now when weak property taxes and soaring fuel prices are putting the squeeze on school budgets from northern California to southern Florida, and all points in between.

Just last month, fourth-graders at the Redlands Christian Migrant Association Community School in Immokalee, Fla., received XO computers from the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. It was part of a 10-week pilot program that began June 1.

Redlands joins South Carolina's Marion County School District and the Birmingham, Ala., school system in deploying low-cost ($200) XO laptops to students in the United States. Just this week, the Birmingham school board voted to accept the remaining 14,000 pre-purchased XO laptops from the city to give to elementary students after a pilot project with the first 1,000 laptops proved encouraging.

And in the latest example of the mini-laptop trend, FUSD is deploying nearly 10,000 Mini-Note PCs from Hewlett-Packard Co. to students in grades two through 12 this fall.

HP introduced its Mini-Note PC in April, joining a burgeoning market of miniaturized laptops that already included products from Intel Corp., the world's largest semiconductor company, and Asustek Computers Inc., the world's largest maker of computer motherboards, as well as OLPC and others. (See "HP unveils small laptop for students.") Dell reportedly is getting set to launch its own line of mini-laptops for students, too.

"HP believes in providing each student with an affordable, creative, multimedia tool like the HP Mini-Note that will better prepare [students] to live, learn, and work in an information-rich society," said Jeri Callaway, vice president and general manager of HP's Personal Systems Group.

Says Kurt Madden, chief technology officer for FUSD: "We wanted to have the ability for students to access technology content at anytime while they were in the classroom." But traditional laptops were too expensive, he said--and they were also too big to fit onto a desk that already had large textbooks on it. Students would have to have either the laptop or their textbook book on the desk, but not both, Madden said.

For these reasons, FUSD developed specifications for a small-footprint laptop back in January 2007.

In addition to the HP Mini-Note, FUSD looked at other options, such as the Nova5000 from Fourier Systems, the ASUS eeePC from Asustek, the Samsung Q1 Ultra, and an early version of the Intel Classmate PC. The district had just completed a pilot project with the ASUS eeePC, which it liked, but students and educators said the keyboard and screen were too small for middle and high school students.