EE LIVES - now a "classroom disruptor ... changing Russian schools"

[Dumas]

I remember reading some rumors last year that enTourage was selling off their assets to some outfit in Russia. This article would seem to support that.

Classroom Disruptor: the proprietary tablet PC that's changing Russian schools

It would appear development is continuing on the device.

FTA:

An American national (Alex Shustorovich), who divides his time between Moscow and New York, Shustorovich reveals that, in the project's second year, there are currently about 10,000 tablets in almost 300 schools in more than 40 Russian regions. "And that's a very minimal number," he says.

One of Shustorovich's biggest challenges was finding a tablet which met the stringent requirements of the Russian Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development, which restricts the amount of contact a child can have with computer screens which emit low-level radiation. Despite a national policy to connect every school in Russia to the internet, computer usage has generally been restricted to standalone IT classes and occasional research. The enTourage eDGe met the specifications he was looking for, but wasn't selling particularly well. The eDGe has a 9.7-inch touchscreen that, when written on, will digitise text. Links built into books launch applications on the LCD display or in a web browser. At the time, it retailed at $499.

"[enTourage] were simply device-makers," he says. "They didn't produce content. As a result, all they could do was license books from other publishers and sell them via their device. And there was no synergy between the reader part of the device and the tablet side. It was like having a Kindle with a computer on the side. In all they'd sold about 10,000 [units]. But for us it was exactly what we needed.

Academija/Uchebnik trialled the device in schools across Russia from September 2010. Seven months later, Shustorovich bought the company. "The first version of the device which we're currently using is a bit too expensive and has memory, disc-drives and all sorts of things we don't need," he says. "We're planning that our mark two will be a different design. It will essentially be a dumb terminal. All we really need is two active screens, a video camera and a microphone. The good thing is that enTourage has intellectual property and manufacturing resources, and we wanted to get inside the code of the programs and the IP ownership they had."

Some might consider it a long article. Reads kind of like a spy story, what with the links to nuclear weapons, high-level political connections, and embedded surveillance. You might enjoy.

I'll be interested to see how the 2d Gen Russian EE turns out (without the memory and disc-drives and all the other things not needed). Also looking forward to the added "synergy" between the reader and tablet. Anybody else wondering if Shustorovich has actually used a EE?

[lorenzoens]

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=170553
:-)

[Dumas]

Thanks for that. Didn't think to search on the Russian title.

[ivanjt]

I'll be interested to see how the 2d Gen Russian EE turns out (without the memory and disc-drives and all the other things not needed). Also looking forward to the added "synergy" between the reader and tablet. Anybody else wondering if Shustorovich has actually used a EE?

Obviously a little misinformation in there - there are no disk drives as such, just a flash memory chip that combines memory and storage.

One assumes he has used one - there are pictures of him doing so - but he is the money man and not the technical director.

For what they want there would be few changes to the internals. Cost could be brought down by bulk manufacturing which was one of Entourage's problems - not enough units made, the other was dud, or no, marketing.

[vicinc]

they are barking on a wrong tree/outdated platform.
an update to a allwinner cpu/platform with eink and better integration and you may have a winner.

[lorenzoens]

Vic I think you're not considering costs. Buyng the remaining EEs and building some new ones is way cheaper than updating them with new hardware (and software)

[vicinc]

allwinner platform is far cheaper than anything on the market. cpu is less than 6usd and outperforms many android cpus. see the ainol tablets. very good reviews for the platform.

[Dingo]

So any new news about that edge in Russia?
Any link except first one in thread?

[ivanjt]

The only way we are going to get any information is if one of the Russian members of the forum find anything out and tell us.