Google Earth / Live Search Maps Alternatives

I am trying to introduce various classes to their collaborative projects this week. One of the things I want to do is to show them where in the world the other classes are located.

Sounds like a perfect Google Earth project right? Yep, it is but the problem is I can't run Google Earth in DirectX on the computers at school - many of them don't support DirectX and then ones that do don't have monitors that support 32 bit colors. It will run in OpenGL but it is extremely, extremely slow. Did I mention that I typically only have 256MB of memory?

Okay, so then I tried Microsoft Live Search Maps - I did use this today with a couple of classes but could only use the 2D mode. I think I may be able to use 3D on one of the computers in the lab. I need to try this tomorrow and if it works I'll just use that one - I'm afraid it won't though.

Tomorrow, I'm introducing my 7th Graders to their collaborative project. In addition to showing locations of other schools, I want to do an exercise with latitude and longitude since the first thing we have to do in the project is write an introduction including the latitude & longitude of our school. I'd love to do the Crack The Code activity to work with latitude & longitude. I've given up on having each student doing this independently but would love to be able to do it as a whole class activity.

Any ideas of ways I can do this online without Google Earth, since the speed at which it doesn't work makes it not a good choice, or Live Search Maps, since the 2D mode (which is all I can run) doesn't show latitude & longitude at least that I can see?