Teacher laptop initiative kicks off -

Teacher laptop initiative kicks off link

This is a depressing article I feel.
I think the initiative of making sure that all teachers have a laptop is a very good idea I however feel the specs and software installed on them does not make sense in our environment.
These laptops are going to cost between R7000.00 and R8000.00 each the article says.
Why can the teachers not just go to game and buy an entry level computer ie samsung rv510 for R2999.00 and install open source office on it or use google docs.
The rest of the money should be spent on connecting these laptops to the internet ie hotspots in all schools and more 3g data when the teachers are at home.
If the teachers have a high end microsoft office when the students want to do the same on their computers they will not be able to afford this ? makes no sense ?? why not open source software or the cloud ?

I agree that the price range of those laptops are too high. I don't think that many teachers could afford them. I would like to see the specs for these laptops. The costs of the laptops may really be between the R4000-R6000 price range to make up for the cost of the software.
How did Mustek get this deal?

Good grief. R7000.00 for a teacher's laptop? That is very expensive. What they wanna do on these things...create 3D animated movies or something? I say get them a decent R3000 - R4000.00 laptop and gooi Linux Mint on there. Works with 3G modems easy peasy and comes preinstalled with multi media playback and Open Office. What more do they need?

I thought they used the money to pay for raises?

ocleroux said:

What more do they need?

Click to expand...

3k of gravy.

As for the opensource comments...Microsoft pushes their software hard in education environments. They'll give it away for free if they have to...so that the schoolkids grow up seeing MS Office, not OO. Wouldn't be surprised though if our gov managed to pay a fortune for it somehow.

They are all available on a 24-month contract on MTN, with data contracts offering between 75MB and 500MB a month.

Click to expand...

75MB? Haha. Wait till Win7 and Office decides it needs to update. Eish the cap she is gone.

On a more serious note, lets rather make sure the school buildings aren't falling apart and that kids have writing gear...

ocleroux said:

Good grief. R7000.00 for a teacher's laptop? That is very expensive. What they wanna do on these things...create 3D animated movies or something? I say get them a decent R3000 - R4000.00 laptop...

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing then I realised that there is no way that a company would make any kind of deal the government without making a huge profit. I think that the prices that they are selling these laptops for may be R2000-R3000 above the normal price. I could be wrong but I don't think so.

Musdrek! Sounds like a schmokkel deal!