David M Williams
Tuesday, 28 April 2009 18:38
Business IT -
Technology
Page 2 of 3
In my home country of Australia the present federal Government promised laptops to school attendees during the election process.
True to political caricature, promising and delivering are different matters. The states administer secondary education here and weren’t happy they might be roped into paying for somebody else’s promise. After some political to- and fro-ing the New South Wales (NSW) state Government announced they were issuing a request for tenders to supply laptops to over 250,000 secondary school students from grades 9 through 12.
The catch was the laptops had to be no more than $500 apiece. Price was a key consideration.
Linux had the
clear edge – no other significant operating system can be added without a licensing cost thrown in to the mix.
Yet, the winning solution chosen by the NSW Department of Education (DET) was a
Lenovo and Microsoft combination.
I don’t believe in criticising for the sake of it. If the DET opted for Microsoft Windows based on a sound and unbiased comparison across all the submissions then so be it.
However, I’m not content to just be told who the winner is. I want to know why it was stronger than the others. I want to know why the others were weaker. I want to know if the winning solution came in at the stipulated budget.
In fact, I even want to know if Linux was genuinely submitted by someone as a credible option. Given the Linux community is largely a grassroots movement I expressed my concern that maybe nobody really put it forward because everyone thought someone else would.
According to
Australian Reseller News the Lenovo and Microsoft deal beat out Acer, ASI, ASUS, Dell and HP. iTWire editor Stan Beer
priced the winning package at $600 per head. I’m certain taxpayers would want to know if this blows out the budget and if adopting Linux would have avoided that.
NSW Government spokespeople refused to give away any insights saying merely that they considered proposals that were based on both Windows and Linux and, surprisingly, MacOS too. Given there’s no Mac laptop option anywhere near $500 it comes as no surprise Apple weren’t a finalist.
That brings us to today.
