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VIRTUALISATION NSW schools netbooks program to present a $600 million bill for taxpayers
VIRTUALISATION NSW schools netbooks program to present a $600 million bill for taxpayers | NSW schools netbooks program to present a $600 million bill for taxpayers |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Thursday, 02 April 2009 | |
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For anybody with a cheap calculator, the sums should be really quite simple. However, on closer examination they're not really. We do know that about 260,000 year 9 students and a raft of teachers are going to get free laptops for the next three years at least. A Lenovo IdeaPad S10e with the same specs as the models going to the schools - Atom N280, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive and Windows XP - retails for about $775. Minus GST from that brings it down to $700. Of course we can assume that the NSW Government as a volume purchaser gets the box at wholesale price or even less, so knock 20% off, bringing it down to $560. However, each machine carries an extended 4-year warranty, so add back $40 for support costs. Thus we can assume that final cost of each netbook to the Government is at least $600. Some say the actual cost is more but let's not quibble. On top of this each netbook will have a copy of Microsoft Office Professional. "The laptops will have Windows XP and the Microsoft Office suite, which includes Word, Excel, Publisher, Powerpoint, One Note and Access," a Microsoft Australia spokesperson told iTWire yesterday. The recommended retail on the Office Professional Academic Edition is $270, but the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) will get it under its existing volume licensing agreement. For how much? No-one will say. CONTINUED Page 2 |
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