Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 10 December 2008 13:35
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
Last year, when Australia went to the polls, one of the major promises held out by the Labor Party - which ultimately returned to government after 11 years - was the provision of computers to school-children, one for each child in grades 9 to 12.
A year has gone by and it has become apparent that the costing of this programme wasn't exactly spot on. The projected support costs and the electricity costs are prohibitive, to the extent that some states are reluctant to join the programme.
And as with any delayed initiative, the cost has blown out, some say by as much as two-thirds. The original estimate was that it would cost $A1.2 billion.
With this in mind, one Melbourne-based open source company has prepared a plan that could meet the promise, and yet cut costs by a substantial amount.
"It's a simple proposition; we've prepared an open solution which delivers the best-possible value to education for netbook or laptop roll-outs," says Con Zymaris, CEO of long-running Linux firm Cybersource.
"Our proposal is to use low-cost netbooks, allocating one per two students, with the students using 'live' Linux USB keys to store their operating system, applications and school-work. This results in a major reduction in installation and maintenance complexity, but still allows the students flexibility in how they use their netbooks and applications."
Zymaris' proposal visualises two students sharing one netbook (either an eeePC, an Aspire One, Dell Mini 9 etc) and each student being given a 2gb or 4gb USB key.
The USB key would have a self-booting Linux operating system plus the needed applications.
"This greatly reduces ongoing IT tech support costs as the software is easy to 'install', update and 'revive'," Zymaris says. "Simply remove the old or non-functioning USB key, pop in the new one, and reboot."
