Mon, 23/02/2009 - 13:49
Six companies have been announced as candidates for providing roughly 200,000 netbooks to secondary schools across the state:
ASI Solutions, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asustek and Acer.
There are also four companies (NEC, Lenovo, IBM and ASI Solutions) on the shortlist for a second tender for the rollout of wireless connectivity.
Who do you think will win?
Lenovo or Acer.
They won down in Victoria, so they're obviously doing something right.
Personal opinion this, too, but Acer and Lenovo's netbooks are the best, aesthetically and in terms of quality.
I couldn't begin to guess which company would have the best chance, but I hope it's Acer or Asus — both companies have produced excellent value netbooks. And Asus in particular has a track record of producing products (including netbooks) that are cheap and often innovative (although sometimes tending perhaps more towards "quirky" — notebooks with built-in scents anyone?).
Wonder what kind of netbook ASI brought to the table?? Anyone know?
ASI have a product called Nimu, which is an Intel-based classmate PC specific for education usage. This is one market they play a lot in.
Nimu is the local brand for Intel's reference platform for edu machines, and it's pretty interesting.
It's a convertible tablet, so it can be used as a normal laptop or a slate. It's ruggedised, will survive a 1M drop and water-resistant.
Price overseas is about $US500 - ASI is saying RRP $AUD 770.
Comes with Windows or Mandriva Linux; both with extra touchscreen extensions. I'm a Mac person myself, but since there's no Mac netbook I'll be getting two of these for my kids.
I have no idea about the bid politics, and I suppose pricing & support and so on will play a part, but if it's about the product then I'd think the Nimu would win hands down.
Wondering why Apple is not there?
There are many schools that have support of the Apple Education Solution - and I've experienced this first hand - it's amazing ! Surely Apple would be able to give HP or Lenovo a run for their money.
For a company that prided itself on making the easiest UI - they are hopeless at communicating things themselves. When was the last time you saw an interview with the Australian Apple head honcho?
Rather that kind of approach was not taught to our kids.
Maybe it could be becuase apple don't actually have a netbook yet.. There are discussions for one to be launched, but the criteria doesn't necessarily fit into what Apple can provide.
Either way, it's just a shed load of tax money being spent and personally I think for no reason.. These will end up broken, damaged and replaced within 6 months and the cycle begins again.
Do kids really need a netbook? What's wrong with cheap thin clients in classes.. Shit I never had a pc to learn on until I was 13 and even then we could only program in Basic..
Anyway, back to the question - I think Lenovo or HP...
A netbook *is* a cheap thin client - just one that you can take home because instead of being a client for the school mainframe it's a client for the internet. These things are $500, that looks pretty damn cheap to me. Or if you're worried about them being broken the $750 Nimu is ruggedised.
The kids getting these netbooks are in Year 9 - two years older than you were when you got your PC, which surely cost more than $500-$750. The cheapest computer of the BASIC era (Commodore 64) was $500, and in 1980s dollars that was probably more like a grand in today's money.
When you had your PC at 13 the previous generation would have thought that was unnecessary too, since they got by fine with pencil and paper. Their previous generation thought doing everything on paper was a luxury and got by with slate. Time marches on ^_^