Brown offers free laptops to deprived UK schoolkids Free laptops with broadband access will be dished out to more than a quarter of a million UK households to help kids from cash-strapped families do better in exams, said Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday. "We want every family to become a broadband family, and we want every home linked to a school. For those finding it …
"Free laptops with broadband access will be dished out to more than a quarter of a million UK households to help kids from cash-strapped families do better in exams, said Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday."
How in the hell can a laptop with broadband access help a kid do better in exams?
I'm sick of seeing all these initiatives, as if waving a laptop at someone is going to increase their intelligence or improve their lives.
Still not as bad as one intiative that gave internet access to drought stricken Peruvian farmers. I'm sure they didn't want a well digging and are now happily browsing for porn while their crops fail.
It should have been supplied with standards-compliant software and (as far as possible) free software. This would have reduced the cost and allowed many more bribes...err...laptops to be handed out.
Quite example:
Ubuntu (or similar)
Firefox (or Opera, or Konqueror)
OpenOffice (or ?)
Done. No need to reinforce the defacto monopoly.
...now as a family that pays taxes, works hard (ahem), got an education through actually turning up for school and has no social life due to mortgage,nursery fee's, bills, taxes and minor things like buying food, can I have a free laptop and broadband?
No, thought not.
Kids, want free stuff.? Then don't bother working hard, just wait for your handouts...
But:
1>. These laptops will be on eBay, BNIB. Perhaps gordon should visit homes where they cant afford a laptop. I would suggest that if you can afford a 48 inch plasma, 40 fags, 2 crates of hoffmeister and 6 litres of white lightning a day, you can afford a laptop. And youll find that lot in every one of those homes.
2>. Whats in it for MS ? Getting them wile theyre young maybe with immersive advertising, feeding them MS crack whilst they dont know what theyre doing.
Well done Gordon. Youre a genius. Or an idiot.
sorry but they really are taking the piss. A child is up to 16. I can sometimes accept the up to 18 as you can't vote or drink I can see the justification on the grounds that you aren't treated by law like an adult in these situations. But 19? I was at Uni had a job and busily getting completely pissed every pay day at 17.
How about just making it possible for people to be able to afford these things for themselves. Having a shiny new computer and broadband access at home isn't much use if you can't afford to turn them on.
How ironic it would be if they lost their Home Access due to 'illegal' filesharing activities. I wonder how broadband can be deemed a non-essential utility and then be deemed worth £300 million to dish out to poorer families.
I'm not saying I disapprove of the plan, just think the message is a little mixed.
A gubbermint IT project that went well? Surely you jest?
There should have been no MS products on their (unless they were the sole maker of something and I find that difficult to believe).
A child needs an education - and that comes from books. Not from a PC. Even IT pros don't use PCs to learn (PCs are for doing, or testing out what was learnt from a book), just ask O'Reilly et al.
So, in a nutshell, these laptops are not needed. They are just a bribe before the election.
I'm glad to hear the package is good, but since the initial planning stages, there's been a revolution in Small Cheap Computing. The pilot should be reconsidered as a proof of concept, and the nationwide rollout should be based on new SCC/netbook/nettop technology. Preferably with HDMI so that we can go back to the old days of using a single screen as both the TV and computer monitor.
Details? What kind of BB contracts will be deemed necessary to the underprivileged kiddies, a piddly 2GB/mo ADSL2+ (if so what happens when little johnny watches ceebeebies on iPlayer and uses up the allowance in a day?)? 20Meg Cable?
Will nanny state have nanny filters on said laptops to prevent the interwebs corrupting little Johnny or being stolen by peadobear?
It creates a kind of reverse of the actual problem.
When my kids were in 6th form, their mates whose parents didn't work got all kinds of things paid for by the state, including a new top of the range PC. They even got paid to turn up at school (about £30 a week if I remember rightly).
My kids, however, got no pc, and no £30 a week because the combined family income was just greater than the threshold and it was assumed I could afford to pay each of my 4 children £30 a week myself (yeah right! I didn't have £30 a week left to spend on anything when the bills were paid).
So the kids of those parents who choose to try to make a decent living for themselves, and not just take from the state will become disadvantaged compared to those who don't.
It's a laudable aim but I think it will just result in a different unfairness.
I'm slightly over the threshold for various state handouts and I work my socks off 6 days a week. The perks of refusing to take a job or to go part-time seem very tempting and I'm sure I'd be in better health if I didn't have to work so hard, but I couldn't bare to be a bone idle scrounger living off handouts. Yet I must pay taxes towards the multi-billion pound benefits and perks rewarded (yes, they work like rewards) to people who at the end of the day have all the electronic goods for free that I have to work my fingers to the bone for. And like the poster above I'm very lucky to have £30 a week left over for myself. It really doesn't pay to work when you could just do nothing and get everything handed to you. And I wouldn't even have to buy my kids a laptop. Yay! Oh to be classed as poor!
...It's about £1,100 per laptop.
If it is a base-spec lappy it should cost around £350 (probably less as a bulk-order, so let's say £250)
This leaves about £850.
From that remove the broadband cost (circa £35 per month, but this is a bulk order...so let's say £25 per month). That's £300 per year
This leave £550
From that, let's remove costs not already covered (e.g dispatch etc - say £50)
This leaves £500 clear profit PER LAPTOP.
What could that be for? Well bonuses to the directors of the companies involved. I wonder how many of them are MPs, spouses of MPs, relatives of MPs or good friends of MPs.
So not only is is a blatant bribe, but it is a money grabbing scheme by MPs and their cronies.
Labour disgust me.
So they they are giving out laptops with one hand to raise "digital awareness"- but then cut the higher education budget with the other hand.
That makes sense if you are trying to dumb down a population. After all, you wouldn't want an educated population being able to think for themselves - they might question what you are doing.
terrible idea - even with a free laptop, broadband costs money, then there's support, and if the laptop runs windows - you can expect them to be next to useless after a few months of steering through the sea of malware and viruses that is the internet to the uninitiated. A far better idea would be more machines within schools and libraries and out of hours access and tutoring.
Of course the other issue is - the government thinks broadband is very important for everyone to have, even going so far as to say it was "as important as electricity" - yet they are still prepared to get behind a "three strikes and you are out" anti-piracy rule to cut people off.
Question for you all - is a family who can not afford a computer or broadband and manage to get one for nothing under this scheme, more or less likely to always pay for downloads ?
Topical in view of yesterday's CSF Bill debate in Parliament, with the government talking about more support for home education, yet explicitly denying them the opportunity to participate in this scheme if they would otherwise qualify. The small print at the bottom specifically states that home educated children do not qualify.
> provide a link for families to access their children's school progress reports on attainment, behaviour and other issues.
Isn't that what parent-teacher meetings are for? This is just NuLabour trying to buy pre-election votes by giving free toys to kids. They'd be better off encouraging schools to have open days, get the parents down to meet the teachers, and name&shame those parents who abdicate that most basic of responsibilties: educating their children.
And laptops, for chrissake! Desktops are cheaper, more repairable, last longer, and can be upgraded instead of being scrapped when they don't run the latest version of WIndows.
Surely this must contravene some law on votebuying?
This initiaitive is reminiscent of why iPlayer originally only supported MS Windows, "because there's no demand for alternatives" aka "because we reinforce the need to have MS Windows people will continue to assume that there is no point considering alternatives" thus proving the original assertion.
People like me will say "of course if you were to encourage platform neutrality, innovation, price reduction through competition and so forth or invest in some of the ARM based stuff that looks like it's going to get interesting" (and the IP is still sort of UK-ish)
Likely, vested interest will jump in and say "LOTD ROFLMAO 1%, fanboi" or something.
As long as the public sector seems to reinforce computing == Microsoft then the opportunity to benefit through competition is reduced as is the opportunity to discover alternatives.
Err ..... is Labour stealing somebody else's clothes and trying to look good whenever they have run out of ideas and are starved of talent, because can one not go along to any common or garden high street mobile telephone shop and pick up a free laptop with a tailored broadband subscription ..... just as Labour are offering as if new?
And if one cannot afford a laptop and/or are very new to the wonderful and weird and wacky worlds of the Internet, how are you going to pay for all the extras on the broadband connection, which will not be free, as you are bombarded with all manner of tempting earthly and pornographic delight?
How nice. Get them early, just like all drugs that are bad for you.
I wonder how much these "free" computers are going to cost at upgrade time? Is it part of the contract that they can't install another O/S once they're distributed? I'd be curious to find out. I'm curious to see if El Reg is curious to find out too.
Or maybe I'm just too cynical. Then again, Microsoft is involved. Is it possible to be too cynical after having dealt with, fought against, and generally been beaten up by that company for 29 years?
On the plus side, if these little feckwits get free computers maybe they wouldn't be arsed to go steal mine. Or if they do maybe I'll be able to pick a cheap replacement up from 'Dosh Converters' where they hocked it for dope money.
Win win for Afghanistan's premier product!.
That is if it's a real policy and not a Vote for gordon phoney baloney hot air policy.....
My kids school is just being rebuilt and as part of that they announced that they were issuing laptops to all the kids for use in school and for access to the school from home. The reality is that we received a letter informing us that we will need to pay for the Netbook (no it's not a laptop) and not only that it is running windoze. That is the last thing I want to be contributing money to.
I wonder how free the laptops are that Gordon is using as an electioneering ploy...
Nice to see that Microsoft are using some of their advertising money to ensure that there is no choice in schools.
It also begs the question if these free broadband connections are going to be subject to the rural broadband tax.
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