School Netbooks are here! (2 Viewers)

[Bemboka]

Yes! The rollout of the new awaited school netbooks has begun.

Teaching staff have recieved their Lenovo s10e Netbooks equipped with Microsofts new *unreleased* Windows 7 as it's OS, Microsoft office 2007, Photoshop CS4 and Dreamweaver, the netbooks (softwaricly) sound like they are great!

But we also have to look at the Hardware. The tiny 1.6GHz Atom Processor and the 1 GB of RAM is no where near enough to run the software the DET is putting in them making the experiance painstakingly slow. The small 8.9 inch screen is way to small to be practical. Also there has been a rumour that some schools are taking off Office 2007 and replacing it with 2003 because it's apparently "more compatible."
Many restrictions and monitoring will be put in place for the use of these new laptops. Remote locking of the netbooks (incase of theft/unauthorised entry) is just one of the few requirements the DET has made.

I'm in Year 11 and I know I'm not going to recieve a netbook, but after hearing about them it kinda makes u happy that you aren't getting one.
The government is going to make a few people a little unhappy; Some people will be complaining because they don't have one, While the ones who do have one will be complaing because they are so FKN SH*T :burn:!

Laggy and frustrating this new "learning" curve will be.

 

[johony]

a laptop is a laptop, rudd didnt say anything about a perfectly functioning one.

 

[Kwayera]

Why the heck is it getting CS4? Surely Elements would be sufficient for most school use!

 

[timw7845]

i heard they have webcams built in...

i wonder what that will cause

 

[tarraganda]

Just like to let you all know, one of my teachers that is also part of the IT crew bought one to class the other day and im here to tell you they are nothing flash... They come in a plastic container with contact on the top of the lid. They are color coded with teachers receiving black and students recieving a colour such as cream or red i think the options were. They have built in trackers and can be remotly shut down. But they have a serious problem, with their restrictions you cant change the resolution and the desktop can not even fit on one page so you have to scroll to see it. And i hope you dont have a printer flash drive and mouse because it only has two USB ports... Good luck and thankgod im in year 11!!!

 

[Uncle]

....

But we also have to look at the Hardware. The tiny 1.6GHz Atom Processor and the 1 GB of RAM is no where near enough to run the software the DET is putting in them making the experiance painstakingly slow. The small 8.9 inch screen is way to small to be practical. ....

Hahahahahhahaha.

Why the heck is it getting CS4? Surely Elements would be sufficient for most school use!

With the small screen it wouldn't be a good idea either way.

 

[Sprangler]

8.9 inches? That's 1.9 inches bigger than the length of my penis. Who wants to play with a 1.6 Ghz penis computer?

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Why the hell didn't the government morons use free open source software instead of proprietary Microsoft products, like was recommended to them? Oh that's right, because DET has their hand in Microsoft's vagina. Now I really am fucking pissed off that my taxpayer dollars are being used to prop up a foreign fucking monopoly.

 

[EpicFailGuy]

Why the hell didn't the government morons use free open source software instead of proprietary Microsoft products, like was recommended to them? Oh that's right, because DET has their hand in Microsoft's vagina. Now I really am fucking pissed off that my taxpayer dollars are being used to prop up a foreign fucking monopoly.

open office ftw

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Just like to let you all know, one of my teachers that is also part of the IT crew bought one to class the other day and im here to tell you they are nothing flash... They come in a plastic container with contact on the top of the lid. They are color coded with teachers receiving black and students recieving a colour such as cream or red i think the options were. They have built in trackers and can be remotly shut down. But they have a serious problem, with their restrictions you cant change the resolution and the desktop can not even fit on one page so you have to scroll to see it. And i hope you dont have a printer flash drive and mouse because it only has two USB ports... Good luck and thankgod im in year 11!!!

You should be able to remove those restrictions by installing Ubuntu.

To everybody having a laugh at the specs: don't be stupid. It's not meant to be a gaming PC. A netbook is the perfect hardware tool for this purpose. Last I checked you didn't need 4GB of RAM or a dual core to type documents or surf the Net. The screen may sound small but you don't notice it much. The real issue will be the keyboard. Any keyboard below 10 inches on a netbook is patently awful. But they're kids with smaller fingers than us who text on their phone keyboards all day long so I'm sure they'll get used to it.

 

[EpicFailGuy]

You should be able to remove those restrictions by installing Ubuntu.

To everybody having a laugh at the specs: don't be stupid. It's not meant to be a gaming PC. A netbook is the perfect hardware tool for this purpose. Last I checked you didn't need 4GB of RAM or a dual core to type documents or surf the Net. The screen may sound small but you don't notice it much. The real issue will be the keyboard. Any keyboard below 10 inches on a netbook is patently awful. But they're kids with smaller fingers than us who text on their phone keyboards all day long so I'm sure they'll get used to it.

I think most people aren't suggesting that these netbooks have those kind of specs. They are merely just loling at the fact that they are putting programs like adobe cs4 on these computers which

a) are being used by kids under 18 who probably 1 in 50 would know how to use photoshop cs4 properly.
b) the specs are not good enough to run a program such as this.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

I think most people aren't suggesting that these netbooks have those kind of specs. They are merely just loling at the fact that they are putting programs like adobe cs4 on these computers which

a) are being used by kids under 18 who probably 1 in 50 would know how to use photoshop cs4 properly.
b) the specs are not good enough to run a program such as this.

Yeah, that's very true.

Not to mention that if they want to throw on extra shit like that they should make it free (GIMP's about as difficult to learn as Photoshop) so it's not costing anything extra anyway.

Schools using proprietary products on their lab computers that not all students have access to (without paying hundreds of dollars) is bad enough, but then actively propping up those proprietary system with tens of thousands of new purchases of them each year all with the benefits (for the monopolists) of vendor lock-in in children? That's so fucked up.

Did they even have a bidding process for the OS? The hardware vendor? How did Lenovo get the deal in the first place?

 

[dieburndie]

They should have at least gone with 10.1"s

 

[bigboyjames01]

netbooks? fucking lame

 

[aussie-boy]

Surely they should have looked towards the OLPC concept to choose a laptop.

It should have a 10" screen, huge battery life, SSD and all open source software

 

[annabackwards]

Surely they should have looked towards the OLPC concept to choose a laptop.

It should have a 10" screen, huge battery life, SSD and all open source software

I agree.

I especially found the inclusion of CS4 hilarious ^^

 

[Lukybear]

No matter how bad you guys paint it to be, i would still love to have one. Its free after all.

I recon you can probably play wc3 on it without a hitch + starcraft.

 

[dux&src]

No matter how bad you guys paint it to be, i would still love to have one. Its free after all.

I recon you can probably play wc3 on it without a hitch + starcraft.

Oh well year 11s don't get one.
A free laptop/netbook is a free laptop/netbook. People shouldn't complain when they are given something free. Unless it's a hook to the face, in which case complain like a grumpy old man.

 

[pwoh]

Oh well year 11s don't get one.
A free laptop/netbook is a free laptop/netbook. People shouldn't complain when they are given something free. Unless it's a hook to the face, in which case complain like a grumpy old man.

But think about where the money comes from....taxpayer dollars. The same amount of money could've been spent more wisely...

 

[dux&src]

But think about where the money comes from....taxpayer dollars. The same amount of money could've been spent more wisely...

I knew someone would point that out to me.
I do feel the money could've been spent more efficiently elsewhere.