Government plans to spend £300m to give a million disadvantaged
children free laptops and internet access have been questioned
by industry experts.
Mark Taylor, CEO of Sirius
Corporation, said the sums quoted appeared high relative to
what the government was getting. Sirius has just become the first
open source educational systems supplier to gain accreditation from
Becta, the education
technology agency.
"You can get broadband for around £10 a month and an Asus Eee
PC, with free Linux, OpenOffice and FireFox, costs about £160, so
£280 for a year's access to the internet is actually at retail
rates," he said. "I am sure an order for a million units would give
the government some bargaining power with hardware and network
suppliers."
Chris Mayers, chief security architect at
Citrix, said the government
needed to reconsider what it was getting for the money.
"We have seen some very successful schemes where schools provide
terminals with a browser that gives access to school resources and
the internet, via a Citrix thin-client infrastructure," he said.
"The connection is always secure and the terminal is low-cost,
durable and will not be out-dated in a year. The school has control
over the resources provided, the kit will be used for educational
purposes, and can be passed to a new pupil when others leave," he
said.
Details of how to claim one of the million-plus laptop
computers, the configurations and likely suppliers will be made
known in early October, said a Becta spokesman. She declined to say
if open source suppliers are on the short list.
Becta
recently referred Microsoft, which has the lion's share of the
UK educational market, to the Office of Fair Trading for aspects of
its education licence, and Becta earlier
advised
schools against installing Vista and Office 2007 for
interoperability reasons.
Microsoft has just
agreed to pilot a scheme, starting in six months, whereby
schools that use competitive products such as Linux or Apple Mac no
longer have to pay Microsoft to licence them.