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Michigan To Purchase Record 130,000 Laptops
goombah99 writes "The Detroit FreePress reports that Michigan state is planning the largest single laptop purchase/lease ever, over 130,000 wireless laptops--enough for every 6th grader. And of course future purchases for each new class. The main competion is between Dell and Apple, with Apple having the edge in classroom integration experience. But price points will matter since the school districts may have to pay $25 per pupil. And the Gates foundation has a foot in the door. No word on what OS the Dell laptops would run. What would be your choice for middle school classrooms with minimal sys admin?"
I'm a newspaper reporter and I cover the local school board as part of my beat. One of the biggest problems with this, according to the administration, is that the state is purchasing these laptops on a two-year lease. Nobody knows what's supposed to happen to these computers once the lease is up and the computers are obsolete. Will schools have the option to buy them (even though they're outdated) so that 6th graders don't have to give them up before they're finished with middle school, or will the state just reclaim them? And nobody knows where the money will come from two years from now when it's time to upgrade. The state has all kinds of money for this initiative now, but next time they might say, "Okay, public schools! It's your turn to foot the bill this year!"
Oh, and to answer the main question in this thread... they'll probably run whatever OS a majority of Michigan schools are already running. If the kids are learning how to use XP in the computer labs, it's the most practical (though not necessarily the best) solution to stick XP on the laptops too, for consistancy's sake. As beneficial as it would be for kids to leave middle school knowing how to use both XP and OSX or Linux, it ain't gonna happen.