Wyse? I thought that they were dead years ago, Fujitsu bought them. Maybe someone has done a Lazarus on the name. The thin clients look like we are heading back into the days of green screen terminals, just with some fancy graphics built in.
I think that they are looking at the staff buying their own laptops, IBM were looking at a similar idea last year.
The notion of having a memory stick with all the software on it is a bit suss though, the performance wouldn't exactly be startling.
26 August, 2009 Media release Digital Education Revolution delivered in NSW Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard and NSW Minister for Education and Training, Verity Firth will today announce the delivery of the first laptops to secondary schools in New South Wales.
The Deputy Prime Minister and the NSW Minister for Education will visit a Year 9 class at Fairvale High School in Sydney's west to see how the laptops will be integrated into the lesson.
The laptop deliveries signify the roll-out of the Rudd Government's $2.2 billion Digital Education Revolution to NSW high schools.
Ms Firth said the laptops would revolutionise the nature of education and training and provide students with more access to technology than ever before.
"More than 200,000 devices will be distributed to NSW government school students over the life of this $386 million program.
"Because of this investment, students will be able to access more learning tools than ever before. They'll be more computer literate and in the long-term more competitive in a global market."
Ms Firth said the roll-out would begin with Year 9 students and for the next four years, each new Year 9 class in NSW government schools would receive a laptop.
"This is a gift for every government high school student in NSW-once they have finished Year 12, they can keep their laptop for good."
Ms Firth said the Rees Government had worked extremely hard to provide the best possible product and software for NSW government schools.
"In a world first, Microsoft's Windows 7 has been installed on every laptop which is also equipped with $5,500 of the latest Microsoft and Adobe software and is wirelessly enabled to allow students to access the internet from anywhere within the school.
"NSW will also employ an additional 400 IT support officers to provide on-site assistance to students and teachers, providing more jobs in the current tough economic climate.
"The NSW Government has also invested $16 million over four years to provide secondary high school teachers with the same laptops, with another $10 million allocated for professional learning.
"The Digital Education Revolution complements the NSW Government's four-year $693 million investment in providing state-of-the-art connected classrooms, computer labs and technology to NSW schools and TAFEs.
"The NSW Department of Education and Training has developed new world-class curriculum specific teaching and learning resources to be used with the laptops. The classroom as we know it has changed."
The Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard welcomed the NSW Government's commitment to the Digital Education Revolution.
"The Rudd Government is determined to ensure Australian students are equipped with the tools they need for the jobs of today and tomorrow.
"The Digital Education Revolution will help to bring our classrooms into the
In article , snipped-for-privacy@migo.com said... : :If handing out free laptops is going to improve the apalling level of :literacy in this country or add to it?
It'll *continue* to make it worse, obviously. Or was that meant to be a joke, given your spelling?
Nope Wyse are still kicking, and whilst it's not up to a desktop PC it ain't far off with current technology.
I'm currently implementing VMWare View where I work, and it's an amazing technology. Delivers your work desktop to you where-ever you happen to be with an internet connection, basically using a really souped up RDP session (souped up to the point that the old horse and cart is now more like a Lambaghini).
Storage ain't a massive issue as it has a "gold image" which is referenced by all users, and there is just a "differential" image kept for each of the users to keep track of any changes. The differentials are blown away every 7 days or so, but the profile information is kept intact and stored elsewhere, so the user doesn't really notice the difference as long as they don't do silly things like dumping data onto C drive outside of their profile (company policy is to store all data on the network anyway).
Now getting back to your comments, one of the packages that comes bundled with View is Thinapp (previously Thinstall until VMWare bought it and souped it up further), so the way we do things is all SOE apps are on the Gold view image, and any other required software we thinapp and stick on the network, where only those authorised to use those apps can run them. They run beautifully (even large apps) from the network as thinapp only streams the parts of the app to you that you need as you need them, it doesn't need to shunt the whole thing across to your machine, I'm sure that technology would work equally well off of a USB stick or similar.
And the Wyse terminals (we're using S10's and V10L's) are nearly up to scratch of having a desktop PC. Wyse have done some interesting things with compression and the streaming of video and sound to their terminals (the only place where they fall behind a full desktop PC), and with what we've got now we can wack a V10L on a desk, point it to an FTP server to pick up it's config and licensing, plug in a monitor and bang it's up and running. Connects to the View broker, user authenticates and they get their own personalised machine up on the screen, from where they could watch a movie if they wanted to even though they're just sitting at a thin client.
We've ruled out replacing all desktops with these terminals though, as they have implications in respect to Windows licensing which we don't encounter buying OEM PC's, and after the licensing is sorted you're nearly paying as much as a PC anyway. Also the user experience isn't the same as sitting at a real PC, it's nearly there, but the performance isn't all the way there. For instance you can't just add a codec to your master image to make everything good for new video formats, you'll find crappy performance as Wyse will not have catered for that codec yet, shit they've only just got flash working, and even that is a tad flakey. Instead we'll be buying a bunch for rapid implmentations, temporary work area set ups, overflow usage, and hot desks and so on. But the PC's will still be there for a while yet.
It can run quite happily from the memory stick though, and perform without drama. Thinapp is a magic toy. With View you can even "check out" your work PC to a memory stick (if you have the space), take your work computer with you on the road, and "check it back in" with all changes when you return to work.
I would love to see the item by item costing to support this assertion.
BUT
That is only $1,930 per computer.
nope, they throw another few dollars at the existing teachers in return for taking on a mountain of work supporting this crud. Oh wait, that is what happens now.
Cynically know in the dept as being created so the minister can send out emails to every student.
And then compare it to academic pricing and cough !
Academic pricing is much cheaper, I'd say they'd be hard pressed to prove the $5,500 even at commercial pricing. And that's not even taking into account the massive bulk-buy discount they'd be getting. Usual political spin doctoring and lies.
There ya go!
Dunno what state you're in, Dept of Ed and Training in WA throws heaps at the highschools and dismally neglects the TAFEs. Although that may now change since they've gone full circle and are splitting the depts after the abortion of merging them.
What, you mean they're finally going to pay for the infrastructure to run all of this? Know someone that was involved in the PC tenders over here in WA, and intentionally priced through the roof to miss out, apparently his mob had tried to push the point that this would not work without infrastructure to run the gear and was told "that's not your problem, the promise was on PC's, that will be delivered, infrastructure not to be included, just price on the PC's". His mob didn't want their name associated with such an abortion.
Wonder if it'll turn out to be the same in-house abortions that we see so commonly from govt depts.
Any NSW teacher or support staff, full or part time can purchase this software- yep full versions and double of some bits for under $200.
Microsoft provides a Work at Home Rights licence for all DET employees (teaching and administrative, full time and part time). Only those Microsoft desktop products that are included in the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement and that are installed on a user's workplace computer can be installed on only one home computer for work purposes.
Includes the operating system, MS Office, and
Adobe Master collection and bits. Adobe CS4 Collection for Windows >includes :Acrobat Pro Extended, Photoshop Elements, Premier Elements, Captivate, Master Collection (9xDVD) also available for MAC. $84.50
Office Enterprise 2007 Win32 English DVD>> includes Word,Excel etc. Office MAC 2008 DVD Expression Web Win32 English Media-replacement version of FrontPage Visual Studio Pro 2008 DVD these are $50 each
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.