The £300million Becta Home Access programme was launched on January 10th 2010 with the aim to get 270,000 households with school age children online by March 2011.
The six approved suppliers and link to the packages they are offering for the Home Access Programme are shown below (the suppliers listed are those shown on the Becta website - if there are more please let me know).
Bli Education
http://www.homeaccesscomputers.com/homeaccess/index.php/computers-internet/computer-internet-bundle.html
Centerprise
Comet
Misco
http://www.misco.co.uk/content/homeaccess/homeaccesspackages.htm
Positive IT Solutions
http://www.homeaccessgrant.com/purchaseproducts.html?p=catalog&parent=6&pg=1
XMA
Each of the suppliers have products on offer that meet the three levels of grant awards (PC only, Broadband only and PC and Broadband). Each are offering broadly similar configurations, mainly laptops although a couple of desktops do feature. All are running Microsoft Windows 7 and Microsoft Office.
The specification levels are fairly basic all with just 1GB RAM - not a problem for their intended use - although the minimum advised level to get Windows 7 and Office running and all come with a technical support provision.
But isn’t it a missed opportunity.
No Open Source software or Operating systems being used - it’s much more cost effective and flexible.
No second user PCs or laptops are being made available (running any Operating System) - it’s much better to re-use than to be contributing to the growing e-waste problem.
Finally, something which may seem quite tivial, but are the recipients being made aware of the ongoing running costs of their new computer? The printer, ink, paper, electricity costs etc etc?
