From Pine View Farm

Crabbing about Apples 4

I would suspect these folks already have computers, likely even laptops.

Is there any kind of justification for locking them into the walled orchard:

The Aurora (Colorado) City Council is considering trying out iPads to go green and help save some green.

(snip)

City officials say it currently costs $710 to print each city council information packet and another $200 per council member to assemble and deliver the packets.

It’s happening here in the city and in the state:

This year, the General Assembly is initiating a pilot program that will place iPads in the hands of select legislators as an alternative to the more common PC laptops they have been assigned for about the past decade.

State lawmakers first received laptops as part of a 1999 pilot program which was extended the following year to provide computers to all 140 members of the legislature. Since then, those computers have been replaced every 3-4 years.

It is possible that there are data security concerns that justify the government’s purchasing and setting up the computers, but let’s look at the math: They could get laptops for half the price of iPads and netbooks for a third the price.

They are letting themselves get sucked into the Apple vortex of hype.

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4 comments

  1. Duffy

    November 10, 2010 at 3:03 pm

    <i>They could get laptops for half the price of iPads and netbooks for a third the price.</i>

    Since when is government concerned with cost effectiveness?

     
  2. Frank

    November 10, 2010 at 5:03 pm

    I will simply point out that both the Virginia administrations (I don’t know about the Coloradan one) are heavily Republican.

     
  3. Karen

    November 15, 2010 at 2:05 pm

    I just checked the council website. No sign of Repub or Dem. But there’s also no sign of stupid, either. That part’s invisible.

     
  4. Frank

    November 15, 2010 at 4:08 pm

    The city council is officially non-partisan per the city charter.  More to the point, this is a resort town.  As a group, it is leans not so much left or right as it leans “developer.”

    Kerry Dougherty I think nailed it in her column.  Despite Duffy’s and my potshots at this, it’s not about politics.  It’s about infatuation with gadgets and envy.