Because iPads are cool man! Borked IT buys from the ACT Government continued.

Friends in a certain department all got Iphone 4’s recently oh and some others got Laptops.

Seriously, I swear half the public service budget goes into stupid “Oh yeah, we need 50 inch screen TVs for everyone for um.. uhh… people who have bad eyesight so they can’t read emails at small resolution!” scams.

Corruption at it’s best.

Whats worse is that the Government could have easily programed some stuff up for Android devices that could be used across the entire Public Service, now they are stuck with Smartphones that do nothing aside from look good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PetqKh7lr8g&feature=related

Seriously, what a monumentally stupid decision.

An iPad is just about the most expensive device you can find to read PDFs on, short of a full fledged computer.

There any number of android devices that do pretty much exactly what an iPad does, but because they don’t have an Apple logo on the back of them, they cost 1/3rd the price.

The other ridiculous thing is that the whole reason an iPad has a backlit, colour LCD display is because it is designed to be used for browsing the internet and watching multimedia. Backlit LCDs aren’t particularly good for reading stuff on, which is why dedicated e-readers have e-ink type displays.

Not to mention the difference in power drawn by each type of screen, which is half the reason an iPad will go 10 hours before you have to recharge it, whist an e-reader will go 2 weeks before you have to recharge it.

Did i mention that dedicated e-readers cost a fraction of what an iPad costs and don’t have the capability to browse the web so you don’t need to disable all the features on it?

The thing that really pisses me off is that money blown on stupid frivolous things like is money that isn’t spent on the government services and programs that provide benefits to the community.

I can think of no good reason for the continued existence of paper textbooks.

But I’d go with something like a kindle over and ipad if I was king.

johnboy said :

One wonders if this is good for cabinet when they’re going to get rid of text books in our schools?

iPads have a cool factor, to both staff and students, of approximately a bazillion times that of a text book…

johnboy said :

One wonders if this is good for cabinet when they’re going to get rid of text books in our schools?

I have heard of a school in Queensland that trialed replacing textbooks with iPads… pretty low-tech use of the device in my opinion, but a start… They are perfect for the educational setting… much better than the small-screened notebook PCs the Rudd computer money purchased last year…

Gerry-Built said :

IntACT still class the iPad (and other iOS devices) as “hostile” and will not provide support for iOS devices.

When I was at InTACT, what the LA wanted the LA got, and the entire management chain shivered in their boots. Would be shocked if anything has changed.

This is a great idea. I don’t think the device selection matters that much. The more significant thing is the change in our society to one that is finally perhaps heading toward the paperless utopia. Alaska airlines is doing away with paper manuals in airliners and replacing with iPads. A washing machine guy rocked up at a friends place with an ipad. He was able to access parts manuals, order parts, issue an account etc. all from the iPad.

One wonders if this is good for cabinet when they’re going to get rid of text books in our schools?

I have been keen to get some iPod Touch devices in my high school Media classes, but I was told that IntACT still class the iPad (and other iOS devices) as “hostile” and will not provide support for iOS devices. I imagine if iOS devices are not supported, then the chances of other e-readers being supported is much, much lower…

The CT article annoyed me. He started too many sentences with But.
And for all the hype and hoopla about making it more environmentally friendly blah blah blah, I bet they installed Angry Birds before they shut everything else down…

They could have continued to read the hard copy documents @ no charge….

Just morons……………….really!

More areas of the Government will see iPads shortly, DSD are expediting the risk assesments against the devices and the software which can incorporate them into their environements. Deffinetly a case of the cart before the horse but who mandates that the executives in government caln’t do such things? It has happened before and it will happen again as it was the same with Blackberries many years ago, unfortunately for RIM they haven’t done anything new since. Apple devices are perceived by most as the “bee’s knees” at the moment, Executives and other officials are not immune to the marketing of such things no more than the next consumer. A waste of money? perhaps it can be argued that they are overkill for the job, perticularly in this example, but the government wastes a lot more money on things that perhaps we should cry over as “tablets” are peanuts in comparison… even the most expensive ones.

harvyk1 said :

….plus you can remotely wipe an iPad if it gets left somewhere…

Not so much if you have disabled all the wireless features…

I’m not sure how many iPad’s they’ve brought, but lets assume it’s 20, at the average price of $599 for a base model you’d be looking at $11,980 for the hardware…

I expect the consultants which they no doubt brought in to advise them cost more than that…
Knowing how configurable these things are, and I do have to hand it to apple, they are also pretty secure (to the point of being a pain in the arse to a developer like me), I’d say they have picked the right tech for this job.

A kindle on the other hand costs only around the $150 mark, so 20 of them will only cost $2,780. That’s a $9,200 saving…

Kindle was designed to read e-books, that’s it… There is an software development kit available which is in beta, you don’t have the same ability to lock the device down as it was only ever originally designed to read books with it, not classified documents… Plus Amazon has the ability to remotely access the devices at any time – Ironically look up Animal Farm \ 1984, both titles which Amazon removed from sale, then removed from everyones devices without user interaction.

I can just imagine the decision process:

– boss wants an iPad – ’cause it goes to 11
– underling buys an iPad – ’cause that’s what the boss wants
– some other underling comments on security problems
– underlings compromise on a crippled iPad
– the boss gets another EFD that they won’t use

No-one bother to ask what the thing would actually be used for, and before that was figured out and the security problems examined, the iPads had already been bought. At no stage did an underling suggest that an e-reader would fill the bill as that’s not what the boss wanted.

Seen it too often.

johnboy said :

compared to an e-reader?

Better option would have been an Android tablet. Same functionality as an eReader or featureless iPad, but significantly less cost.

Seems someone in the Chief minister’s office has been spending too much time at over-priced conferences and envy got the best of them.

johnboy said :

compared to an e-reader?

I expect an ereader would be cheaper, but it would be far more inflexible, and it’s far easier to lock down an iPad, plus you can remotely wipe an iPad if it gets left somewhere…

seanneko said :

grundy said :

What a waste of great hardware….

idiots.

Of course, what were they thinking disabling the wireless functionality of a device that contains various highly sensitive documents.

Idiots.

I know you really mean, “what were they thinking wasting money on a device with stack of features that didn’t need and had no intention of using”, don’t you?

I hope so.

compared to an e-reader?

I think it’s a great idea… iPad’s are cheap, can have additional software writen for them to preform more functions as needs arise (something dedicated e-readers can’t really do), and they don’t take 10 minutes before they become useful… (How often have you sat in meetings waiting for one of the participants laptops to boot \ log in \ get the right document open)

About the only disadvantage with an iPad is they have limited ability to type large amounts of text, but in the case I doubt that would be a problem…

Well, least they can’t say; “Oh, I need a new one. ‘Lost’ the last one.”

When in reality the kids have ‘borrowed’ it.

grundy said :

What a waste of great hardware….

idiots.

Of course, what were they thinking disabling the wireless functionality of a device that contains various highly sensitive documents.

Idiots.

Very stupid. iPads are expensive and pointless at the best of times, so to remove the only features that make them possibly worth buying is just ludicrous.

What a waste of great hardware…. idiots.