Don't worry. The Trumpian Conservative party will simply hand billions to another backer who's business expertise is in plumbing to sort this one out.

You get what you vote for.

^^This. And wow, what idiot in the Govt wrote the specs? “Processor - Intel or AMD Integrated Graphics” - yeah, that won't get abused at all.

Also I guess Win 10 Home is the same as Pro Education! Yikes.

The specs on this thing is atrocious. Celeron… well, that's a lot more of our money going to the Tories' chums.

You would think that things would be checked thoroughly before being sent out, especially given their intended destination, but this would suggest otherwise in this case.

I bet many companies love government contracts, as it seems that they never have to offer actual value for money and (in many cases) can even cost more than they were meant to, and even then there is the possibility of still failing to actually deliver the intended outcome.

I'm not saying that is actually the case for all companies, but with stories like these and the news reports you always hear about government contracts over the years, it does make you wonder if there is value for money being gained anywhere.

And while I am not saying that it is because of party donations that companies are subsequently picked for government contracts, the circumstances can't help but provide that avenue of speculation.

The name Computacenter says it all.

This seems like blatant corruption when they give tax money to a company that is owned by a major Conservative party donor. This is like when the Health Secretary give his local pub landlord a contract worth £30M to supply PPE when he was never in that business in the first place.

Is anyone surprised with the clowns currently in charge that the deliverables are poorly briefed/spec'd and then poorly executed? I'd be more surprised if the headline was “government scheme nails it and performs better than required, on time and within budget”.

Looks like the typical response from this government - how cheaply can we do ‘something’ to make us look like we care while enriching our mates. (My wifes 6 or 7 year old 2in1 laptop is similar specs to this and cost £200 back then…)

ik9000
Is anyone surprised with the clowns currently in charge that the deliverables are poorly briefed/spec'd and then poorly executed? I'd be more surprised if the headline was “government scheme nails it and performs better than required, on time and within budget”.

Aircraft carrier project? They learnt from all the expensive screw ups with the Type 45s….


Giving the other side of the argument perhaps, you are asking for a huge number of laptops, quickly and at a time of peak demand and component shortage. You're going to pay a lot more. Additionally, what is included in that cost? Is it just the hardware or is there some support, software, etc in there as well? The government website says that a software package can be installed and that needs specifying at the time of order - so is this included in the cost or not?

Yep the specs are terrible, but they'll do the job using cheap and available parts. They aren't meant to be performance machines, but the minimum viable spec to get kids through the next few months.

That's not necessarily what I think, but it's considering the other side rather than just raging when we only have surface level detail.

The PPE rant above - lots of companies which weren't in PPE manufacture in the first place are now churning it out. Surface level detail makes this sound ridiculous when there is surely more to it.

Another example of this kind of thing from recent US politics is “Biden reverses Trump executive order reducing the cost of epi-pens and insulin”. That is all I've heard of it, but I'm assuming he's not a monster and there's a good reason for it, rather than going “DEMON!”

Another consideration with donors is that, even if they were blind to who was and wasn't a donor, they'd eventually give contracts to donors. The question that I think needs asking is whether a particular government issues more contracts to donors than any other recent Tory government. It is the rich people who make significant contributions to parties. Certainly to the Tories as their policies promote large business. Labour gets its cash from trade unions, and it is infuriating that to get representation at work you have to be supporting political activism (you can check a box on application but it's obvious how they work around it) in any way. Regardless, they'll end up with fewer big business donors and so it's hard to compare one government to all governments.

Example : Biden recently axed this pipeline contract. The oil is still coming in by train (obviously in lower volume and there's a lot of other considerations). The train company is owned by a large Biden donor. How much effect did the presence of the donor have on this decision? Or did the decision land the donations? All that is a huge question in itself. But all you have to say is “oh yeh, the pipline gets cancelled and a Biden donor has the contract to bring in the oil by train” and it sounds awful.

No offence but there's more to this than the surface level figures.

567
This seems like blatant corruption when they give tax money to a company that is owned by a major Conservative party donor. This is like when the Health Secretary give his local pub landlord a contract worth £30M to supply PPE when he was never in that business in the first place.

lol as if that sort of thing goes on, what conspiracy theory is this….

I think its less about what the government could afford and more about what they could get ahold of. Imagine a post brexit government proceeding to not buy 800,000 laptops from within the UK. I'd imagine Computacenter (go back to 1985 please) probably dictated a lot of the price/performance for a stupid profit, knowing the government would just pay.

eMMC 32GB/64GB - I just HOPE that they're 64gb, otherwise the next version of Windows 10 will fill the drive and most people won't know what to do.

PlusNomad
I think its less about what the government could afford and more about what they could get ahold of. Imagine a post brexit government proceeding to not buy 800,000 laptops from within the UK. I'd imagine Computacenter (go back to 1985 please) probably dictated a lot of the price/performance for a stupid profit, knowing the government would just pay.

This. It's about supply and demand.

I know you've all got your technical heads on saying wow what a s**t cpu I could have got a better computer for quicker, (I was in this camp too), but could you have got 100,000 of them within a short time frame? The government were caught between a rock and a hard place, people criticise no matter what they do - they could have got 1 million decent specced laptops in a decent timeframe but people would still criticise.

This has got to be the most blatantly corrupt kleptocratic government in the history of this country. How they're still in power, let alone not behind bars, is utterly beyond me. Brexit could be the biggest ever fraud perpetrated on a western country. Anyone who identifies themselves as a Tory - specifically supporting this government - can go diagf.

PlusNomad
I think its less about what the government could afford and more about what they could get ahold of. Imagine a post brexit government proceeding to not buy 800,000 laptops from within the UK. I'd imagine Computacenter (go back to 1985 please) probably dictated a lot of the price/performance for a stupid profit, knowing the government would just pay.

Knowing what we know about this government - eg, giving out a shipping contract to a friend of a ministers company without them having any ships, and the most recent 500% profit margin on a paltry amount of food for starving kids, again going to a mate - it would be extremely rose-tinted to assume that this was just a case of a private company bilking the taxpayer while the government hold their hands up and say ‘nothing we could do’. They are actively taking every penny they can out of the taxpayer, they're doing it in plain sight, and the working class will keep on voting for them, because the right-wing media are in their pockets too.

wazzickle

PlusNomad
I think its less about what the government could afford and more about what they could get ahold of. Imagine a post brexit government proceeding to not buy 800,000 laptops from within the UK. I'd imagine Computacenter (go back to 1985 please) probably dictated a lot of the price/performance for a stupid profit, knowing the government would just pay.

Knowing what we know about this government - eg, giving out a shipping contract to a friend of a ministers company without them having any ships, and the most recent 500% profit margin on a paltry amount of food for starving kids, again going to a mate - it would be extremely rose-tinted to assume that this was just a case of a private company bilking the taxpayer while the government hold their hands up and say ‘nothing we could do’. They are actively taking every penny they can out of the taxpayer, they're doing it in plain sight, and the working class will keep on voting for them, because the right-wing media are in their pockets too.

You do realise Labour do this too?

davesom555
The name Computacenter says it all.

Sigh.
They are a huge UK listed supplier covering hardware, services etc. £5bn sales, market cap nudging £3bn.
The £40m will cover a lot other than the hardware. Yes, they can arrive in a box in a single warehouse for £100 a piece, but by the time they have been batched up and likely configured, then delivered, the £200 each sounds about right. People doing stuff costs money.
The spec though? Just stupid on first appearance as the bare minimum. Having said that, given who and how these will be used they are likely only assuming a year of life each, so will replace with whatever they get for that momey each year.
Before people go boo boo tories. 99.9% of the people involved in this are nothing to do with the government - it will be civil servants and consultants, most of which i'd wager put an X next to Mr Corbyn last election.
Congratualtions on shoe-horning the founder of Computacentre being a tory donor in there. Both of the founders gave most of the proceeds of selling the business to charity. Not enough space to mention that? They also likely made donations to Labour too, as most big companies do.

bit strange, around here a chap got his thinkpad with touchscreen and all bells and whistles easy 1k£ worth of laptop for free from school, how is there such a gap in specs

also i dont get how you can USE a 11" laptop for anything other than writing microsoft word essays… its inadequate for doing anything else

aniilv
bit strange, around here a chap got his thinkpad with touchscreen and all bells and whistles easy 1k£ worth of laptop for free from school, how is there such a gap in specs

also i dont get how you can USE a 11" laptop for anything other than writing microsoft word essays… its inadequate for doing anything else

These use eMMC storage so not only are they are going to be slow,but also with only 4GB of DDR3 RAM,there is going to be a ton of paging which will cause the eMMC to wear out. Wearing out of eMMC is an issue. SOC is a Celery N3450.

Edit!!

Looking on the manufacturers website,there are comments from users on the specific model:
http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/218211-geo-geobook-1e-education-laptops-horrible.html

This is the alternate machine supplied by another supplier:

I have just had my order of these changed to HP 255 G7 – AMD - A4 9125 / 15.6" - 2.3 GHz - 4 GB RAM - 128 GB SSD I would like to think they are listening to the problems but they probably just ran out.

We've now had a mixture of Surface Go 2's, HP 255 G7's and now landed with 140 of these….. with a set of BIOS and Windows passwords that don't work!

So bigger screen and a larger SSD on the HP:
https://www.europc.co.uk/hp-255-g7-notebook-amd-a9-9425-4gb-ram-128gb-ssd-15-6-1920x1080-fhd-hp-1-yr-wty-138535.html

Its really a bit crap,especially compared to some of the previous ones and are a mix of different revisions which have interesting quirks.

Yup, these are total hot garbage - Got 20 oodd delivered recently. We've done the BIOS test thingy & yup, it kills the password. So it's a waste of time us protecting them as kids can just wipe the OS install and use it for their own devices. (Tho in theory if you register them in autopilot & they re-install windows it'll always be locked to you…)

I wouldn't mind, but the “DFE Protected” ones are Dell 3190's, which are more than fit for purpose. I wish I'd jumped through hoops a bit and just dealt with the hassle of getting the admin/bios password on those, rather than have subpar hardware that will last all of 5 minutes.

An annoying thing I've just found - the SD card slots don't line up with the cases properly, so it is possible and very easy to lose a SD card inside the case.

Our advice from the council who supplied them now (regarding several DoA ones) is that we can send them back for repair but the cost will be sky high so we might as well just use the ‘repair’ money on a new system and throw the geobook away :-|!!!

We can't raise them faults through the computacentre link as our LEA provided the devices, not the DFE!

So far we've had 17 arrive completely dead, what a waste of public funds!

They are a total waste of money. We’ve had 7 fail so far. Screen just goes feint and cant be seen.

WTF,is the company not bothering to repair all the DoA ones??

Thanks @CAT-THE-FIFTH for answering a question that was bothering me. Are these PC's even fit for purpose, as in play videos, do video calls and homework? Or is this just e-waste? I'm not convinced it is, but I won't call myself an IT expert, just an enthusiast.

bae85
This. It's about supply and demand.

I know you've all got your technical heads on saying wow what a s**t cpu I could have got a better computer for quicker, (I was in this camp too), but could you have got 100,000 of them within a short time frame? The government were caught between a rock and a hard place, people criticise no matter what they do - they could have got 1 million decent specced laptops in a decent timeframe but people would still criticise.

Do you not think it's even slightly suspicious that every time one of these sus contracts goes out, it's to a big Tory donor?

This government isn't finding the best suppliers or trying its best by any measure. It is rewarding its friends, to put it kindly, or as I'd put it, theft of our money.

This company was sitting on a huge stock of laptops they could never have sold, got the contract, pulled in some more bad stock and rode out like bandits. It happens over and over again, month in month out, and you'll say, “Boris is doing his best.”

aniilv
also i dont get how you can USE a 11" laptop for anything other than writing microsoft word essays… its inadequate for doing anything else

There's a lot of Macbook owners clinging to their 11“ machines that will disagree. My best ever laptop was my Sony Vaio 11”. That thing was amazing.

Scryder
Are these PC's even fit for purpose, as in play videos, do video calls and homework? Or is this just e-waste? I'm not convinced it is, but I won't call myself an IT expert, just an enthusiast.

The spec looks like it will be fine for Google classroom and similar cloud based classroom solutions. They don't want to be giving out high spec laptops anyhow. i) A relatively high proportion will get broken well before they are end of life. ii) They will start turning up at Cash Convertors.

The worry with the spec is the eMMC, 32GB or 64GB is not enough to run the big Windows updates. Hopefully the schools are set up to image them. I suspect the DFE laptop initiative will go the same way as Computers in Classrooms; over-funded capex, nothing for ongoing support and maintenance.

I really don't envy my colleagues in educational IT at the moment. It's a hostile environment at the best of times.

bae85
You do realise Labour do this too?

Whatabouttery at it's finest. Everyone does it to some degree, but this government has done it to a staggering degree. Like saying ‘oh the nazis weren’t that bad, because other regimes have also killed millions of people'.

gagaga
Sigh.
They are a huge UK listed supplier covering hardware, services etc. £5bn sales, market cap nudging £3bn.
The £40m will cover a lot other than the hardware. Yes, they can arrive in a box in a single warehouse for £100 a piece, but by the time they have been batched up and likely configured, then delivered, the £200 each sounds about right. People doing stuff costs money.
The spec though? Just stupid on first appearance as the bare minimum. Having said that, given who and how these will be used they are likely only assuming a year of life each, so will replace with whatever they get for that momey each year.
Before people go boo boo tories. 99.9% of the people involved in this are nothing to do with the government - it will be civil servants and consultants, most of which i'd wager put an X next to Mr Corbyn last election.
Congratualtions on shoe-horning the founder of Computacentre being a tory donor in there. Both of the founders gave most of the proceeds of selling the business to charity. Not enough space to mention that? They also likely made donations to Labour too, as most big companies do.

Sigh yourself. With £5bn in sales they will be able to leverage their buying power to get these laptops likely even cheaper than £100, and their size and expected efficiency means that the incidental costs to get them out to the users will be far lower, so no, £200 only sounds right if the aim is to bilk the taxpayer. We literally just a few weeks ago saw another Tory supplier doing the same with food.

You've launched into a defence of this tory government, which makes you fairly suspect, but you've specifically countered the fact that they're tory donors with your imagination that they're also labour donors, without any justification whatsoever.

You've also completely glossed over the malware issue. Why is there russian-originating malware on these laptops? To paraphrase Robert De Niro from Casino, if they didn't have good enough security to keep this malware off, their processes are not up to par, and if they did know, they were in on it, either way, they should be fired.

wazzickle
You've launched into a defence of this tory government, which makes you fairly suspect

Wow, just wow.

gagaga
Wow, just wow.

Yeah, if you're looking to justify the behaviour of this tory government, maybe it's time to look in the mirror, maybe this can be your wake-up call.

wazzickle
Yeah, if you're looking to justify the behaviour of this tory government, maybe it's time to look in the mirror, maybe this can be your wake-up call.

Wow, just wow.

CAT-THE-FIFTH
Looking on the manufacturers website,there are comments from users on the specific model:
http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/218211-geo-geobook-1e-education-laptops-horrible.html

Reading that whole thread is quite shocking. I do not envy those in charge of the school IT and sorting these out prior to releasing to students, there has obviously been zero quality control from the supplier. Why is it that anything remotely involving IT and any government is a complete waste of taxpayer money? Are politicians all really this clueless?

Iota
Reading that whole thread is quite shocking. I do not envy those in charge of the school IT and sorting these out prior to releasing to students, there has obviously been zero quality control from the supplier. Why is it that anything remotely involving IT and any government is a complete waste of taxpayer money? Are politicians all really this clueless?

Often, yes. I assume they left it to some Subject Matter Expert (SME), and assume that whatever they said is correct. Without double checking with anyone else.

Scryder
Often, yes. I assume they left it to some Subject Matter Expert (SME), and assume that whatever they said is correct. Without double checking with anyone else.

Yes and from my experience usually that SME is a) either not up to date (They had relevant on hands experience 10+ years ago) b) Very good at selling themselves but otherwise clueless about the ‘Subject Matter’ in hand!

They are giving them out for free. If you give free anything it tends to get trashed as people don't look after what they didn't have to pay hard money for. It's not the first time the government has given disadvantaged kids free laptops - I had some friends and as the IT guy I'd get asked “my jonny's laptop screen has broken (a quick look shows something hit it hard), or it seems to have stopped working (keyboard looks like someone poured coke all over it) can you fix it”. Hence I am all for giving out cheap disposable machines that aren't built to last as they aren't going to last anyway.

I saw one of these in Curry's last year. Laptops with less than 64gb is almost criminal.

I don't think we can certainly claim that this current government as being the most corrupt in history.
I'd say it's more down to the fact that the digital age has made it harder for governments to hide their corruption. It's now easier for the populous to have their voices heard and the media is giving it the attention that it deserves.

Saying all that, I still remember the following recent scandals:
Ferry company winning a government contract who didn't have any boats or trading history
The whole test and trace scandal
HS2 has turned into a complete mess
The “fixed” strike price contract for Hinkley Point power plant

I'm sure that there are many, many more.

I am shocked and surprised by this …unseen turn of events.

I hear they are scoping for tender a new ‘advanced’ track and trace system. Where is the oversight of this procurement?