Netbooks
On Thursday 24th September, 2009, Year 9 students at Baulkham Hills High School started receiving their Lenovo netbooks. As I started writing this in a science lesson on Friday arvo in the library, I was talking to a friend in year 9 asking about them.
Aparrently, they have a program installed on them which prevents the running of exe files that haven’t been authorised (work around found within 2 hours of getting the netbook…). Internet Explorer 8 is automatically set-up to use the DET’s proxy server/internet portal. THEY HAVE RIGHT-CLICK ABILITIES (we at Baulko do not on the school comps…)!! They have (strangely) Windows Live Messenger installed on them already, but they aren’t allowed to use it… Office 2007 loaded in, and as far as I could tell, a fully licensed copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (I couldn’t tell if it was RC or not, but it looked like Retail…), Photoshop Elements 7, Google Sketch Up 7, and various other programs.
They get a free netbook and free software?! Grr… Anyways. The netbooks seem like pieces of junk compared to your usual laptop (13″, 14″, 15″, 16″, 17″ take your pick, they’re all better it seems), but then again, netbooks are meant to be ultra-portable, ultra-small, slimmed down laptops, so I guess that’s what you’d expect from them…
Talking about laptops, I wish Australia wasn’t so far behind the US with getting new hardware in computers. On Wednesday 23rd September (2009), Intel released the Clarksfield CPU, which is the mobile (laptop) version of the Core i7. At the time of release, Dell, HP, Asustek & Toshiba were the only people selling it. Dell immediately updated their laptop ranges, from Studio 15 upwards, to include the Core i7 as an option for the computers in the US. Australia? All we got was the top model of the Studio 15 and one of the Alienware laptops updated to include Core i7. I wonder how long till the other laptops get the new core… I’d like to my own laptop sometime in the next 4 months… But I need to study, so back to the science work (ARGH!!! SO MUCH STUFF TO REVISE!!!!)
These netbooks were very much customised for the DET.
W7 Enterprise edition is what they’re running, from what I remember, and it’s fully licensed to the DET (not a RC or Beta).
All of the servers in the schools is running Server08, in RODC mode. 2GB is storage is available on the laptops to each student, and this is synchronised back to the server when you’re on site. All logins are performed against this server, but of course it’s cached on the local machine so you can login wherever you want.
Anyway, that’s it in a nutshell. Nothing to get excited about, really.
What? That red colour is nice…
At all NSW Public schools, the netbooks are Lenovo IdeaPad S series (from what I can tell). They are the ugly Red colour. Apparently there was some other optional colours or something, but very few of them. Don’t know about that. I’ve also heard that they will be a different colour each year.
Looking at the Lenovo website, I’ll take a guess and say that they are the IdeaPad S10e (which appears to be on sale right now…), although they could have a slightly older model, considering that they were ordered something like 3 – 4 months ago. I’m too lazy to write up the specs, but they are pretty ok. Supposed to have a ‘multi-touch’ pad and a 10.1″ screen…
Are the netbooks at your school Red as well. All the netbooks at our school are a horrible red colour, or bright green, or blue. Although I have not seen a blue one, only red & green.
ANd, apparently it is the real version (not RC) of windows 7. I think someone told me that the DET made a deal with Micrisoft. I am not sure though.