Ubuntu-cy reacts to laptop funding pre-installed with Vista for high school students

[Mario Spinthiras]

why should students need a choice? The MOE should be responsible of
making a responsible choice for students.

Next off people should forget about the mac choice as they are out of
the scope of a "standard" computer user.

You also have to examine the reasoning behind a windows environment.
the fact that teachers no nothing about linux and the way teachers
feel their learning days for new material is over makes things even
more difficult. Personally I feel the Cyprus government is doing it
for the easy reasons. It will also cost them a lot of money to train
everyone to use linux - and time.

Its a shame we wont be seeing linux in schools any time soon.

Regards,
mario

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Savvas Radevic <vicedar at gmail.com> wrote:
> People, we already have a response for help:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jan Husar <jan.husar at skosi.org>
> Date: Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:58 PM
> Subject: Re: Ubuntu-cy reacts to laptop funding pre-installed with
> Vista for high school students
> To: "Ubuntu local community team (LoCo) contacts"
> <loco-contacts at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Cc: Cypriot Ubuntu LoCo Team <ubuntu-cy at lists.ubuntu.com>
>
>
> Hello,
>
>
> I can try to force them to answer via the pernament representation in Brussels,
>
> I do that next week, please forward me the names who are responsible for
> that decision, e.g. directors, attachees,
>
>
> deal here is following,
>
> what money is going to be spend on this "funding",
> for sure it's tax payers money, but is it CY? EU?
> this we need to find out, and we need to push the problem
> that they are preferably selecting a vendor and thus
> the competition rules should apply here...
>
> In such cases you can even go to court with your government, over
> not following public procurement rules and competition rules by favoring
> one vendor
>
> --
>  -----------------------------------
> |  Jan Husar
> |
> | doing what matters
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Savvas Radevic <vicedar at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The Government of Cyprus / Ministry of Education has recently decided
>> to fund high school students to buy a laptop. The funding will be
>> about 400 EUR for each student. The website and more information about
>> this is unfortunately posted in Greek:
>> http://www.moec.gov.cy/ekpaideutiki_metarrythmisi/index.html
>>
>> The problem is that they have set a strict requirement, that laptops
>> would come pre-installed with Windows Vista operating system.
>>
>> A local newspaper has reacted to this (in Greek):
>> http://www.politis-news.com/cgibin/hweb?-A=840834&-V=archive&-w=VISTA@&-P
>>
>> Members of our local community have strictly opposed to the fact that
>> the laptops would come with Windows Vista (in Greek):
>> http://ghadjikyriacou.blogspot.com/2008/12/vista.html
>> http://ctrl-alt-backspace.blogspot.com/2008/12/blog-post_13.html
>> http://ctrl-alt-backspace.blogspot.com/2008/12/laptop.html
>>
>> Theodotos Andreou of the Ubuntu-cy local community has recently sent a
>> letter (by mail and electronic mail) to the Ministry of Education
>> requesting a specific reason to the question "Why Vista?".
>> Furthermore, he requested to leave the choice for the students to
>> decide whether they would want a Macintosh, Windows or GNU/Linux
>> installed.
>> He also included numerous reasons about a more convenient choice of a
>> Linux-based operating system, including freedom, speed, stability and
>> price, which make a Linux operating system a much better solution for
>> educational purposes.
>> The email has been posted in our mailing list (in Greek):
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-cy/2008-December/000154.html
>> http://n2.nabble.com/%CE%93%CE%B9%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%AF-Vista--td1672094.html
>>
>> The same letter has been forwarded to major media stations in Cyprus
>> and has been posted today (Sunday, January 11th 2009):
>> http://www.scribd.com/doc/10061438/123165639623481-wwwpolitisnewscom
>> http://pdf.politis-news.com/pdf/pdf?-A=132214&-V=pdfedition
>>
>> The Ministry has not replied to the letter, neither acknowledging nor
>> acquiring more information about it.
>>
>> --
>> loco-contacts mailing list
>> loco-contacts at lists.ubuntu.com
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
>>
>
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