Australian Governement Is Handing Out Free Laptops To Every Student In A Public School ... Which includes me, Yay But its unhackable...

[Nameless_ 1]

Haha... guess what? I don't only have a Macintosh computer now, I also have a unhackable and nearly unusable (especially for browsing the web purposes) lenovo red laptop...

Well, the Australian New South Wales government has ordered a one kilogram heavy laptop to every single student in a government public school (which includes me, haha), and it is around A5 in size when folded... And the company is Lenovo I think, it's on the top red cover of the laptop, and I believe that both parties were part of an alliance to arm Victorian school students with netbooks and a three-year, $9 million program was announced some time ago.

Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Lenovo, Acer and ASI were shortlisted from a pool of 21 companies by NSW DET after expressions of interest closed on January 14, and in the end we got the Lenovo laptops.The money came from Australian's Government's $2 billion National Secondary School Computer Fund for students in years 9 to 12. (Yess!!!) And my state, NSW, was given $256 million in the first round - there are two and my school is in the second round... But I have it now.

 

Apparently the laptops are no more than $500, which would take the contract value up to $110 million.

And the laptops have wireless and bluetooth, so it's basically good. :)The plans are to kinda give 200,000 devices to students like me and around 20,000 to government school teachers. 571 schools to give... wow, that's a lot...

 

Unfortunately, all the devices are government tracked, and that means that all the internet websites deemed to be unappropiate will be blocked, and it's really stupid because it is IN the computer, so even if I bought it home to use it my internet will be blocked too... and you are not allowed to download any applications on it (not even WAMP!!!) And if you lose it, or if it got stolen or something, a "poison" pill thing will be sent out to disable to computer and the police can track where it is...

 

And all attempts to hack the computer will be monitored by the government... which is sad... but I really want to disable some restricted features...

 

But anyway, I'll have to make a new thread for that, and I'll do it if I have time or something like that... I guess I just gave away my location in this thread though, but oh well.... :-/ I guess I'm not nameless anymore anyway... and definitely not country-less.

 

 

What do you think? They're meant to last us until the end of high school and after that the laptops will be disabled from the government network and all filters will be removed and the laptops will be free to keep for us. I just think that more people will get glasses this way, and people will be playing games instead of working in class and the teacher won't even notice it.

[FouGilang 0]

heigood for you for that (i sure hope )so basically it just a school-office-only laptop, right?oh, and you haven't mention what were pre-installed inside that laptopif you cant download a thing for it, at least there must be some installed programs there right? o_o

[Nameless_ 1]

Yes... there are actually a lot... all for free!!! Unfortunately the government wouldn't give us Adobe Photoshop though, only Photoshop Elements, but if you add up the differences in all the sums, then it will add up to a lot, especially with ten thousands of students to install... Of course, unless they can only buy one and install them on all of the computers...

 

Are you allowed to do that? If that is the case, then I don't see why they don't provide us Adobe Photoshop instead of Photoshop Elements though... the tax should really just cover up the cost difference.

 

I will try to list them all up here... let me see, I'll have to open my computer first though...

OK, it's opened.

 

Let's start with the operation system: Windows 7

 

The list (I'm typing them up one by one so it's not exactly ordered...):

Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements, Acrobat Professional Extended, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, Captivate, Word, Excel, Publisher, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access, Internet Explorer 8, Audacity, Adobe Flash, Adobe Shockwave, Java

 

OK, I give up... the rest will be in a list... it's easier this way...

 

* Microsoft Silverlight

* Apple QuickTime

* Smart Notebook 10

* Smart Recorder

* Smart Video Player

* ActivStudio Viewer

* Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2009

* Microsoft Maths

* GeoGebra

* WinKMT Chess

* Periodic Table

* Periodic Table Quiz

* Earths Core

* LenMus Phonascus

* MuseScore

* Notation Player

* Google SketchUp 7

* ArtRage 2 Starter Edition

* Multilanguage add-in

* Mind Mapping: Freemind

* Group polling and response: Student Response Network

* Flowchart diagrams: Dia

* QR code reader: QuickMark Barcode

* Apple iTunes

* Windows Media Player

* CCCP Codec pack

 

A long list huh?

[FouGilang 0]

WowThat almost all you need for doing your job, i must sayDreamweaver, word, excel, encarta, acrobat, other stuffs, It even has win7 (which i havent...) o.oItunes, codec, pretty nice :PAnd at least the laptop will be yours after you graduated, just take it for the time beings

[Baniboy 3]

Well, I know a way you can hack it. Check if booting from an external device is allowed. Then just install a linux distribution on it!Or...If the filtering and all that stuff is software-based, change the hard disc. Install a new OS on that new hdd and you can then install whatever you want on it. You could try formatting the old hard disc but you would lose all your windows 7, software and other things. So just wait a few years after the HDD switch and then attach the old one with w7 on it to the laptop.Baniboy, always guiding you through things you should never do. (sounds like a commercial)

Edited October 25, 2009 by Baniboy (see edit history)

[Spyda 0]

That's pretty awesome that they're doing it. It kind of sucks for the students that they block a lot of websites and won't let you download anything on it, but I guess that's a good idea to ensure students are using their computers for educational purposes and not to go on Facebook or play World of Warcraft for ten hours

[TheDisturbedOne 1]

More socialism in the world. How will the government pay for them? Isn't it considered censorship if they don't allow you to use your laptop to go on appropriate websites. Or what if you are taking a class in C++ and you have to download your program onto the laptop?Also, can you import programs through a USB drive?I'm sure eventually they will be able to be hacked. You know how many things that were "unhackable" ten years ago that a 10 year old can hack now?

[inverse_bloom 0]

Hey thats too cool for school, im scraping for inspiration today... Anyways, Im not sure if you'd want to try to hack it... depends what software it has on it. Even if the hard drive was replaced it is possible to be partially locked in by the bios, in which case i'd be very careful what you choose to do from that point onwards.The other thing is, laptops are tracked by the Mac address on their network hardware, i think from the mainboard also, although i'm not totally sure on that one. So once you login to the net you leave tracks that are tracable. Gee, they should have been doing that ten or so years ago, then i'd have something to hack to pieces. Seriously though, just use it for what it is intended for, or at least try to.