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The title of this BBC article is a little broad in my opinion, the laptops in question were given out by schools in England. I'm not sure if it is common in Eng

The title of this BBC article is a little broad in my opinion, the laptops in question were given out by schools in England. I'm not sure if it is common in England for "schools" and "the government" to be referred to in the same context, but to my knowledge the average school's IT department will differ drastically from a larger governmental organization's.

ac3xx 6y ago
School IT department are definitely completlely separate from the "government", but the first content line of the article clearly states that it was found on devices sent to ths school, rather than by the school.
retsibsi 6y ago
The laptops were sent by the government to the schools, where the malware was found during initial setup.
willyt 6y ago
The government has commissioned a contractor to supply these to all the schools in England and it turns out they haven’t done it properly. I would not be surprised if the next thing we will find out is that the company that provided these laptops is owned by a friend or family member of whoever the politician is that’s in charge of this as our current government is incompetent and deeply corrupt.
- happymellon 6y ago
  These are really bad netbooks which we have apparently spent £420 per laptop on based upon £96 million for 230,000 laptops. https://geo-computers.com/geobook-1e/ https://geo-computers.com/geobook-1e/ They are £199 from Currys. They don't even try.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    It doesn't make sense to skimp on these devices. The amount of value that a £420 laptop could have provided is much greater than whatever this thing is. It's like the boots quote from that disc world book. If it is cheap and crap you will buy it again and again. If it is expensive and good you'll keep it for a long time. Especially nowadays when Intel fails to improve performance of laptops.
- happymellon 6y ago
  > I would not be surprised if the next thing we will find out is that the company that provided these laptops is owned by a friend or family member of whoever the politician is that’s in charge of this as our current government is incompetent and deeply corrupt. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. https://goodlawproject.org/update/computacenter-laptops/ https://goodlawproject.org/update/computacenter-laptops/ > more than three quarters have come from Computacenter... it's founder [is] Sir Philip Hulme

ac3xx 6y ago

School IT department are definitely completlely separate from the "government", but the first content line of the article clearly states that it was found on devices sent to ths school, rather than by the school.

retsibsi 6y ago

The laptops were sent by the government to the schools, where the malware was found during initial setup.

willyt 6y ago

The government has commissioned a contractor to supply these to all the schools in England and it turns out they haven’t done it properly. I would not be surprised if the next thing we will find out is that the company that provided these laptops is owned by a friend or family member of whoever the politician is that’s in charge of this as our current government is incompetent and deeply corrupt.

happymellon 6y ago
These are really bad netbooks which we have apparently spent £420 per laptop on based upon £96 million for 230,000 laptops. https://geo-computers.com/geobook-1e/ https://geo-computers.com/geobook-1e/ They are £199 from Currys. They don't even try.
- imtringued 6y ago
  It doesn't make sense to skimp on these devices. The amount of value that a £420 laptop could have provided is much greater than whatever this thing is. It's like the boots quote from that disc world book. If it is cheap and crap you will buy it again and again. If it is expensive and good you'll keep it for a long time. Especially nowadays when Intel fails to improve performance of laptops.
happymellon 6y ago
> I would not be surprised if the next thing we will find out is that the company that provided these laptops is owned by a friend or family member of whoever the politician is that’s in charge of this as our current government is incompetent and deeply corrupt. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. https://goodlawproject.org/update/computacenter-laptops/ https://goodlawproject.org/update/computacenter-laptops/ > more than three quarters have come from Computacenter... it's founder [is] Sir Philip Hulme