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Councillor cancelled Ipad order
A CITY COUNCILLOR has cancelled her order for an Ipad after a public backlash over tax expenditure.
Leicester City Council decided to spend taxpayer money on Ipads for 54 of its elected representatives this week. The justification for buying Apple's over-priced toy was that they would stop councillors from spending cash on printing council papers.
Fair enough. You'd have thought that could be done by spending under £200 for an e-book reader. But, in a climate where we're heading to hell in a handcart on a double dip recession, Leicester City Council was happy to spend £699 a pop.
According to This Is Leicester, Labour cabinet member Sarah Russell had a last minute change of heart and cancelled her order. Russell did this after two Conservative councillors and one Liberal Democrat accepted delivery. Timing was either fortuitous or she was listening to the masses because she cancelled after unanimous public backlash on local forums.
"It may have improved the way that we work as councillors but I've got to be aware of how it appears to taxpayers," Russell told the newspaper.
But the best is yet to come. It appears that Leicester City Council has an IT department that was consulted in the initial process of capital outlay for IT equipment.
"I've asked the IT department to look at more cost-effective ways of helping councillors to work efficiently," Russell said.
Surely the IT department will reply that not spending £699 on a toy might help. µ
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thx mycelo i'm glad you agree with me on that.
@ steve i said either failed or labeled obsolete. you update/repair any apple product the same items. a hammer and a fresh credit card.
I'm talking about a full fledged laptop, btw. Intel i5, 500gb hdd, 16in screen, and 6 HOURS battery life like the one I just bought, for.....($599 US) decent 720p led lcd on this thing. its only 4 lbs and an 1.5 inch thick. obviously this would be overkill for the councillors.
2 documents side by side. plus i can actually use it to type without looking like T-Rex. not to mention actually being able to work on databases and spreadsheets.
if your talking just about something to read, then i definitely question the point of getting one.
now if you're talking about REAL work and efficiency.....laptops can be used for more than just reading and are a recognized productivity tool.
also laser drums lasts into the 10s of thousands of pages. not something you have to replace but once every so many years. and if they use professional laser printers then much much longer.
HURR how do i read if not in portrait layout.
finally, grab an iPad and find this text in your post "and are more f"
it takes all but .0001 seconds with the find feature. no cheating now.
didnt bother with punctuation
No. You can't possibly be trying to justify the lack of text search in a browser or in any other text displaying application whatsoever made in the last 20 years.
That's a typical Apple consumer.
a home for the terminally hard of thinking?
Finding text on a page isn't something that is drastically hard to do manually. Most people can live quite happily without. Searching the internet, fair enough (and it does have a box for web searches), but most people can scan a page of text for a word or phrase they are looking for.
You seem to have some mistaken ideas about the lifespan of Apple mobile devices. They are no worse than other manufacturers, probably better than most. Apple are quite happy to offer a full parts and labour extended warranty, something that no manufacturer could afford if they had a high failure rate in the second year.
The cost to the council wasn't just for toner (even an idiot like yourself should realise that toner isn't the only expense in laser printing, what about paper, drum and fuser costs to start with), it was for printing and postage. I assume it included the staff costs to make the prints, bind them, stuff them into envelopes, frank them and bung them in the post.
What much cheaper devices are you talking about that (1) can browse the web, (2) read email, (3) read documents - both in portrait and landscape modes and not like you're reading through a letter box, (4) run for 10 hours on a charge and (5) are as portable?
Netbooks? Bigger, clumsier, poor for document reading (1024x600 landscape only - like reading through a letterbox), have worse battery life and are more flimsy (hinges to break and conventional HDDs that can suffer a head crash).
Kindle? Smaller screen (600 x 800 in 4 grey shades), poor refresh speeds, poor web browser, worse email, low storage capacity (180MB standard, expandable with 4GB SDHD cards) and a screen that doesn't work so well indoors and in low light (you think councillors spend their time.
Android? There aren't any comparable models on the market yet. Even Android fans admit this. See http://www.pcworld.com/article/201340/where_are_all_the_android_tablets.html for example.
Once again, either the iPad is a toy, in which case so is every available or planned Android tablet, or it does the required job and is suitable for the councillors to purchase.
Cries of outrage when the council proceeds to get a bunch of laptops instead of the iPads, and spend even more money doing so, or not.
I can't imagine using a browser without a "find" feature. What real browser DOESN'T have one? God forbid I have to sift through excessive intros or lengthy forums to find what I want.
iPad cutting expenses? Laser ink cartridge=$150. Cartridges last 1500 pages. after taxes you would have to use more than 4 cartridges printing about 6000 pages per person before you equal the cost of an iPads. Since most apple mobile products seem to fail (or get labeled obsolete) after a year, they would have to consume that much paper in the same time.
like the article said you could use a much cheaper device. $500 laptop would make more sense. Especially since it can MULTITASK.
They saw a toy and wanted one. They can use their personal money not the public's.
More spectacular stupidity on your behalf. While searching for text on a web page can be considered as a "nice to have" feature, it's hardly a "vital, must have" function. Given that mobile Safari pretty much sets the benchmark for web browsing on portable devices it's pretty obvious that it's lack isn't a major flaw. When it comes to reading documents in iBooks however you have a fast and comprehensive search system, which given that was a proposed uses for the devices is fair enough.
Secondly cursor keys? What planet are you on? You don't need cursor keys for the simple reason that you can move the edit cursor with your finger to anywhere you want. Are you suggesting that you need them for some more simple minded reason? For keeping track of where you are when reading so you can sound out the letters?
IF the iPad can't perform other than as a toy then no proposed Android tablet (and note the use of the word proposed, nothing else on the market yet matches up to the iPad) can be described other than as a toy either.
If a machine can truly cut expenses, comes out of existing budgets and performs a useful task then treat councillors like grown ups and let them make their own decisions rather than forcing your own prejudices onto them.
If it would have helped them work more effectively, then she's wasting money by not having one.
I think they would have used it like a Blackberry.
I've used an ipad and although it has some very obvious shortcomings in use, it's actually quite good if it was £300.
Safari Browser - has no "Find" tool, so you cannot find any text on a page. LMAO.
Move through text using cursor keys - it cannot do this either! Instead there is some backwards awkward method of clicking on some text, maybe clicking a few times to make the tool work, then using a line with a start and end triangles on it. Then sliding these triangles left and right to move to the point you want to get to. A seriously tedious way of not using cursor keys.
Why don't apple use cursor keys? WTF is that about? lol.
The council should buy the Android Touchscreen ipads instead.
I work in the public sector. This s41t is normal. Half the corrupt little middle managers at our place are busily getting suppliers for their pet overpriced projects to prduce iphone apps - so they can force us in IT to buy them an i-toy.
U can't obviously name myself, which is a shame.
So now she's cancelled, the council still have to print agendas so there are no savings to be had either.
to cancel the order?
And (or), has the iPad been accepted by the council, but given to someone else who works there?