Just thought some of the people on this board might be interested in this.

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,22417856-16123,00.html

I hope they enjoy them.

Queensland was doing a similar thing, not sure who won the tender (or if the tender has been put out), but there was a news article a few months back.

Just like to point out, only 6 IT staff are required to support 32,000 Apple laptops if setup correctly.

Sorry to correct you grant, i believe the figure was 36,000 Laptops, with 6 IT Staff.. but those are Macs.

I think i may have found the source of the info:
http://1laptop1student.blogspot.com/2006/07/jeff-mao-maine-coordinator-of.html

Now, i just need to find the point where it states there are only 6 IT Staff, else, there is a link to a site with contact details for the State of Maine's Education department, i could just ask someone there.

tak, thanks for the correction, I knew it was around that amount.

Read that whole article, not sure how their backup would work if they all have local accounts. Tad different setup then I'm use to, however I can see the side of that if its off the network its going to run alot more faster without all the "chatter" going on.

However maintenance wise and installing software I would believe would be hard, unless you have users out there that know how to install/uninstall software, security patches etc. Fix problems that they created etc. It would be interesting to know some of the more finer details of a setup of this type.

Like e.g. If they move from one classroom to the next, they have to install their own printer?, if the printer has a problem are they ment to fix it etc. I could see long term it being better for everyone as people will learn computers more. However I could see time spent doing better things like studying English.

I read the entire blog (Yup, not just that article)

It is basically centred around 1 person who carries out sys admin for a cluster of schools.

I can answer a few of the points:
Macs have a software installer format similar to a windows MSI, its called a .pkg, and is apparently (much like everything is meant to be on a mac) Easy to create
If the OS or HDD become corrupt, a student simply goes to a "re-imaging" station, where they plug in a firewire drive, and boot there laptop, it procedes to re-image the
The drive has a particular setup, a folder for the image, and a folder called "packages" for any extra software, schools may replace the image at will, and the packages folder contains .pkg files for any school specific software.

So thats reasonably straight forward, all of the laptops have the same 4 user accounts:
administrator
teacher
parent
student
(not sure about passwords)

and when a student takes the laptop home, it routes its internet usages through the schools proxy filters.
Apparently the primary schools have gone for Labs of Mac Minis or iMacs, In this case they are using LDAP to create logins.

In theory - Nice idea, in practice, there are actually a lot of teachers who are highly opposed to it. Also, every single school has requsted that the in-built Web cam be disabled, to prevent students using online chat, however every time the OS updates, it "repairs" the camera.. lol.

Oh, and at one point, the sys admin guy mentioned working 8-12 hour days, 7 days a week !!! <- This is not efficiency at work, this is a guy working himself to the bone.
(oh, and that is during the Holiday break, just on the central serves + setting up the LABs in the schools, i cannot imagine what kind of hours he works when school is in full swing !!)