Lenovo, Acer picked for Tassie schools

The Tasmanian Department of Education has placed Lenovo and Acer on its panel to supply computers to schools for the Federal Government's Digital Education Revolution.

Due to the panel arrangement, there is no set contract amount, however, 13 government schools in Tasmania have already been earmarked for 634 computers in the first round of funding, while 56 government schools took part of Tasmania's $5.2 million round two funding in January in order to buy almost 4000 computers.

No Tasmanian schools received funding from the Federal Government's supplementary 2.1 round of funding.

Other states have previously made public announcements about the purchase of hardware for their schools.

The NSW Government has signed a $150 million contract with Lenovo to build up to 267,000 laptops. Victoria has initiated a trial with Lenovo and Acer, rolling out around 10,000 netbooks to schools across the state — 8000 from Lenovo and 2000 from Acer.

The computers in schools plan, dubbed the "Digital Education Revolution" began with a promise of $1 billion in November 2007. An additional $807 million for the program was served up 12 months later.