Computers for under £25 will help 11 million disadvantaged Brits on benefits get online

You get these from Getonline@home site and it's a complete ripoff.


For a start if you don't take out broadband package @£3 to £5 a month and a costly £14.50 a month line rental you pay £149 for a piece of crap refurbish PC.


The spec of these units are mouse and keyboard, 15” screen, P4 2GHz processor, 1Gb RAM, and 40Gb hard drive.

For £99, you can do better for your money.



Laptops start at £149 and include a Celeron processor, 1Gb RAM, 40Gb hard drive.

again you can do better for your money.
 
Locky said:
You get these from Getonline@home site and it's a complete ripoff.


For a start if you don't take out broadband package @£3 to £5 a month and a costly £14.50 a month line rental you pay £149 for a piece of crap refurbish PC.


The spec of these units are mouse and keyboard, 15” screen, P4 2GHz processor, 1Gb RAM, and 40Gb hard drive.

For £99, you can do better for your money.



Laptops start at £149 and include a Celeron processor, 1Gb RAM, 40Gb hard drive.

again you can do better for your money.
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I don't know much about the low end computer market, but it does seem that your getting pretty crap hardware...


However I think it should be a priority to get everyone in this country online.
Not having internet when applying for jobs would ridiculous.
 
Well people didn't have internet the 10000s years before it was invented and managed to get jobs just fine. There are loads of places to use free internet these days and they even have places where you can apply for jobs. If they think that giving people computer and internet is going to solve unemployment, because people can sign up for jobs easier, they obviously never used the internet before... But anyway, we don't have a job applicant shortage, we have a job shortage. Its not that there is a lack of people applying because they don't have a free internet. Typical government logic.

So now we can add it to the free stuff list.

free house
free healthcare
free transport
free education
free bills
free spending money
free computer
free internet

i am not sure, eh, if i had all that for free, id probably just sit at home all day and sit on the internet and drink cheap cider.
 
groen said:
Typical mindset of a government solution advocate. Not only will the market not be affected by the government but it will actually help.. lol!
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You appear to have missed the subjective "may". The point I was trying to make is that it is far from clear what the economic impact of such an intervention would be. It's a problem with many (most?) government interventions; they tend to be made in the complete absence of any evidence for their direct and indirect impacts.

c) They will definitely not be selling second hand pcs in this scheme, they will procure brand new ones with a big contract with suppliers. Cause that is how the government likes to do things.
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This would be the real worry; if they do something like this, it would be little short of insanity.

As a (basically) free market libertarian, you've made my day calling me a "government solution advocate" :)
 
groen said:
People who like this idea, how do you think it will affect the low end computer market?
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Don't care. I don't buy low end commodity computers.

groen said:
The computer market is definitely the last market that i think needs socializing. Of all the things in this world, the computer market is not one that i think needs a price reduction.

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Windows PC manufacturers have been in a race to the bottom (price wise) for years. Each time seeing a reduction in profit margins.

The Government providing cheap computers will have zero impact on that race to the bottom.
 
Malevolence said:
So, assuming it's not an internet dongle, will they also be funding phone lines too?
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No.

The broadband packages listed will usually require payment by direct debit and with telephone line rental needed (£10 to £15 per month) when the cheapest
broadband service is listed as free (with £62.18 of upfront costs) the scope for people signing up and not fully understanding their financial commitments is pretty large.
 
this scheme sounds like a waste of money. those who don't have a computer are typically those who aren't interested in them.
I remember saving up for 2 years to get my Amiga 500
 
elmarko said:
Applying for jobs is significantly easier with a home PC (to pretend this isn't the case is the ignore reality), regardless of this - the silly notion that everybody has a library within a very short distance is also daft (which isn't true for many).
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Yes, applying for jobs is easier with a home computer, I don't disagree with that but there's nothing like stating the obvious to try and prove a point though. Internet gambling is easier with a home PC, buying on eBay is easier with a home PC, playing CoD is easier with a home PC, some tasks may not as be as noble as trying to gain employment but the point stays the same across the board, yes it's easier for someone at 4am to wing off a CV to a company than it would be at a job centre at that time of night, that is obvious, isn't justification for state subsidised computers and Internet access though. I don't recall saying everyone has a library on their doorstep, but point being that option is still there for a lot of people.

Children doing home-work without a PC are at a significant disadvantage compared to those who do, I fail to see how this is a case of the best being given a chance to do well in life (meritocratic values which you on the right claim to support do dearly).
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Again I don't dispute that, I stressed the point that using the Internet is quicker and easier than trawling books for information. But to say that because a child doesn't have a home PC puts them at greater disadvantage, I don't think is strictly true, at my old school at least, and I imagine quite a lot of schools do this; allowed us to use computers during lunchtime, and for a few hours after finishing time to do homework. And in the later years, we could come in during half terms to use computers/internet. And unless the children are part of an large extended family of serial oxygen thieves then I seriously doubt there isn't computer access somewhere within their family and friends network that they could rely on if push came to shove. I can remember friends who didn't have home computers coming over to work on homework together with me, that ability doesn't exist anymore? In stressing that point though you have to think about the child and their upbringing, if you have a child with a **** work ethic instilled in them by the parents then they're not going to stop back to work, so I don't know if a home computer would be much use to them anyways.


Library's are not open 24/7, neither are they close enough for quick reference like the internet enables - the physical distance can't be ignored for some.
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I can agree with that, but again how is that justification for the governments solution of providing people with nonessential items and services, that the vast majority have to pay for themselves if they want it?

You are not paying a "**** ton of taxes", you are paying the basic rate.
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Seen my P60 have you? Regardless of how you want to spin it, I believe the value I get for my tax contribution outweighs what I pay in, especially when hair brained schemes like this surface, urgo I deem the tax I pay, a **** ton. Which you're free to disagree with. Regardless of that I still pay it.


I agree that it might not be the best allocation of funds, but it's not like the money if not spend here will directly fund something more useful - besides, without study this may be economically beneficial in the long term, it's impossible to say.
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You're probably right, but that doesn't excuse it, managing funds one way badly (this scheme) because managing them another way (xyz) is just as bad, and just as wasteful isn't justification. The potential for that money to better people's lives in a more substantial way still exists though, even if 9 times out of 10 it turns into a governmental cluster****.

Yes there's normally no concrete evidence without a study, that's why I'm saying I'm skeptical about the scheme and as such would prefer it wasn't enacted at all and funds diverted elsewhere. As I believe any benefits would be minimal to warrant the outlay.

So you had an advantage you did nothing to earn & don't want others to also have it?.
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I had that advantage because my parents worked hard for it and paid for it off their own back, they had parental responsibilities, they didn't expect to say "a PC and Internet would be useful, gimme, gimme, gimme".

I don't care what your parents did, you did nothing to earn it (as you had no source of independent wealth).
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Yeah... Not many places around here willing to hire a 9/10 year old, proving your point in that statement to be a pretty moot sensationalist one at best.

This plan isn't about helping out lazy parents, it's about ensuring that the next generation of children are functionally computer literate (which does have economic benefits).
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Ensuring the next generation of children are functionally computer literate? You mean like all the skills they learn currently, I believe from junior school upwards now, all the way up to being eligible to do A levels and diplomas in various computing subjects. The learning network is there, home PC and Internet will aid it, still doesn't make it vital or a necessity though. If you believe the structure and magnitude of computer literacy will fall into rack and ruin because the only access some children will have to computers and Internet is at learning establishments, then that's just silly, they'll still learn all this at school, the only ones who will be computer illiterate in the coming years will be the dross who chose not to learn, sticking a PC and Internet into their home on the states dollar will likely do nothing to aid that. But even in saying that, some of the people who I went to school with who didn't give two ***** about anything still came away being able to navigate IE and to this day are still about to spout **** on Facebook, computer illiteracy will cease to exist with or without subsidised computers, it's up the squishy human bit that operates them to determine on what scale they're able to operate computers.

Firstly you do receive £££'s, do you think the NHS costs nothing? - the police, fire service or the rest of the benefits you receive in return for paying tax?.
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Again another moot point. I don't recall talking about point of use services or getting my bins emptied, or getting fires put out, as they're not relevant to the conversation. I know where my tax and NI goes, I know where my council tax goes. The conversation isn't about that, its about people being provided with a non vital tangible item and service into their home, at a subsidise rate, when others have to pay more.

Secondly, while it may appeal to your daily mail style morality - punishing the children of the poor for the bad life choices of the parents is a short-sighted social approach (which usually costs us more in the long-term).
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Punishing the poor? By not giving them subsidised technology a lot of people have to pay full whack for? Give over. Punishing the poor is giving them no money for food or rent, not depriving them of Facebook and YouTube.
 
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