School Declares Switching From Books to HP Tablets An ‘Unmitigated Disaster’
Lemon. (Photo: Laptopmag.com)
For schools, replacing books with tablets always sounds like a great idea in the planning stages. They probably think that they're going to save so much and having kids carry less books is going to be less of a burden to their health. But there's only one problem that could tarnish a school's plan: tablets that don't work.
An elementary school in Ireland had to shelve its "book to e-book" program after its HP Elite Pads were plagued with major technical issues that made the devices basically useless. The Independent writes that the students are complaining of the tablets not turning on, randomly slipping into sleep mode and not connecting to the Wi-Fi.
Calling the program an "unmitigated disaster," school officials are refunding families the $800 they paid for the tablets and are ordering working and low-tech text books to replace them with. They have also met with HP, which acknowledged that yes the devices suck.
IA letter obtained by the newspaper, written by the principal for the school's families, says the school picked the HP Elite Pads after a year and a half of research for the amount of memory they contain. The principal writes:
“The roll-out of e-learning which involved the use of HP Elite Pads and e-books should have been an exciting and new way of moving forward....We have met with HP representatives on a number of occasions to address the issues."
Dude, you should've gotten a Kindle.
