It is difficult to stay objective when discussing computers for education, simply because there is so much prejudice and marketing hype within a computer industry dominated by money and greed by huge, multi-national computer companies.

The computer industry is one of the fastest growing and cut-throat industries in the world, so it is careful to base any buying decision on functionality, value for money and user friendliness and not get taken in by smooth talking sales people and glossy advertising hype. There are a number of important things to consider when purchasing computer equipment for schools and colleges:-

Obviously this is not a definitive list, because teachers and advisors no doubt want computer systems to be as future proof as possible, saving limited school budgets, yet also allow pupils to new and exciting technologies leading into the New Millennium.

Unfortunately, most people seem to think that unless a computer runs Microsoft Windows it is of little or no use in the classroom. This is an opinion formed by hype and not a serious consideration of users actually want the end result of I.T. literacy to be.

Teaching 'skills', not 'market products'

The 'Industry Standard' myth

A compact history of IT in education

Meanwhile in the US and Japan, emerging computer technologies were beginning to appear, but these were mainly governed by business with high budgets and specific computing needs. The IBM PC appeared and began to be adopted by big business. The small company called Microsoft and headed by Bill Gates bought up a small operating system called DOS and started developing what would become Windows - and make Bill Gates into the worlds richest man, and megalomaniac. The problem with the emerging PC technology was that it was fundamentally flawed by underestimating the distance computer technology would develop over the next ten years. Most PC's came with 640k of memory. Bill Gates even said himself, in 1989 that "640k of memory was more than enough for anybody".

This seems like a huge amount of memory compared to the lowly 32k provided by Acorn in the BBC B. However, what many people failed to recognise was that the Acorn design was much more advanced and programmers had developed techniques of ensuring that all available memory was used as efficiently as possible - which is why so many powerful BBC B programs became available over the years. The IBM system had a built in obsolescence.

This 'obsolescence' is what, ultimately, ensured that Microsoft were to become the global monopoly they are today and why Acorn was relegated to relative obscurity outside education - it's primary market. The IBM design assumed that by effective marketing you could fool companies into upgrading their equipment every six months to a year in order to make sure they had the 'latest technology'. Acorn conversely, prided itself on the reliability and longevity of it's BBC systems. Some are still in active use to this day - fifteen years on! Of course, like inventing a everlasting lightbulb, their reliability didn't really help Acorn financially as people simply weren't upgrading their computers.

Leap-frogging the competition using British Innovation

Unfortunately, this is where the hype and misinformation come into play, as the big multinational PC companies realise that there is a vast new area to conquer; the educational market. You will start to see adverts about how you are missing out on the latest developments if you don't buy a shiny new Pentium or run Windows95. This is quite simply, rubbish and lies. All Acorn machines running Risc OS 3 and above (which includes all machines since 1987) are still capable of running video clips (courtesy of Acorn's world beating Reply technology), surfing the Internet, running the latest desktop publishing packages and accessing CD roms.

Don't Panic!

There is simply not the money available in education for schools to keep wasting money upgrading computers. BUT they don't need to. If you already have Acorn systems you will find that they are more than capable of still keeping up to date with Pentium technology, but at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the hassle required in maintaining the huge, inefficient software and it's required upgrades.

Schools that were lucky enough to buy the Acorn Risc PC when it came about three years ago, will already know that it is more than capable of keeping up with Internet developments, even overtaking Microsoft - now that they can't properly run Java code (currently the subject of a courtcase between Sun, who defined Java, and Microsoft, which defaulted on their contract of agreement). An Acorn Risc PC can even run Windows95 using a built-in PC co-processor. However, you'll find that you can more than prepare pupils for the new millennium without even installing the PC card.

If your school is in confusion about what to do and whether your current Acorn computers can cope with current demands, then think carefully about the Microsoft and Intel hype. Don't let yourself be swayed by marketing hype and glossy adverts. Save yourself money and use fully your existing equipment.

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Don't buy the hype. Use the Best - Acorn