thewayneinspain
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@wrexview 2198 wrote:
The Demorcratic Services Committee has voted in favour of going ahead with the purchase of IPads for each of the Council’s 52 members.As many have already thought this may well be the tip of the iceberg as the Council will now also be looking at the provisions for printers for IPads to assist members!
democratic services? says it all. we voted the councillors in, it’s our fault that we have let them feather their homes with new hi-tech gadgets. We are to blame, we are responsible.
@Mike Davies 2197 wrote:
I would assume Wayne is talking about the large scale printing that all councils provide for public consumption, not in-house literature. This would have to be printed commercially as using a laser printer would be extremely inefficient and also very expensive.
It is true that some council departments use secretaries etc to design stuff for publication. This is not cost effective as they are not familiar with commercial design software and the “designs” often have to be re-originated by commercial print-houses (at extra cost) prior to publication. This also begs the question of who is doing the secretary’s work while they are trying to come up with design ideas etc.
yes large scale stuff. You only have to take a look at your bin day stickers to see that it’s 300 dpi printing and perfectly aligned to see that’s industry standard design software rather than microsoft pub. So either a mac or designed by an outside agency.
when i sais provide examples, i meant an actual example, proper hard documental evidence. Otherwise it has to be classed as only hear’say.
@NJones 2183 wrote:
Don’t be daft- they get the secretaries to do most of it in MS Publisher then bang it out on the expensive and under used A3 colour laser!
Provide examples.
on the subject of ipads… we (the electorate) are to blame for this happening because there is no public display of challenging the decision, just acceptance.
Whilst wrexham suffers from a recession and less jobs in the area, the local policitians feather their own homes with a new gadget. They are out of touch.
@wrexview 2157 wrote:
Wrexham Council say to replace the aged laptops now used by Councillors would cost £36400 . That works out at £700 per laptop for the 52 Councillors ,even allowing for some software costs , that seems expensive. It would be very interesting to read the details of the specifications used to arrive at that figure. Particularly high specifications would give a high unit cost and make the purchase of IPads seem a much cheaper option at £23500, £450 per Councillor. The £36400 might of course be the original sum paid for the laptops currently used by Councillors!
They only need a basic netbook, so no more than 199.
Don’t see why they can’t buy second hand.
@NJones 2145 wrote:
Marketing literature is often done by the secretaries. I’d be impressed if a Mac ever got into any council office; apart from some schools.
Alot of the Marketing literature has gone to a printers, so i’m guessing that either the printers are creating it via inDesign or Quark or a design agency are doing this.
I’m a PC lover, but even I admit that it’s more efficient in terms of costs and time to work on MAC for inDesign or quark work.
@NJones 2121 wrote:
What happened to all the laptops they were given- ah yes most couldn’t use them and some were lost. It would be interesting to see how much the cost of additional training would be for an authority that hasn’t any Macs.
They should have mac shouldn’t they? They can’t do all their marketing literature via consultancy and design agency firms can they?
They’d need a mac in the planning department too.
waste of money for a start either the kindle fire hd or the google nexus 7 is less than half the price and i can’t think of one thing that can’t be done on either of those machines that can’t be done on an ipad.
So hypothesising that the lifetime of the each councillors ipad (before they buy another one) will be three years. so postage and printing would be a little less than 2 quid a week (300/3 years=100 quid a year then 100/52 weeks) That’s three to 5 letters a week to be cost effective.
There would also be an electricity charge which Councillors could now claim as expenses.
Of course it’s not just the cost of the ipad… it’s also the insurance, security features, internet costs, cloud costs, app costs and various ‘training’ courses that they will have to do.
App costs are also cheaper on android tablets like kindle fire hd… e.g. lots of stuff for free.
Finally ipads are not green, they may have a lifetime carbon footprint of about 150 g of CO2 (about the same CO2 as 1,000 miles on a passenger jet per passenger) but the marketing policy means that the lifetime cycle is very very short so it’s going to be a 150g every few years never mind the extra carbon footprint for training, cloud server costs, etc.
@harry 2050 wrote:
Local gov = not a chance!
Agreed, which is a shame as the dept of transport suspended the bureaucrats that fouled up the west coast railway bid process.
@harry 2048 wrote:
look at Wrexham town centre! I wonder if they drive round(sorry sit in traffic) thinking ‘isnt this wonderful, i caused all this chaos’
If the one way system is costing local business more in both time and money, those who decided on the idea should be sacked for gross negligence.
