Have you even taken it for a spin? The hardware is somewhat suitable for what it needs to do. I ran a couple of the CS4 programs and got a lil system lag, but that was all. As for Win7 being a power hog, i wouldnt know, i dont run it, but it must be better then vista.
Besides, 90% of the time they will be hooked up to a power source, meaning High Performance for most of that time.
Our school has just received our lot of laptops, and they're shipping with Windows 7 RTM. On the one I played around with, Aero runs fine, but because of the screen resolution, there's a link on the desktop to change to XGA res, because the Adobe CS4 suite doesn't like running on a tiny screen. Our school isn't allowing students to bring power supplies in, mainly because we don't have enough power outlets around.
I very much doubt that. On both parts.
The scheme was for year 9's and teachers. If another student got one it was against the government's wish and the school will probably get bitch slapped.
According to the people organising the DER, there are several states for the laptops. You have:
1) Unallocated. This is where the laptop has not been allocated to anybody.
2) Comissioned. After the first user login, the Comissioning agent runs, and from then on, only the user who ran the comissioning script will be able to login to that computer, hence it is "allocated"
3) Loan. This is the state that iRuler will have his laptop in. This mode is functionally equivalent to Comissioned, but the laptop will not be allocated to a particular person. This is the state that loan laptops to other students, and staff that don't teach year 9, will be in.
4) Lost. Self explanatory. Computrace locks down the system, making it worthless to a would-be thief.
5) Broken. Self explanatory again. These machines have been recovered, and are awaiting repair.
6) Written off. If you manage to blow your laptop up, and recover the pieces, this is the last of the states, where it will be removed from the DET asset register, and will cease to exist within the system.
As you can see, the DET has planned for other students and staff to get ahold of these laptops for "short term use", with the inclusion of the 3rd state.