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Cambridge City Council is getting flak for thinking of buying iPads for councillors in a drive to be greener.
The idea has been floated to buy around 40 of the latest must-have gizmo from Apple as part of the council’s £250,000 climate change budget.
Apple hasn’t yet said what the cost of the iPad will be in the UK but the bill will be around £25,000 - 10% of the pot.
The thinking is that browsing council minutes on them is obviously better than printing reams of paper but - as the Taxpayers’ Alliance inevitably points out - doing the same thing on a cheap and cheerful laptop would be cheaper.
The Cambridge News is inviting its freaders to say what they think - the comments should make spicy reading.
I have to declare an interest - I love my iPhone and would love an iPad (note to Editor!)
But even with that caveat, I reckon the council should buy iPads not because of what the gadget can do but because of what they don’t YET know: I got my iPhone as a sophisticated phone - without fully realising how useful its ‘apps’ would be - and continue to be.
Chances are that would apply to the councillors’ experience of using Apple’s latest beauty.
David Roberts, head of policy and projects at the council, told the Telegraph: “It is definitely a possibility. Some of the council agendas can be 1,300 pages long - that is a waste of trees, cost and carbon. What is being looked at is the financial and carbon benefits in using electronic gadgets.”
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Readers' comments (3)
Daniel Ratchford | 9-Feb-2010 10:22 pm
Well done to Cambridge City Council for being so forward thinking. The days of huge reams of council papers will hopefully soon be a distant memory (for officers as well as members), and we'll all be reading on laptops and iPads. More efficient, better for the environment, and easier to carry round who those of use who travel by bike.
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Rob Jackson | 10-Feb-2010 10:25 am
@ Daniel Ratchford. While I agree that the council has been very progressive, buying iPads is a huge error. It doesnt have the non-backlight display of a Kindle (and other actual ebooks) so reading large amounts will cause headaches/eyestrain for 90% of people. The Kindle is also cheaper. This is the first generation of iPad, it will be superceeded by better versions in 12 months - will CCC replace them?
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Mike Thompson | 10-Feb-2010 11:14 am
Why the continued celebration of all things apple? Most people use windows machines so an open system capable of reading multiple systems that may develop would be prefered. This would avoid being tied to todays trend, and would, i think be a better choice. Remember twitter came from nowhere and is available on a number of devices apart from iphones, ipads, etc. Who knows what may develop so let's keep our options "open".
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