Gar

Perhaps if 12.5% of the funding for EVERY school build didn't go to consultants there would have been a bit more to spread around sooner... Now it looks like it's all over they'll be retiring until Labour get back in. Seriously though, I spent some time with a recently finished school a couple of months ago and they'd been charged £45,000 for an IT Consultant (Becta framework) to write about 200 words in their Output Specification. He also wanted to charge them £7,000 to "assess the suitability" of their current desktop population for future use. The youngest machine they had was 6 years old. We're all in the wrong line of work...

Ergo also have a new all-in-one called (imaginatively, the AS3). It's calpella and pretty configurable (also available with touchscreen) not on their website yet so you'll have to call them..

It's nothing to do with a partnership, or any other agreement. The Schools Agreement entitles you to upgrade your OS to the latest version. What you need to be careful of is that most resellers (Insight/Misco etc) don't want to open the box they're shifting, so they'll tell you you have to have the OS that comes on the system. At the moment you should be buying Vista Home Basic (if there are no ridiculous deals on Win95/98 COAs you can find). System builders (like Stone - mentioned above - or Ergo) should always ask if you've got a Schools Agreement and provide the most appropriate (ie. cheapest) OS.