i detest the iPad

But if it the shove to get people of printing then good on it !!

I have a co worker that prints every email to proof it before sending !!!!

*anon cause im dissing people who mayy read this

what a crock....

"he was able to chair a major council meeting just by using his iPad"

Absolute meaningless bow-locks. He may very well have had all the relevant documentation transferred to his iPad, but the implication that this somehow 'enabled' the councillor in question to chair the meeting is tosh.

I've chaired 'major council meetings'. Depending on the meeting, you need to look at lots of paperwork. I can see how a connected-up iPad would be useful at, say, a planning meeting, or any situation where a quick answer is required that can be sourced from the intra/internet. But then so could a laptop/netbook/smartphone/tech-savvy intern.

I'm dying to know just how the iPad was able to provide something more to enable chairing this meeting than any of the choices I've suggested.

Really, this is meaningless.

love the triple negative

"Equally, if we are not convinced that new devices like the iPad won't deliver improvements, we won't buy them"

This equates to saying that they'll only buy things that they are convinced don't deliver improvements.

I wonder where I will be placed in the list of dozens who point this out though...

Cost effective?

Well, paper + ink/toner can't be as high as 1p a sheet, but let's use that.

1p * 36 ("dozens", generously) = 36p a meeting (although, "dozens" may have meant all meetings).

Excluding the cost to charge the device and any repairs/support, the cheapest iPad is £429 with VAT. Let's assume the govt circumvent that, so say £363, or 932 meetings, assuming all meetings have roughly the same number of pages that would have been printed.

That's a meeting a day for almost three years.

Very cost effective.

What solution does the iPad solve for them that a cheaper laptop would not? For a start, they can't really request any custom development for the iPad.

Theres not even an app for that!

So I wonder who is paying for all of the iTunes acquisitions of both music and applications.

I find it shocking and disappointing that as a tax payer, I am helping to line the pockets of Jobs. It's bad enough that my taxes help towards buying Microsoft licences, but adding this to the mix just makes me sick. I've never wanted to spend any with either Microsoft or Apple and I now I don't have any choice in the matter. I may have to move out of Leicester just on principle.

I wonder how my missus will react when I tell her why we are moving.

why not kindle?

£109 vs £429

I'd think they'd say anything to keep their expensive toy. I'm quite sure they can 'chair' using just about anything that can display a PDF and make notes on. It'd be interesting to see if they still used pen and paper to make notes with...

A netbook with Office and Outlook on would still cost less, be more manageable (domains/GPO etc) and more secure (the ipad has none). Their reasons for an iPad are hogs wash.

The problem with the iPad...

... seems to be that it's both fun and useful.

If Leicester City Council had spent £500 on a Blackberry or corporate PDA of some type (for which the cost would no doubt have been much higher, having to go through approved suppliers and appropriate procedures and what not) then no one would have batted an eyelid.

Clearly, what Apple need to do to crack the corporate and government market is create a special ugly-as-a-brick version, double or triple the price, and prevent it from running normal apps from the App Store (only running apps from a special corporate store) and they'd sell millions.

Council toys..

Next they'll need an iPhone obviousily for phone calls and dictation, and iTouch's for secretary's to type up the dictation. Maybe each to have segway's to cut down their carbon footprint between walking too the desk in the office to the meeting room....

...and then a laser... what for? Who knows, but every evil son of a gun wants one in the movies!

Maybe a fountain that spews out liquid gold would be a good idea too?

iPad's for the office? What a frigging joke. Like previousily said you can get a cheap netbook, with touchscreen and spinning screen, and then can at least connect it up with a projector for the mass audience.

EPIC FAIL

Where would we be without Steve Jobs

Wow.... Apple invented the mobile phone... for before the iphone we all had to make do with pieces of string and tin cans... just like that Apple also invented Tablet PC's For before the iPad there was no keyboardless computer device.

My guess would be that the council uses some implementation of Windows for their network (if they use Mac's then they really do have too much money). So if the councillers really want to have some form of keyboardless device then they should really use a Windows based tablet PC, this will have maximum compatability with the business network and will really ramp up productivity.

This would actually work out much more expensive than the iPad as tablet PC's can go into the 1000s. But then a Tablet PC doesn't impress the guys at the conservative club now does it.

In addition to this if they went down this route it wouldn't have caused a media storm, seeing as more people know what an iPad is than what a Tablet PC is.

Feckin Jobs-worthies

Laughable excuses of councillors caught bang to rights - with such poor quality excuses it makes you wonder how dim Leicester's councillors really are, or how dim they think we are.

From a Leicestershire resident .....

This is all about being open

With no ability to apply stupidly restrictive group security policies like you can with BES and Win, then the meeting documents will be available to anyone with an iPad, thus achieving open government at a stroke. Bring it on. (I dont live in Leicester so am happy for the great experiment to start there.)

"....paid for out of existing annual support packages."

Ah, a capital aquisition made from the operational budget then?

If the voters or the staff don't nail 'em to the cross, their bean counters will.

Seems a good swap to me...

1000 workers in leicester for an iPad, sounds like a fair swap to me :D

mine the one with only joking in big letters.

Toys= Efficiency

If we fit out the entire council offices with a windy and convoluted Scalectrix track and fit each car with a letter rack we could save untold amounts of money on internal mail and the like.

Oi, that's my Schu-Mack-er.

@mark149

Not necessarily. Instead of meaning:

a) They will only buy things that they are convinced will not improve performance

they might mean:

b) They will only buy things that they are not convinced will improve performance

or (and this is my personal favourite):

c) They definitely won't buy things that they are convinced will improve performance.

As you say, got to love triple negatives :-))

Anyway, it's half six

They'd be better off spending some of the money on braces for their mayor

Having lived in Leicester for many years up to 2002, and having kept in touch with events there subsequently, it doesn't surprise me that insufficient justifications (possibly post hoc) are being given for some toys some councillors think are necessary for them to use. My only comment is that they would have been better off spending some money to help prevent the "wardrobe malfunction" that the mayor suffered from a short time ago: http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news/Lord-Mayor-s-trousers-fall-children-s-event/article-2360982-detail/article.html

Mwahhhhhhhhaaaaa!

"It may have improved the way that we work as councillors but I've got to be aware of how it appears to taxpayers. I've asked the IT department to look at more cost-effective ways of helping councillors to work efficiently," she said.

Efficiently! They don't know the meaning of the word!

Mwahhhhhhhhaaaaa!

(I've got an iPad and I DON'T think it's good for the Council)

Rate payers foot the bill...

for fat cat councillors toys. No matter what country you live in it is the same, politicians are abusing the system for personal gains....

Paris because she would get Apple to pay for her iPad

wrong saving...

Town councillors? So, are they a target market?

Not exactly renowned for their sense of style or good judgement.

A bit of a backhanded advertorial.

These things are so laden with aspirational PR guff that one way to save money might have been to ask the company for a fee NOT to disclose this little nugget.