$25 Million - really???? A proposed tax on canoes, plastic bags, cuts to every department, new taxes on home heating oil, more layoffs each day, and someone thinks spending $25 million a year is a good idea? I do believe that education is very important - but $25 million - I think they "tapped" the wrong wood at the Blaine house earlier today, perhaps a labotomy on Baldacci would be more effective - who knows maple syryp may even come out !!!! Time to stand up - A Tea Party, We Surround Them, something has to happen.

Totally agree! What a waste of money!!! I'm so tired of hearing about all these new taxes and fees, yet they go and blow $25 million on this??? Ridiculous!! I can see maybe purchasing some laptops for each school to have in their library for children who are less fortunate to use if they don't have one at home, but most children have access to computers at home now. When is the wasteful spending going to stop?!?!?!?!?!?! Get a freakin clue Baldacci!

How about a tax break so that families can afford to buy their own computers?

This is very poorly timed and unnecessary. In these economic times this is a poor use of funds that are obviously coming from the Federal government while attempting to increase taxes to pay for the costs the Federal money should be used for. This is typical of this administration's failed policies, especially in education where both Baldacci and Gendron have proved incompetent and wasteful of millions of dollars with the mandates of local benchmarks and with the failed MEA's.

As for the laptops...after working closely with these units since they were first given out to 7th and 8th graders, they have proven to be low-quality and frustratingly slow for any real effective use in the classroom. They are low-end units that Apple can't sell to the public and with the locked-down image the state includes, they are not conducive to classroom management by teachers. They are NOT "child proof" as originally represented. Their failure rate is such that "reserve pools" are constantly drained. The repair process is so convoluted that it prohibits the timely turn-around of a malfunctioning unit which could involve weeks. The $25 million is misleading...it doen't even include the local costs for handling each unit...so there is a much greater cost incurred here.

Maine's governor and legislators are so free to spend the hard earned money of John Q. Public maybe they should give back their salaries and benefits to help pay for their crazy ideas.

Our experience with the middle-school laptop program has been very positive. Our district has had a low damage/repair rate. My son doesn't find the units slow or cumbersome. His teachers across disciplines have used them creatively for research using real data, noteshare, projects and research. He's able to submit some assignments electronically and to access some text books online. It really makes sense to expand this project to high school, where these skills will become more valuable and the ways in which classroom teachers can use them for demonstrations, collaborations and inquiry research can really expand.

This is a wonderful program that Mainer's should be proud of. It's is especially nice for low income children/families who would otherwise not have access to a good computer.

Most kids by the time their in the third or fourth grade have been useing computers and have full knowledge of how to work them. When I get stuck, I ask my 10 year old grandson. As someome said, have some in the school libraries to use. But this idea is just plain insane! lifeinmaine---hilarious! Labotomy sounds good, but I don't think you will find much!! How important can computers be when there are no jobs, groceries are almost impossible to buy, people are losing their homes, and half of the state is shut down.? It really dosen't take a genius to figure this one out!

25 million a year. 100 million over four years. This is about as irresponsible as it gets, whether it comes from the federal money or not. How does this state benefit financially from this if the funds are from the stimulus plan? If the money is not from the stimulus plan then how is it being paid for? Why not use the money to improve our colleges instead ? If federal money is used then tuition could be lowered so more people could afford higher education which might have a more positive effect on the state than laptops for high schoolers. If the state was in a surplus situation and was looking for somewhere to blow some excess cash then the laptops might be a worthwhile indulgence ,but, it isn't. Why not buy PC laptops fro half the price or EEE laptops for a third of the price - why spend premium dollars on Apples? If this was such a fantastic program, the rest of the country would be doing it by now but they're not, why? Our leaders like to think that Maine leads the way but, in reallity, we're just standing here with SUCKER written all over our foreheads.

Heck now all the kids can chat on Myspace, Facebook and look at porn while they are in school!

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." – Winston Churchill (1903)

Unbelievable. The irresponsible misuse of money stolen from the people who earned it continues... Governor Nero is tuning up his fiddle.

Tom, but time after time the people of Maine keep voting this boobs back into office out of fear of losing their entitlements...they will not bite the hand that feeds them.

The governor must heat the Blaine house with taxpayer money!

Geezum, for 25mil, I would hope the laptops are equipped w/mini wind turbines to keep the batteries charged!

Anyone do the math on this one. $250 a year per laptop, with a total of $100 million when the four years is up the total will be $1000 per laptop. I can go to the store and buy a laptop for $500. LOOK I JUST SAVED THE STATE OF MAINE $50 MILLION. I SHOULD BE GOVERNOR!

Baldacci wants to tax kayaks and spend $25 million on laptops? I'm a technology teacher and this sounds ridiculous! As nice as a laptop for every student would be, I just can't see how we as a state afford this right now. If you want to spend $25 million a year, how about infrastructure repairs? I live in Hermon and Route 2 is in horrible shape!

This has got to be one of the ridiculous things this governor has ever purposed. While I'll agree we should provide kids every opportunity we can afford this is just plain uneconomical and unproductive. I had a foster child who had a laptop provided by the school. After noticing an increase in filthy joking and talk I looked at the computer. I found multiple pornographic sites. These computers are suppose to be monitored, they appear not to be. The computers are suppose to block inappropriate sites, apparently they don't. For the most part, the computer was not used for schoolwork. It was used for social networking, pornographic viewing, and gaming. While as parents we monitored what was being done at home, but we couldn't control every minute that this student was able to access the internet. I'm not intending to generalize every student but according to this student, "everybody is doing it." It would be better in my opinion to have a computer lab at school. Permanent computers in the school monitored by a teacher. As for the USM report of it increasing students writing skills, I thought writing was done with pen or pencil. Has anyone noticed how terrible the spelling, grammar, and handwriting are of most the kids today? Practically illiterate.

This governor's failed Dirgo plan owes our Maine hospitals millions, he better be paying up! The roads are terrible, though I wouldn't waste spending the money paying workers to repair the roads as most of the time they're standing around looking at each other. Goodnight, I can't wait for this moron to be out of office.

And I as a state worker who is always on the road can't have a laptop but a 7th -12th grader can??

I think that most of the comments here reflect a complete misunderstanding of how this program will be funded. Under EPS, the state's formula for distributing education funds to districts, each district is allotted a certain amount of money per student for educational technology. It will be these existing funds that *can* be used by districts to buy into this program. Districts will have the option of participating, or using there educational technology money on other things.

To rel1861… You have clearly swallowed the state’s propaganda about the MLTI project hook line and sinker. The state does not provide any school the option to “Opt” out of the program and use the money for other technology. If that were the case our district could provide a laptop for each child and staff member K-12 and still have money left over to hire the staff to support them. The state is ignoring the fact that there are laptop computers out there that are a third of the price of a low end apple laptop and are more capable. I would love to see an investigation into the bidding practices used in this program and hear how the state justifies the choice of a laptop that is $1000 over a laptop that is between $300 and $500 with the same or better warrantee coverage.

To opinionatedinbangor… Taxedtodeath1 did not say he could get an apple laptop for $500. There are many PC laptops out there for $500 or less that are just as if not more capable than the laptops that apple sells to the state. If a student or teacher breaks the display on their laptop it will cost the school $600-$800 to have fixed, as damage to the display is NOT covered by apple. If a student were to damage a display on an Acer one or similar $300 netbook I could replace the entire laptop for $300. The failure rate of the apple laptops is so high that apple had to build a repair facility in Westbrook just to handle the laptops in the MLTI program. I ship out 3 to 5 laptops each week that need to be repaired because of a hardware failure, not because of damage caused by students. The batteries need to be replaced every year because they will not hold a charge for longer than an hour. This is a big problem when the students are supposed to be using the laptops in class and I have yet to see a desk with an AC outlet installed in it so that the kids can keep them plugged in so that they can use them.

The money for this program is not coming from Obama, it is from the hard working taxpayers of Maine.

It is time for the people of Maine to wake up and put some hard questions to Augusta.

I am the parent of a child who has learning disabilities and the no child left behind act is a big joke to me. I would like to see the state push

SAD1 super out of his job but we all no that will never happen because the school board always approves of everything he does.He is the

highest paid in the state and has bylaws to never let anyone else be a super of more than one district at a time. He should be ashamed of steeling money

from the system to pad his pockets at the expense of my daughter's right to have a proper education. He is more concerned with having his

name plastered on the athletic field at the middle school. It should have been named after anyone other than him. He's just steeling on a legal footing.

AT 25 million dollars they could hire alot of qualified special ed teachers with the right education. I took her to Bangor and had her test to see exactly

what disabilities she has and the doctor there told me that the person who she had in grade school claimed to being qualified

is no more qualified than I to teach or over see teachers who were supposed to be qualified for learning disabilities. I had to hire someone on the side to teach

my daughter how to read and spell because the teachers don't care about the hard to teach only the easily taught children.

My child needs to have a person in the school system who can teach her and understand how her brain works not another laptop for her

to play on. Our super is the highest paid super in the state and now he wants to put up windmills and do two different studies @ 50k each

to find out what????????? that the wind blows most of the time. 25 million is a riduculous amount of money and very irresponsible of our

state to even consider doing this now on an extension of the laptop program.

She never stood a chance from the moment she entered in the public school system here in Presque Isle and I'm mad as hell at the thought of her never being

able to get to her full abiltiy. Thanks for nothing but more money out of the pockets of a single mother who's trying to do the best for her daughter.

If I remember correctly, part of the reason the state chose apple computers is because they thought that that operating system would be the one used by the majority of businesses. The state never should have gotten into this - if they wanted to increase computer literacy and usage by students they could have funded more desktops. The majority of kids are computer literate before they enter 7th grade. The cost of upkeep and repair is astronomical. Why the state thinks it needs to continue it is mind-boggling. mcbell - I hear your frustration and as a certified teacher I couldn't agree with you more in many ways - including No Child Left Behind.

WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY!!!!!!!!! Can't we stop this waste of money somehow? When I went to school we did not have computers or calculators to use in our classrooms and from what I see nowadays with the young kids is not good. Ever go to a store when the electricity goes out and you go check out your items and the young person does not know how much change to give you back because the cash register is not working and they don't know how to count with a pencil and paper or without a calculator at hand. Computers and calculators should not be allowed in schools at all so kids can learn like we did. I have noticed also that kids never go to school two full weeks in a row, they either have holidays or teacher workshops that give them alot of time off. Whats up with these teacher workshops that occur so often. Teach the kids like they use too so they will learn something instead of playing on the internet while at school, and try to show them what common sense is.

Cancel the program and pay the hospitals what is owed to them!

What a JOKE! This is such a waste of money, especially in hard financial times that the whole country is in let alone the state. I know a lot of students who have these state given laptops and just use it for MySpace and facebook among other things, instead of what it is intended for. I know it must be hard for lower income students not to have a laptop like the other kids, but get over it! When I was in high school, I was low income; I used the computer clusters at the school. Also they could use this money to keep schools open instead of closing them, or use it as Mainefriend suggested pay the hospitals what they owe them.

This is the dumbest state in the union! what a waste of money! buy your own computers. i had to because i'm a working taxpayer ! this place sucks!!

Yes, lets keep our children in the 19th century. Why not do away with pen and paper and give them abacuses, hand held slates and chalk. That would only cost $25/yr per pupil, after all we - want all of those high skill mill jobs to come back.

HermonNet provides a powerful desktop and internet access for students K-12 (at school and at home) for a fraction of the cost that the state will be paying for laptops, It costs less that $3,000 for HermonNet to run 40 terminals simultaneously. The equivalentt cost for the laptop program, according to the figures published in the BDN, would be approximately $40,000 over 4 years. Think what the state could do with the money it would save by implementing the HermonNet model statewide.

"Maine started its first-in-the-nation program by distributing more than 30,000 computers to each seventh- and eighth-grader in all of the state’s state public schools in 2002 and 2003."

Each seventh- and eighth-grader was given 30,000 computers? If so, each student was given about $15 to $20 million in computers. Why finish school? Just sell the computers and retire!

opinionatedinbangor- As appletech stated, I did not say that they had to be apple laptops. I know that Apple makes a nice product, but the sad fact is that most businesses use the PC platform and not the Leopard OS platform. The second thing that I have to say is, when you buy things in bulk, the price drops (Depending on the number that is bought). There are many companies out there that make computers that last at least 4 years.

If I were governor, I would not spend $100 million dollars of the taxpayers money on this. I did my math correctly, and for all you know I could be 18 years old and was in school when this program was put in place. You seem to be a very angry person......they make fiber pills for constipation.

I am pretty sure that the State chose Apples because it is the "PC" thing to do. (I really crack myself up sometimes) Seriously, the Apple TV commercials make it pretty plain that creative, artisitic hippies (read teachers union) use Apples, and bumbling shirt-and-tie conservatives use PC's. Although I like Apples in some ways, and dislike Vista intensely, I am certain that PC's would have been a better choice. I think making computers available to students without access at home is the way to go, but this program - at this time - is ridiculous.

Regarding the current program, Apple actually underbid the "other" manufacturers. Lenovo was the closest, at approx $300 per year, per student.

Even though Windoze PCs may appear initially "cheaper", the Total Cost of Ownership is more. Add in the virus-prone, spyware-ridden, counter-intuitive, reverse-engineered, buggy OS and you've got a formula of high-cost, mediocrity.

Last i knew librarys still existed..... Don't they have computers?? Hell... i think schools have librarys!