Just found this article on the SchoolCIO website about Indiana’s Open Source experiment. Indiana has gone to a linux desktop model for their computers to increase the number of computers they can put in schools. OpenOffice, Moodle, CMAP and other open source solutions are now all being used.

Allow me to quote:

Perhaps the most impressive impact of the new system has been cost savings. Previously, the state of Indiana was spending $100 per year per machine to license software from vendors such as Microsoft or Apple. Today, the school is paying no more than $10 per year. With 18,000 computers, this is a savings of more than $16,000 per year. And when amortized over 300,000 computers, this annual savings jumps to $27 million.

The district is experiencing a similar savings with hardware, reducing total cost of ownership per machine from $1,000 to about $290.

They aren’t at laptops yet, but they are looking that way… and I can’t imagine it’s far off…

Rock on, Indiana.