Students at Warners Bay High School in NSW and not mentioned in this article receive their laptops in 2009. That's a pretty low appraisal of devices that were meant to empower NSW students as citizens of the digital world. Yet they've had the opposite effect, at least in his Sydney high school, where Lenovo ThinkPad Mini 10 netbooks (and comparable units from other years) are mainly used for basic entertainment – or not at all – by kids that find they're just too much effort for doing real work. "I personally use it as little as possible – probably 10 minutes a day – and most people only use it when they have to," he says. "Everyone says they never use them on holidays, and if I'm doing homework at home I wouldn't use it unless I've already started working on something in it. Teachers know they're pretty bad, and some teachers don't even let kids use the laptops any more because they find half the kids are just playing games in class anyway." Mum Yvette, who runs parenting-advice site happychild.com.au, is resisting his pleas for a more powerful laptop for now – but she agrees the department has been "overselling" the laptop program. "It was sold to parents in such an exciting way as having thousands of dollars' worth of software for children that want to do graphic design, animation, and so on," she says. "A lot of families just can't afford to buy laptops for each child, so I was supportive of the government providing them. But I know kids just play on them when they're at school, and there are obviously supervision issues. It's a shame." The Lenovo netbooks handed out to NSW students in 2009 and 2010 sport a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 2GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive and 10-inch screen. The N450 CPU offers middling performance and is below the minimum specifications set by Adobe, which recommends that CS4 apps like Photoshop have at least a 1.8GHz CPU. And that's just to get the application running; as students know, actual performance is invariably much slower once they try to do real work on them.

Yvette Vignando, Luca's mother. Asked about the experience of students like Vignando, a department spokesperson said the devices are "rigorously tested" before being issued to students and that the choice of software was made after "extensive consultation with the NSW Secondary Principals' Council". "The Adobe Creative Suite gives students and teachers the tools for 21st century learning and teaching," the spokesperson said. "Slow performance has not been highlighted as a major issue with the laptops … As with all computers, after time they can slow down. The department regularly upgrades the versions of software and performs a tidy up to ensure smooth running of the devices. This helps avoid slow boot and operating times." Not the best laptops in the world ... Luca Vignando. DET is currently undergoing a longitudinal evaluation project to assess whether the laptops are meeting its goals. From a performance perspective, however, the laptops will be under even more pressure as DET reimages even the 2009 models with software including Adobe's newer Creative Suite 5 – which expects even gruntier computers, wants at minimum a faster Intel Core i3 CPU and a faster hard drive for video editing, and will fill 15 per cent of the Lenovo's hard drive alone.

Long-term view Around the country, schools have faced similar issues in considering inexpensive netbooks that may well be near their use-by date by the time they've been rolled out. While NSW DET and other bodies have opted for value-for-money netbooks, many others have bitten the bullet with devices that cost more upfront – but promise enough staying power to last students through their studies. The Glennie School, in the rural Queensland city of Toowoomba, was an early laptop school and currently has parents buying Acer laptops at about $2500 each, including support from a responsive local shop. With three girls at the school, those costs added up for parent Robyn Ayles, but she says experience has proved the investment worth it. Ayles says the school has been strongly supportive of students, and commends both its pedagogical efforts and its logistical work in ensuring students make the most of their devices. Nonetheless, she says, the devices' performance has degraded over time; whether this affects their suitability for students' needs, she says, depends on what the students are using them for. "If my oldest daughter had been doing IT subjects like my middle daughter is doing in grade 11, I'd have to have bought her a new computer," she explains. "The one she had is just not up to speed; it stalled a lot, and crashed when she does video or highly graphical content. It got slow and didn't meet her needs probably by the end of year 12, but it was only for a short period of time [before she finished school]."

Schools that get powerful-enough laptops can make a strong difference to learning outcomes, says Michelle Allen, who runs Erina-based web design firm Webstuff.biz and chose tech-friendly Central Coast Grammar School specifically because it has been so progressive in encouraging laptop use. School parents pay around $1300 annually to lease a Dell laptop: "I remember thinking I could buy this at industry rates for a lot less," Allen says. "It's a rort: the cost ends up being four to five times the cost of the computer, and you don't have a choice of model. But in terms of educational value, it's great." While her daughter recently completed her HSC and "is not that fussed on computers", Allen says her year 6 son's access to laptops during his schooling is making all the difference. "He has really embraced the technology," she says, "and learning is much easier for him using a computer". Paying the Apple tax Gold Coast Catholic school St Michael's College is confident in the educational value of school laptops, and is in its first year of a program that will eventually put them in the hands of all its 800 students. Instead of opting for an inexpensive laptop however, deputy principal Stephen Eisenhuth says it was clear that spending a bit more for Apple MacBooks would be worth it in the long run.

"We were a Windows school and it was a 50/50 call at first, then we went to a group and the kids said nearly unanimously that they'd rather work with Apples," he explains. "The uptake by teachers has been exceptional, and we've been planning around a three-year turnover [to avoid obsolescence]. It has been a really successful roll out, and by next year the whole school will be running on laptops." Even better for parents: while many other schools expect parents to foot the upfront cost of laptops – and may compromise on specs to keep costs down – St Michael's parents were already paying a computer levy that was funding provision of hardware in the school's four computer labs. Much of that funding has been redirected to the laptop program, leaving parents paying just $50 more per year for the laptops. That's an effective result in an ongoing challenge as schools balance the need to keep costs low with the challenge of providing enough power that the devices have the staying power that children need. "Even today a $2500 computer is quite expensive," says Ayles, "but it does last because you've got the high-end processors and everything in them. If you buy a lowest-denominator computer, it's just not going to last as long as buying something that's faster and better at the start."