MAIN(E) COURSE: The Maine Department of Education awarded Hewlett Packard with a contract to provide HP Probook 4440s for tens of thousands of middle school students, reports the Portland Press Herald. Perhaps more telling, this move will end the Maine's exclusive contract with Apple, which has provided hardware for the state's schools since 2002. (Its most recent initiative, the 1:1 iPad deployment for kindergartners, saw mixed results.) The state will fork over $254 for each HP laptop, which will run Windows 8, along with an additional $31 for installation and upkeep. Says one local school tech director: "In general, the consensus is the iPad is a kind of 'gee whiz' thing, but there is a lot of stuff you can't do with an iPad."
