Comes with Intel Celeron and 500GB SATA HDD!
Another day, another corruption case. Classic times, just like the time when the Department of Health purchased laptops worth less than their actual value.
The Commission on Audit (COA) revealed that the Department of Education purchased Php 2.4 billion worth of laptops intended to be used by teachers through the Department of Budget’s Procurement Service (DBM-PS). The price for each unit is Php60,600.80 and with the specs given, there are obviously way more worthy options. Heck, even a MacBook Air is a lot more affordable than that! Also, with 60K, you can go ahead and give teachers a gaming laptop and it won’t break the bank. The resulting procurement resulted in over 28,000 teachers deprived of a computer
The Commission on Audit reported that the laptops purchased are deemed “too slow” because the processor it uses is Intel Celeron, a series of processors intended for entry-level laptops which the laptop is.
In addition, the COA couldn’t find a valid reason why DBM-PS would agree to such bidding. The unit price of the laptop is Php58,300. Even the unit price is way too expensive given the laptop’s entry-level offerings. In Bensons.ph, the Dell Latitude 3420, which was the laptop ordered, costs Php77,700 but has specs justifiable for it, including a more powerful Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor, 1TB HDD + 256GB SSD, and 8GB LPDDR4 RAM
The original plan of 68,500 units was significantly reduced to just 39,583 units due to this ridiculously expensive pricing. Supposedly, the budget was Php35,046 per unit.
Worthy Alternatives
With the given Php58,300 pricing and the total of Php60,600.80, there are a lot more powerful options which even COA mentioned. For instance, the Apple MacBook Air, the most obvious choice, costs slightly less and has powerful specs inside, even with the base 8/256 configuration which by the way, uses SSD, not HDD. Solid State Drives load faster noticeable during boot-up. Inside is the Apple M1 chip which may not be the latest but is more than enough to perform tasks teachers need.
It costs Php57,990 for the base 8/256 configuration.
Another worthy option to look at is the Huawei MateBook D16 which has the latest Windows 11 and is one of the closest Windows alternatives to the MacBook Air. Inside it is the powerful Intel Core i5-12450H and a 16in. FHD+ (1920x1080px) IPS LCD screen, as the name suggests. Also by default you’re getting 16GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB M.2 SSD inside. It is large and lightweight and also has integration options which are great for the more tech-savvy teachers out there.
By the way, this costs only Php 55,999 and you get a lot more RAM/Storage than the MacBook Air.
We mentioned you can also get a gaming laptop with that price. That’s because you actually can. For instance, this listing of the Acer Nitro 5 gives you jam-packed to the brim with performance. Inside is an improved cooling system as it is a gaming laptop, red backlit keyboard, a 15.6in. anti-glare FHD+ (1920x1080px) IPS LCD screen, an Intel Core i5-11400H performance processor paired with 8GB DDR4 RAM, and 512GB SSD storage. Not just that, the laptop also comes with a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce RTX3060 GPU with 6GB VRAM which is more than enough to run heavy-duty tasks like playing demanding games and rendering high-definition 3D graphics. You don’t even need to be tech-savvy to use it, and bonus points as it will make you look cool and flashy.
No time to visit the link? The price is Php58,999 on Villman.com
Source: GizGuide via ABS-CBN and GMA
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