Air Force to Buy Up to 18,000 Tablets to Replace Flight Bags

[Guest]

The U.S. government has issued a notice that it intends to purchase somewhere between 63 and 18,000 tablets.

Air Force to Buy Up to 18,000 Tablets to Replace Flight Bags : Read more

 

[nebun]

such a waste....did we forget that we are in debt?

 

[gmciaramella]

Between 63 and 18,000? Way to be specific...

 

[outlw6669]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]such a waste....did we forget that we are in debt?[/citation]
It is quite a bit more cost effective buying a single tablet every few years than printing and distributing 70lbs of manuals every 28 days...

 

[BruceOTB]

I think this is a good move.. 70lbs of paper per flight bag, being updated every 28 days IS huge money and hassle.

 

[Pyree]

Also the amount of fuel you save.

 

[wopr11]

If they purchase iPads they will be using them to play games - that's what they are used for 99.9999% of the time.

 

[Guest]

99.9999% of the time, statistics are made up

 

[sirmorluk]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]such a waste....did we forget that we are in debt?[/citation]

As a person who was in the Army pre-I.T. revolution and in Army I.T. as a civilian afterwards you would be shocked at the amount waste that goes on in every aspect of government. It is sickening. It was so bad and made me so angry my health started to suffer from stress.

Just one example: I was instructed to destroy $300,000 of tablet computers (fujitsu) that were 1 year old because the RAM was too small for the latest version of software they were running.
I recommended a simple $40/tablet RAM upgrade to bring them up to spec. I was laughed at and told to proceed with the destruction. Sure enough they ordered brand new ones @ $1,500 apiece and crushed the old ones.
I loved helping our troops but cannot work for the bureaucracy. this type of waste was not unique and I cite only one of many that I saw.

 

[Guest]

"But with one nice EMP........boom.......all those manuals are gone
Some paper will come in handy in the event of a nuke over head"

With one big EMP those planes won't be able to fly and it won't matter the medium the manuals are delivered.

 

[ap3x]

[citation][nom]outlw6669[/nom]It is quite a bit more cost effective buying a single tablet every few years than printing and distributing 70lbs of manuals every 28 days...[/citation]


Yea, there was an article about this with an Airline and there is actually a significant fuel savings as well.

 

[monkeysweat]

[citation][nom]wopr11[/nom]If they purchase iPads they will be using them to play games - that's what they are used for 99.9999% of the time.[/citation]

I think when governments / hospitals purchase these I am pretty sure they work with apple on locking the devices only to have approved apps, I think the only thing they might not be able to circumvent will be the browser unless that's completely locked.

 

[tipoo]

Hopefully they'd still have paper docs as a back up.

 

[9_breaker]

why does it have to be apple ? they could just get android tablets for 3rd of the price .

 

[ap3x]

[citation][nom]wopr11[/nom]If they purchase iPads they will be using them to play games - that's what they are used for 99.9999% of the time.[/citation]

Wrong, very wrong. No one is paying $499 or better to play Angry Birds. The purpose of these devices is to provide problem free access to Books, Email, Calender, and the Web in a extremely convenient and easy to travel with manner. The games are just applications just like any other application that people can use to entertain themselves with much like a Movie. I travel a good bit when I virtually never see someone playing a game on their IPad or Android Tablet on the plane. Movies, yes, Books, yes, Internet, absolutely but games, rarely.

The entire story is probably not told in this article because they will probably have some ground control application that provides a bunch of information during flight as well.

These tablets are essentially used especially in a corporate environment as a tool for when a laptop is not needed.

 

[ap3x]

[citation][nom]Monkeysweat[/nom]I think when governments / hospitals purchase these I am pretty sure they work with apple on locking the devices only to have approved apps, I think the only thing they might not be able to circumvent will be the browser unless that's completely locked.[/citation]

Apple does not provide that capability in it's entirety. There is a whole MDM market segment in IT right now specifically to control and lock down IOS and Android devices. Companies like Good and Mobile Iron are the leaders in that space right now. Really hot space, every customer I walk into has a Mobile Device Management project this year. Was not as much of an issue when the BlackBerry was dominating everything as they had a BES server that controlled the device and provided the interface with the corporate mail services. Now the IPhones and Android devices go straight to the Exchange server and most organizations don't have a centralized method to set a policy on those devices when accessing the corporate network.

 

[mrmaia]

I guess if they'll remember to carry extra batteries.

 

[dietcreamsoda]

"Air Force to Buy Up to 18,000 Tablets to Replace Flight Bags"

Really now, is "flight bags" an appropriate way of referring to flight attendants? Whatever happened to political correctness?

 

[9_breaker]

[citation][nom]dietcreamsoda[/nom]"Air Force to Buy Up to 18,000 Tablets to Replace Flight Bags"Really now, is "flight bags" an appropriate way of referring to flight attendants? Whatever happened to political correctness?[/citation]

lol replacing flight attendants with ipads

 

[ramprun]

Apple does not provide that capability in it's entirety. There is a whole MDM market segment in IT right now specifically to control and lock down IOS and Android devices. Companies like Good and Mobile Iron are the leaders in that space right now. Really hot space, every customer I walk into has a Mobile Device Management project this year. Was not as much of an issue when the BlackBerry was dominating everything as they had a BES server that controlled the device and provided the interface with the corporate mail services. Now the IPhones and Android devices go straight to the Exchange server and most organizations don't have a centralized method to set a policy on those devices when accessing the corporate networ

if that is true then why not just go with kindle for a lot cheaper. they only want to replace the printed manual. Why buy something like a table and then dumb it down so pilot cannot play game.