IT labs to educate over 2 million Punjab students, MORE than two million students in Punjab will soon receive computer education with the help of NComputing’s ultra low-cost virtual desktops.
The Punjab chief ministered has driven the programme, which is setting up computer laboratories in more than 4,000 government secondary and higher secondary schools.
NComputing enables a single computer to be virtualised so that many users can tap the unused capacity and share it as if each person had their own computer. In Punjab, each school will be furnished with a 15-seat computer lab, which will be run on three desktop PCs and 12 NComputing virtual desktops that will be connected to the PCs. Besides reducing purchase costs, electricity usage for these labs will be 90 percent lower than a traditional all-PC computer lab. Additional Programme Director Joudat Ayaz of the, IT Labs project said that it was a sustainable and environment-friendly project with very low recurring costs. “In the overall context of the project, we are saving over Rs 1.8 billion, which is almost 36 percent of the total project cost.”
As far as the electricity savings are concerned, the Punjab government would save another over Rs 10 million per month as the NComputing devices use only one watt of electricity as compared to 110 watts or more for a typical PC, he added. VP of NConnexion, NComputing’s distributor and authorized service centre for Pakistan & Afghanistan Saiyid Hasan Rashaad stated that with the NComputing technology, a new era in computer literacy has started in Punjab, which would enable the provincial planners to impart important computer training at low cost.
