The Education Ministry is putting nearly $20 million over three years into its Laptops for Secondary Teachers programme, which it expects will pay for between 8000 and 14,000 computers.
The programme is open to all permanent full-time secondary teachers.
The Government will meet two-thirds of the $26 millioncost of leasing the laptops for three years, and schools the other third.
Schools are also expected to pay for related professional development for the teachers from within their existing budgets.
The ministry has selected two Windows laptop suppliers for the scheme, creating an extra element of competition absent from its earlier Laptops for Principals scheme.
It expects to finalise contract details and announce the successful tenderers next week.
Herald sources say the tenderers are: Auckland IT company Axon supplying Hewlett-Packard/Compaq laptops, Wellington's Laptop Company supplying Toshiba gear, and Renaissance providing Apple iBooks. The leasing company will own the laptops at the end of the tree years.
The principals' scheme, which started this year with the launch of an online portal based on Oracle's Think.com service, gave principals the choice of Apple or Toshiba.
The ministry said more than 1500 laptops had been delivered by the end of September and all principals should have one by the end of next year.
International Data Corporation analyst Darian Bird said Toshiba had dominated sales of laptops into secondary schools.
While Apple was well represented at primary and tertiary level, its share of the secondary school market was much lower, running at about 10 per cent.
Compaq had put a lot of effort into building sales of desktop PCs into schools, Bird said.
The merged Hewlett-Packard/Compaq would try to build on that.
Left out in the cold were Dell, IBM, Acer, and local PC assemblers such as The PC Company.
A ministry spokeswoman said no comment would be made before next week's announcement.
