The Bermuda High School for Girls (BHS) this month started a pilot programme requiring each student to own a 250 mega byte (MB) Zip disk on which to put her schoolwork -- a much cheaper alternative to having a laptop computer.

"This is the most innovative, cost effective programme for school use that we've seen to date,'' outgoing headmistress Eleanor Kingsbury said.

"It has been specially designed for secondary schools. It has all the advantages and none of the disadvantages of a laptop programme at a fraction -- about ten percent -- of the cost.'' A significant part of the programme is the purchase of 220 top of the line desktop computers for the school which each girl can use to complete work that can be stored on their Zip disk.

The 250 MB on each disk is expected to be more than enough space to store a year of work for students in grades seven to 12.

The school believes the comparative costs of a $2,500 laptop and a $250 Zip drive is an advantage to parents of children in a private school.

In addition, the drives are smaller than laptops and the drives come with extra discs and headphones in a handy pouch.

Betty Hooper, the school's information technology head, said: "Central file management works in the business world, but it is time consuming and wasteful in a school system where students need to learn to be responsible for their own files.

"BHS will focus on client software management rather than network management, and will be better able to provide a controlled learning environment.'' Ms Hooper added: "There is no need for individual monitoring of many different laptop computers, all with different programme settings, etcetera.

At BHS all students will have access to the same material.