“MacArthur has always been Mac, but in the fall it’s going PC, thanks to the PTA. The aim, says Lisa Ash, vice president of the Parent Teacher Association at MacArthur Elementary School, is to improve computer instruction and get parents more involved. And it couldn’t come soon enough for the school’s aging machines,” Tom Kertscher reports for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Kertscher reports, “Ash said many parents of MacArthur students believe that Windows-based personal computers, or PCs, could serve their children better, and they set out a year ago to switch the school from Macs to PCs. The PTA has raised nearly $20,000, received donated computer equipment and taken other steps to begin the transformation, she said… The parents ‘have taken it on as a professional commitment,’ Ash said… The timing is good because six of MacArthur’s 30 computers weren’t working at the end of the school year and the 7-year-old Macs were very costly or impossible to maintain, Ash added… A key advantage, Ash said, is that students will be able to do work at home – and get help from their parents – since more families own PCs than Macs.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Great job, PTA. Excellent decision. Have fun with it. Hey, because you bought Honda mini vans as the family car, why don’t you get donations to change all of the school buses to Hondas, while you’re at it?
Virus and malware removal is not a computer skill.
For those who are actually interested in serving their children — as opposed to being lazy by refusing to learn how easy it is to use Macs with the Windows PC you ignorantly bought for your den just because other lemmings you know bought Windows, too — there are many reasons why educated people choose Macs over Windows PCs: http://macvspc.info/
To think that these kids could have had 30 Apple Mac mini’s with inexpensive Samsung or similar flat panel monitors running Mac OS X Tiger and had access to iLife for less than they are going to spend on PCs – it’s sickening. But, you have to be informed to understand why; hence the uninformed MacArthur Elementary PTA joyously celebrate their decision to deprive their children of superior tools.
These people just actually chose to pay more for Windows XP and no iLife over Mac OS X Tiger with iLife for their children just because they ignorantly bought a Windows PC for their home. It’s simply amazing. Remind us to join our local PTA when the time comes. We’ll make some waves.
Most popular applications use the exact same file formats, making it trivial to exchange documents with PC users or to migrate existing files such as documents, pictures and music from a PC to the Mac. Not only are the files compatible with the Mac, it’s really simple to share them as well. Email is a very popular way to share files. Macs handle attachments just like a PC — using the Internet standard MIME types. Macs can also connect to the same networks as PCs and share files over the network using the SMB/CIFS file sharing protocol. Or you can burn a CD — Macs and PCs both read and write to the same standard for data CDs. Other options? Consider USB or FireWire removable hard disks or floppy drives, or a USB keychain flash memory device. Macs can read Windows formatted disks, making it easy to exchange Zip disks, portable hard drives or other portable media between Macs and PCs. – Apple.com.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
16-percent of computer users are unaffected by viruses, malware because they use Apple Macs – June 15, 2005
