“As bargain hunters prepare for Henrico County’s $50 laptop sale, some county residents say they should have first dibs on picking the Apples,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. “Graduating seniors at Henrico high schools were allowed to reserve a school-issued Apple iBook, but the Aug. 9 sale of 1,000 machines is open to the public. One Henrico resident said she would have liked all county high school students, who pay to insure the laptops, to have the chance to pluck one before the public. At least offer them first to Henrico residents, another said.”
“The first hints of a public sale of the iBooks drew a major response, and since Thursday, when the sale details were given, Henrico schools have received more than 1,000 e-mails and phone calls, one official estimated,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Henrico County Public Schools to sell Apple 12-inch iBooks for $50 each on August 9th – July 25, 2005
Henrico blasted for choosing Dell laptops with Windows XP over Apple iBooks with Mac OS X Tiger – May 09, 2005
Henrico school officials on Apple to Dell switch: The logo will change, but the tool is the same – April 30, 2005
Henrico school board dumps Apple Macs, picks Dells with Windows – April 29, 2005
Henrico County Apple iBook plan in jeopardy? – April 02, 2005
Survey shows support for Henrico iBook program with ‘lukewarm support’ for Apple’s Mac OS X – March 07, 2005
Henrico poll finds students are using iBooks successfully – February 11, 2005
Henrico iBooks raise concerns among some parents – May 28, 2004
Henrico high school laptop program to continue, but will it still feature Apple Macs? – February 24, 2005
More schools experience Windows virus, worm problems while Macs just keep working – August 22, 2003
A tale of two school systems: Windows schools crippled while Mac schools unaffected – August 21, 2003
They should have first dibs on these laptops. It’s their tax dollars that paid for them.
This Henrico School board is full of dolts. First they drop iBooks for Dell. Then they price the iBooks at just $50, which is way under value. Then they don’t offer them first to the people that paid for them. Idiots. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of those board members aren’t replaced in the next election.
idiots in the school board that made this decision. Really… 50$ a piece… where did they get that number.
They are the ones who didn’t want Macs in the first place!
I say they should be the last ones to get ’em…
i´m coming with a semi-truck and will be there at 6 in the morning the day before! i am buying any and all – I also offer $150 cash to anybody that buys one.
It makes sense to me. Their taxes originally paid for them. At least these people know the value of a Mac. If it were the other way around (dumping Dells to get Macs), most of the Dells would end up in the county dump.
“They are the ones who didn’t want Macs in the first place!
I say they should be the last ones to get ’em…”
AMEN, brotha!
If I were the school board, I’d put ’em on ebay and pocket the prof…er…put it in the budget for the schools..yeah, that’s what I’d do.
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Parents of students: We hate macs, we hate macs!
School administrators: We hate them too, You can buy them for $50.
Parents of students: We love macs, we love macs!
Should have offered them for $50 to the high school students who used them, then the rest for $50 to other county students, then whatever is left to the public for maybe $250 (I don’t know how old these are.), with a discount for Henrico County residents.
Better yet, auction them off. Some boneheaded MDN reader would probably pay a premium.
A quick look on eBay leads me to believe they could get at least $400 for the all-white G3 iBooks. Even blueberry clamshells are selling for more than $50. I am sure the schools could have used that money for clubs or something. What a waste.
This fiasco makes me laugh!
They poo ppo the ibook scheme for windows crap and when the ibooks are gonna be dumped they want first dibs!
WHAT FUCKING CHEEK!
Not good enough for your school but good enough for your homes eh??
Talk about double standards!!
Makes me sick.
It’s county law, they can’t restrict the sale to only county residents. It must be open to anyone and everyone.
Or state law, some law. it’s in the article
This is a riot. These Macs will be gone within literally minutes of them going on sale. Most of them will then show up on eBay, where they will be sold for hundreds of dollars. The school district is flushing hundreds of thousands of dollars down the toilet, in an era when all public schools are strapped for cash.
Idiocy. Sheer, utter idiocy.
Not all of the parents were opposed to the iBooks. If a parent or student paid $50.00 for the repair fee, they should have first dibs on the machines. Once again the school board has made a decision that the community isn’t going to be happy with. Lest we judge, those who could do better should apply for the job, if not in Henrico at least in your own community.
: )
Must be that Appleworks OS that everybody is after.
But seriously, I wonder if the idiots on the school board are getting a glimmer that they are seriously mismanaging the taxpayers money. The funny thing is, the error they are making by pricing the iBooks so low is small in comparison to the monumental one they are making by switching to Dell. That one is backed by the lemming effect tho, since the majority of the world is choosing an inferior product to save a few dollars up front (even tho it costs them way more in the long run), they think it can’t be the wrong decision, I mean, everybody else is doing it.
iBooks aren’t good enough for your students, then why do you care who gets to buy these “useless” computers?
The irony is thick here. I hope to snag myself one just to spite them.
BWWAA HAA HAA HAAA!
note to self: switch to decaf lemongrass tofu smoothies.
I hope the $50,000 they’re going to make off these iBooks will pay for a couple of entry level technicians who are going to spend all their time removing spyware and viruses off the Dell laptops.
Again, everyone who gets one of these should wipe the hard drive and install 10.3.9 on it.
10.3 CDs can be found inexpensively online at places like Other World Computing. (I’m not affiliated in any way with them.)
“Idiots on the school board”, enuff said!
I wouldn’t touch one of those G3 iBooks with a 10ft pole. I doubt they are refurbed to any degree. And I doubt much care was given to most of these machines by their students. They are running Mac OS 10.2, don’t have Office, either.
I think the utility of these laptops are in buying in bulk for for some repair facility.
But, the student who used it should have the right of first refusal to buy at $50.
If they chose Dells over Macs, then why do they want the Macs now?
These brainless idiots deserve Dells…they’re obviously too stupid for anything better!
They have to justify their decision to switch to Dells by showing how “lousy” these Macs are by selling them at a price that supposedly indicates what they are worth …
Some PC Mac hater guy came up with this scenario .. a final boot to Apple … 50 buck pieces of crap is what he is saying …
Some PC Mac hater guy came up with this scenario
—
The IT guy who was getting bored servicing Macs (ie. mopping the floor, taking out the trash, etc)
I mean seriously, where have we seen this scenario before..
Don’t ask your Barber if you need a haircut.