“A mad rush happened this morning when the gates opened at 7 a.m. at the Richmond International Raceway for Henrico County School’s $50 i-book [sic] laptop computer sale. The much-anticipated computer sale started at 9 a.m. but many people came late last night to wait outside the gates in line,” NBC12 News (Virginia) reports.
“When the gates finally opened, several people were hurt with scraps and bruising as the crowd rushed in. One woman with a one-year-old child pushed in, but her stroller was crushed in the rush,” NBC12 News reports. “The County is selling the 1,000 surplus computers to Henrico county residents because it has switched from i-book [sic] to Dell computers. People wanting to buy a computer must prove they live in Henrico County and are only allowed to buy one computer per person.”
Direct link to the video (RealPlayer) here.
[UPDATE: 1:20pm ET: The Richmond Times-Dispatch has a slideshow of the event and stampede here: http://media.gatewayva.com/photos/rtd/special/ibook/index.htm ]
MacDailyNews Take: Somehow, we can’t imagine the good people of Henrico trampling each other to get four-year-old Dells when the time comes. The Henrico School System will most likely be paying some company $50 per Dell laptop for recycling/disposal. And NBC12, get the name right. It’s “iBook.” It’s quite a simple thing to get right, but it looks really stupid when you get it wrong. (We’ve worked in and consulted for TV stations for a good number of years. Trust us, most of the people working at your local TV station aren’t the brightest bulbs in the pack.)
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Woman wets herself to keep place in line for $50 Apple iBooks – August 16, 2005
Henrico closes $50 Apple iBook sale to general public; only Henrico residents can buy – August 03, 2005
Henrico moves $50 Apple iBook sale to Richmond International Raceway due overwhelming demand – July 28, 2005
Apple announces 30,000 iBooks deal with Florida’s Broward County Public Schools – July 27, 2005
Henrico residents object to public sale of Apple iBooks – July 26, 2005
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
Anyone understand accounting?
This is government. They depreciated the iBooks over the course of their ownership. It’s likely that the iBooks are only worth $50 on the county’s books. They may not be allowed (for tax and profit reasons) to sell them for more than that.
BTW, that’s probably the reason they limited the sale to county residents. It was their tax dollars that originally made the purchase.
I don’t think people would stampede for $50 dell laptops that are 4 years old. Most people know what a 4-year-old PC is worth. I do agree, there would still be lots of people very interested, but I think it’s very obvious that a 4-year-old PC isn’t worth as much as a 4-year-old mac. But that’s just my opinion, I don’t have any facts to back it up.
how presumptous of you, step. typical neo con fodder. i served this military with pride. have you done so?
so what, step? we have to burn the village to save the children?
so it goes. meanwhile my friends and family are dying for a war under a false pretense. sure is easy to decry those that oppose the war as ignorant when there is no lives vested for you.
i have no problems with war et al, for a just cause. i had no problem taking out the taliban in pursuit of osama. can you advise me what the current status of osama is? how iraq connects with that? you want to throw up a democracy in the middle east as an experiment? sure fine. noble. go to war for that. don’t give us a bunch of WMD bullshit and osama = saddamn hogwash.
you brainwashed/braindead hack. lol. go serve, then get back to me.
Darkness, thanks for the insight. Didn’t think about that, myself – that’s a shame if it’s true, but at least they did limit the sale to residents.
I was recently at a community college auction. There were tons of 3-5 year old PC’s that were going for $10-$20 apiece on average. The highest one sold for ~$30. The auctioneer tried numerous times to get it higher but no one would budge.
However, when it came to the same age Macs, they were going for almost $100.
Even if something is cheap, most people still make value decisions.
Actually, yes, hammertime. I spent 6 years in the military, and I paid for it. Not with my life or limb, and I am lucky, but physically and pyschologically I will never be the same.
As for the rest of your post, I’m not ready to respond to that. You didn’t answer most of my questions, if any, but I will try to be a little more civil, and respond to everything in your post that can purport to deserve a response. At least you were a little more honest this time with what you know, believe, and why you’re upset. That I can respect.
It is rude of you to assume that b/c someone supports the war, they must not have family over there. I have both family and friends over there, and I hope not to lose any of them.
BTW, have you lost anyone in Iraq? You have implied that – if so, I grieve for your loss, and cannot pretend to know how I would handle such a loss. If not, please do not pretend you have, and dishonor those who have already sacrificed.
Also, hammertime, you were very upset at how presumptous I am. What did I presume? That you were a hypocrite? Oh, but that was a safe presumption – aren’t you? I don’t know anyone who isn’t. Some more than others, of course. But if I’m so wrong about my presumptions of you, please point them out. Specifically, you could answer my questions directly (whether yes, no, or “I don’t see why that matters”.)
Also, I understand now that you’re angry that people you know are over fighting a war under “false pretenses” (Leaving aside the fact that historically, war is often fought under “false pretenses” even when the real reasons are “good”.) What would you have done now? Do you think the answer is to pull out? That is an honest question, since you haven’t yet indicated that in your posts, and I would rather avoid any more false assumptions, since they detract from the discussion by leading you to make the same mistake instead of a valuable rebuttal.
Ok, so you asked about the state of Osama – didn’t you catch my question about Nuclear powered states? But if you don’t know how that relates, just ask and I’ll explain more. There was a good National Geographic article on this recently, what with the anniversary to Hiroshima and all. Anyways, the state of the taliban is changed somewhat, but there’s something more important than that: The world is very much aware of Osama and his ilk now, and that includes us in the U.S, who have been shielded so long. Having an interest in the rest of the world is very important, and yet far too easy for us to avoid. Ok, you want to know how Iraq connects with that – I’ll have to devote another post to that, as I see you also ignored my question about understanding the geo-political situation of the world. Of course, I don’t claim to be an expert either, but I’ll try and point you in the right direction so you can go expand your knowledge in that area. You may still not agree with the connection, or the following decision, but at least maybe you won’t blindly deny such a connection – nor so glibly (I like that word, can’t you tell
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />) throw around WMD as if it was a joke.
from one soldier to another then: i, too, apologize for my tone. i can respect your opinion as you can respect mine. semper fi. i do not know what branch you served in but God bless you for your service.
and responding to your points:
no, there is no feasible way to pull out. for better or worse, the situation is too tender to simple pull out. in essence, we created this mess in iraq currently and pulling out will only compound the problem greatly. what am i in favor of? do you really want to know? minimize us loss of life. do you know what that means? stop fighting the friggin war wearing out ACLU cards on our uniforms. war has never been pretty and unfortunately the circumstances of vietnam have made the reality of fighting an ugly war virtually non-existant. this war to me is entirely unnecessary. the excercise in iraqi democracy, while noble, was not a priority. why the priority shifted, i do not know. ask bush, cheney and wolf-man for the answer to that question (however, let me add that i still support these chads, no matter how furious i am).
have i lost anyone in iraq? no, not in my immediate family. in my extended family of friends, a close friend of mine lost their son. so the tragedy is very real for me as i grieve with my dear friend.
i will await your other post to respond to your following point.
Geez, take the freaking political talk to another forum and get back on topic…
I was there and it was completely insane. For whatever it’s worth, readers may feel free to read my blog post in which I attempt to grapple with at least some of that insanity, posted at this URL:
http://www.victoriamarinelli.com/blog/2005/08/good-and-bad-behavior-at-ibook-debacle.html
Peace… VM
Hi DLI. You have anything to say on topic? I don’t, everybody already covered it. Given the general quality of MDN’s posts, and the comments, I think we’re actually contributing above par. But I see your point, we’re certainly not on topic anymore – do you have any suggestions for another forum to take it to?
Anyways, we’re (sort of) on topic, here’s how: cobb county -> stampede -> humanity’s stupidity -> humanity’s greed -> our discussion of whether the war was also caused by greed or not, and a discussion of humanity in general, and 2 MDN readers in particular.
hammertime, to get back to our discussion (because I don’t really see anything wrong with continuing it), I do not think the war was caused in any way by personal greed, say by the Bush family. I think that in fact, that’s a very tenous position to defend. In fact, America’s entire economy depends very heavily on foreign oil, so it’s very important to the every citizen that the area be stable.
I actually prefer unstability to some degree, b/c I think it will motivate us to get off our duffs and figure out a better solution before the global economy crashes. That would be a disastrous scenario for all of our “standards of living”, and even “way of life”. In that way, you could say that we’re all greedy, and I’d agree.
Hopefully that clarifies a little why I asked the “environmental” questions, and the oil-questions (since that was the starting point for this whole discussion, oil and greed). If you can explain to me why you think that greed and oil led to the war, I can learn something, since I admittedly know little of the purported connections (it seems so unlikely to me for many other reasons, that I haven’t learned much about it).
I was disappointed over not finding WMD, in that it was a main public reason for going to war, tho obviously I am not as upset as you that it turned out to be false (I don’t feel we were lied to as a people by the president – more on that later). I agree with you that we can’t just pull out – we got involved in a bloody mess, we have to do our best to leave the place “better” than we found it, whatever that means. I didn’t completely follow you on what you are in favor of, though.
mw: blood, which I hate the sight of (unless it’s my own), and which much has been lost for silly reasons since God first put us on this planet and Cain killed Abel, and which much more will be lost until God comes back and ends this life as we know it.
oops – didn’t even get the county right. That’s Henrico county, not Cobb (though one might see why I accidentally confused them).
Victoria, thanks for the post, and the startling clear picture of just part of what happened this morning. It’s always sad to hear another instance of someone taking what wasn’t theirs unfairly (the mother), but I choose to be gladdened by the young gentleman who did what was right in the heat of the moment, and cared more about his fellow man than himself. If no one rights this situation, God has promised he will take care of it himself – and he’s much better at these sorts of things than us humans. Anyways, know that your behavior is appreciated by many of us, as we find ourselves in these different situations, and set an example for many, perhaps even some of those who conducted themselves less worthily.
mw:glass, who do you see in the looking glass? Is it what you thought you’d see when you were growing up?
MDN mods where are you?
My God can beat up your God.
Have you seen pics of this riot? The riot was filled with minorities. Minorities sure like to riot! Don’t get in between a fat black woman and her “bargain”!!!
Girl, I heard that. I got to have my bargain, and my All-You-Can-Eat Ribs!
mike k. – why are you calling for the mods? Seriously? I have only recently started posting on forums much at all – seems like a community watering hole to me, where people can come together from different walks of life and have discussions. Am I missing something? Please explain! I know trolling is annoying and wrong, and I know that off-topic conversations can be annoying, and even not encouraged in some forums, but that doesn’t seem to fit with what I’ve seen of MDN’s forums. Again, please point me in the right direction if I’m wrong.
mw: western – haha, western. err…nevermind.
I can’t believe the idiotic racism that is coming up here (and also probably from people who WEREN’T EVEN THERE), just like on another board I visited today. Whatever. I’ll just post here what I posted there… Though to even past that amount of cut and paste energy is pretty irritating.
—————-
Okay, in response to the racist ass posting above… get a clue! First, are you even from here? (This is a city in which Blacks are in the majority. So – take a wild guess as to who the majority of persons pushing and shoving in ANY given context are going to be? Dumbass!) Second, have you heard of employment discrimination and such resulting in disproportionate poverty of African Americans in this country, and hence, a lack of electronic resources (making a $50 laptop a really helpful thing that could help a poor family)? Third, there were PLENTY of white people who were being just as disruptive, not to mention a preponderance of white people cutting into the line, just like the Far West End — read “one of Henrico’s richest neighborhoods” — white lady I posted about in my blog entry (see http://www.victoriamarinelli.com/blog/2005/08/good-and-bad-behavior-at-ibook-debacle.html) – and in the process, basically acting like they had lots of entitlement. In other words, they didn’t HAVE to push and shove – their white skin privilege did that for them.
— VM (white, but not STUPID)
Let me guess Tom Weak, you are racist, and a Mac hater?
I guess those two fit well together don’t they?
How much can you gain by selling a bunch of computers at $50.00 a pop”
well, lets see.
$50 x 1000 = $50,000
I guess about that much
~~~~~~~
Look up the word ‘gain’ sometime…
Revenue (50,000) – Cost (1 million) = 950,000 loss
Step
you invoked both God and the Iraq war in the same (very funny) thread about dumbasses fighting for laptops.
Stick around a while and i’m sure there will be more “Bush uses a Powerbook” or “Apple allows porncasts” which always devolve into religious or political flamewars (discussions). Save it for those discussions. The rest of us are here to make fun of those nutty Neanderthal Henrico residents.
Welcome to MDN, by the way.
$50 for an Apple laptop? still overpriced. those morons in the news must be Maczealots with Think different tattoos
Did someone say that Mac´s are expensive????
I guess that Dell sells machines under $30???
WTF?
Does MDN really think that we should install something called “realplayer” on our machines?!?!?!?!?!?!