“The ‘cool factor’ of Apple computers, with their sleek design and eye-catching ads, has barely chipped away at the market dominance of PCs nationwide. But if Student Computer Initiative (SCI) sales at Princeton are any indication, Apples may be on the rise,” Belda Chan writes for The Daily Princetonian (Princeton, NJ). “SCI, which sells more than 1,000 laptop computers to University students annually, has seen a jump in the purchase of Apple machines over the past year.”
“Apples have accounted for 23.6 percent of SCI computers sold in the current school year, up from 14.8 percent last year, according to Leila Shahbender, who manages Student Computing Services for the Office of Information Technology. When SCI sold them for the first time in 2001-02, only 10.7 percent of computers purchased were Apples. SCI currently offers four laptop models: two from Dell and two from Apple,” Chan writes. “Shahbender is unsure why Apples grew in popularity this year. She speculated that the susceptibility of PCs to security threats may be one reason for the change. ‘I suspect it could be because the Apples don’t get viruses and worms, so there aren’t as many security issues,’ Shahbender said.”
Full article here.