“In a stunning change of course, Henrico County’s School Board voted last night to distribute Dell computers to every high school student and teacher next year,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. “The unanimous vote to broker a deal with Dell Inc. represents a victory for the Round Rock, Texas-based company in its battle with Apple Computers Inc. for superiority in the fast-growing education technology market.”
“Four years ago, Apple and Henrico struck a deal that drew national attention for being one of the first initiatives to give every middle and high school student a laptop,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: These people are about to learn a bunch of important lessons. Bad decisions have consequences. Too bad for the students, but they’ll be learning something, too. What a step backwards! So, now Henrico will have Windows XP where they could’ve had Mac OS X Tiger. Think about that for a moment. Wow. It’s not the hardware, Henrico folks. All personal computers and operating systems are not the same. Oh, never mind, you’ll learn soon enough. Wonder if we’ll ever know if things are going badly for Henrico or will it just be swept under the rug?
Apple’s “Profile in Success – Henrico County Public Schools” webpages are currently still online here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Cobb County school board approves Apple Mac plan; could eventually distribute 63,000 iBooks – 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
All I can say is its great they are getting laptops, but they are going to be paying out the wazzo to get all the viruses and spyware off those laptops after only a few months of use. Hope they saved the money they saved by going super cheap with Dell to pay for the IT support they will be needing. What is the statistic. Need one PC Tech for every 40 computers, while its Mac Tech for every 100 or something. I need to find thoses numbers again.
Ironic that my MDN Magic Word is “great”.
F*n idiots! enjoy.
Deepest sympathies to the poor students.
Magic word: change -> As in “Think Different”
Priorities: Feeding politics before children. Welcome to America!
Someones been bought off! Are they that stupid?
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Cost to maintain just went up. Quick, somebody check the school board members bank accounts.
They have made themselves a bed I hope they don’t regret having to lie in. And how ironic is it that their decision was made the day before Tiger is released?
MW=bring, as in “Bring on the pain!”
NO PORN – NO SPAM – NO SPYWARE
With such an excellent, system-wide, set of very secure parental controls ( http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/family/ ), how can ANY parent or school system ignore Apple’s new OS X?
IDIOTS!!!
It’s ironic that they themselves will now get an education…
..in what TCO really means.
My son’s middle school got Dull laptops this March. Without going into details (the story is too long for here), it’s a big factor in our decision to put him in private school next year. Horrible, horrible program. Might as well have given them a subscription to Hustler Magazine.
Well assuming this was a straight “business” decision and not tainted, their decision process obviously is wanting (to be mild). Any thought of ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ (TCO) you rubes?
From a purely educational standpoint, the MAC OS X platform offers: various solid and widely used OPEN standards, X Code 2, etc.
From a productivity and management viewpoint: No Windblow$ malwares, parental controls, much more secure, yada, yada.
Feel really bad for the kids. Also, Apple needs to do a much better job of managing these “sales cyles” and “relationships” as we slick, big city sales types say.
I agree that it would have been easier to use the Macs but this is education that is suppose to prepare them for adulthood. Using windows based machines makes sense because almost every single business uses them. They will learn the windows OS and also the shortcomings of it. By learning in a non critical environment they will be better prepared for the business world. Hopefully when their computers mess up the school will take the time to teach the students how to repair their own machines.
It make sense to learn about the equipment that they will most likely be using in the business world. Like it or not it’s better for the kids.
Hopefully things will change and the Mac will begin to be more widely accepted but that time isn’t here yet.
I feel for the Henrico students, but in some ways this is a good thing; not that anyones poised to take advantage. Don’t hang me! Here’s what I’m thinking…
One thing that Apple has needed in its “education” outreach programs is a measure of how beneficial Macs were vs a PC. And I don’t mean, ohh the benefit of having a computer. I mean, how many days per years was the computer usable, what number of virus, bugs, crashes and other breakdowns were log, how much additional technical support was required–for teachers, for students, for student families, how easy was it for teachers to implement the computer into various studies (not just as “go write your history report”, but as forget your traditional 5 page paper, your history report is going to be a multi-media web page or CD-Rom, or DVD with text, images, sounds, video, etc.
The downside of Apple’s success in the area, is let’s face it no one wanted to come in and pull the computers from someone’s hand; and say well last year you were on a Mac, and that was super successful, but this year let’s see if your success can be equally measured on a PC. And comparing one school district against another just has its limitations (things like teachers, students, and other variable start coming in and have to be accounted for).
But having the same school, with mostly the same students and families; and a one year baseline with an Apple computer followed by one year with a Dell computer, really offers the chance for some great research, that no one would independently suggest to any school district. Having the school district shoot themselves, is pretty much the only way this type of research could or would be accomplished.
I think it would be highly beneficial for someone to come in, and make sure all the “t’s” and “i’s” are crossed and dotted on a combo user/usage/benefit evaluation; and use that as a baseline comparison against a one year usage of the Dell’s. I think both quantitive and qualitative measures should be used. I think even if that is just a basic comparison of support needs and uptime; that Apple stands to win; and better yet they stand to win with verifiable data, as opposed to abstract platitudes.
I think sometime during year two when more than half of Henrico’s Dell’s have been exchanged, declared, dead, or just totally unusable because of crippleware–virus, spyware, adware, etc. That a nice big Case Study should be published “Henrico School District: Computer’s in Education, Lessons Learned” or something more biting.
Because even if the results return that ALL the Dell’s are still working and still usable, then it would also have to return (or should return) the costs associated with keeping them so… like we had to hire 1 additional IT professional for each school in the district, or we had to purchase or seek donations of Anti-Virus, Spyware, and Adware software, teach instructors and families how to run scans and repairs, blah, blah, blah.
Greg,
No offense, but maybe you should move to Henrico County. You seem to match the IQ requirements.
I graduated school in 1998. No business worth anything is using Windows 98. My boss and owner of the business graduated in 1988. No business is using DOS or Windows 2.0 or whatever crap was available then.
You teach CONCEPTS, not specific operating systems and applications, in a real school that cares. OSes and apps change too frequently.
Magic Word: “future”
(MDN, you’re freaking me out!)
allgood2,
That would be fine and dandy, but the people who made this decision and Dell+Microsoft will be covering their asses mightily. The truth will not come out of Henrico easily.
In a perfect world, you are right. In this world, the facts will probably never be known about how much money and productivity Henrico lost by moving from Apple Mac OS X to Dell+Windows XP.
Tell em what you think. I did, for what good it will do. Nevertheless, they do need to get a few emails about this, don’t you think?
techconnection@henrico.k12.va.us
Magic word is “pay”, as in: The board won’t PAY for this error in judgement, the students will.
The school board was paid off! Believe it!
“They will learn the windows OS and also the shortcomings of it. By learning in a non critical environment they will be better prepared for the business world.”
You are an idiot. Im sick of people saying that load of BS. First of all, kids go to school TO LEARN MATH, SCIENCE LANGUAGES, ART and so forth NOT to learn how to administer to an OS. Secondly most people in the business world all they use is Explorer, Word, Excel, and and email program. Big whoop-a-dee-doo. Thirdly, by the time kids get out of school in 2008, 2012, 2016 or whatever, the entire thing will be different anyway.
You argument is PC apologist and is completely invalid.
Michael,
That’s just stupid! What a horrible answer. The same could be said about the Mac OS. The whole point is that they will learn how to work within the windows environment. After all that’s what they are most likely going to be using in the real world.
The problem here is that most of you are soooo narrow minded. The Mac is much better than the PC in many ways but obviously Apple isn’t concerned about putting their computers into the business mainstream. That means that schools are doing the students a favor by having them learn to work in the windows environment.
What is so hard to understand about it?
Greg,
I graduated a scant 7 years ago from high school. I’m so glad they didn’t waste my time teaching me Windows 98 or Mac OS 8.
If you can’t grasp the simple point above, you really should move to Henrico.
Don’t believe for a second the school board was paid off. The problem is they are clueless. I’ve already sent an email congratulating them on selecting Dell with Windows. How else can those kids prepare themselves for the businessworld. We deal with spyware and viruses everyday at work. If these kids don’t use Windows they will be shocked to see how widespread it is in the business world. At least now they will come to think of it as “normal”.
I sure hope the school board has budgeted for an increase in the tech support staff.
If I was a student at that college I would promptly apply for a transfer to another college.
THIS SUCKS!
Hammer, talk about an idiot! Where do most of the problems on a PC come from? Mail.
School, like it or not, is to prepare kids for life as an adult in the business world. The PC is THE major tool used in the business world. It only makes sense to train the kids on the tool that they are most likely going to be using.
Get your head out of the sand!
Now if you want to whine about the real problem why don’t you e-mail Apple and get them to seriously court the business community? They won’t because they don’t want to cut their margins to entice business to make the move. It all comes down to money and the PC has won in the business world.
Well I have used macs ‘in the real business world’ for over 10 years – so that crap about ‘real business’ using windows is CRAP.
End of story.
Well I guess education is all about lessons. The students will surely learn one here. I am certain that they have or have had an oppourtunity to play with Windows based computers, now they will be denied the usage of Macs, oh well. I took extreme pleasure in purchasing my own for school, so I can have profecientcy in both OS, this is where having a Mac pays off. It is clearly more stable and safer to use on the internet. So I hope the student learn how to make their own decisions.
Fred,
Ohh I agree, that at least Dell and Microsoft would make some effort to guarantee a favorable showing in the process by donating anti-virus software, support time, spyware, etc. But, I’m not certain in the Henrico Board of Directors have the ability to cover their asses in this situation; and anything that Dell or Microsoft does can be documented.
You’re obviously not going to get the information at the annual school report; but an independent report even if it was funded by Apple (yes some might say that’s an oxymoron but there are a number of evaluation centers and or consultants, who demand objectivity, regardless of who funded the research).
Also Greg,
I agree with Michael, I’ve yet to see a Mac user become totally incompetent, just because someone stuck them in front of a PC. Your argument, though widely use, is just a terribly, terribly argument. One it assumes that the computers kids will be using today, are the same computers that they will be using 10 years from now. Admittedly it is taking Microsoft a longtime to get Longhorn out the door, but even I’d bet that there will be something different 5-10 years from now.
The argument also just makes students out to be the worlds biggest idiots. Come on, by the time these kids are adults, they will be best served by having experience on multiple operating systems, learning and understanding the basic concepts of OS navigation, and application usage. Whether its Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Unix, or some other OS, most of today’s kids will have come across them in some situation or another at least once or twice.
Sure there are differences between the OS, mostly at levels that the average user never even thinks about. When your talking about I can use Microsoft Office products (or better yet, I can use any Word Process given 10 minutes to play around in it), then your talking about what skills a student needs for basic business. The business world is pretty basic in computational tasks run by day to day workers– email, word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, maybe a database, and any number (including zero), of custom applications specific to that work place. Sure their are analyst, accountants, and other specialists, but your average office worker types (and not even that well).
I’d rather you teach my kids how to critical and creative thought processes, core concepts, and get them willing to explore new ideas and technologies, than teach them how to write their history report in Microsoft Office. Maybe I’m giving them too much benefit, but that I believe the can figure out themselves.
Take heart, this will be the new test site to show the world HOW NOT to roll out equipment to students.
This is a beautiful case study for Apple waiting to happen. All they have to do is keep track of all the problems from disgruntled students and the massive IT bills and hawk that around to every other school district.
I work in Henrico. I was a teacher and now I do tech support. I am sick. This is a disaster. The teachers, students and tech support are all centered and trained on Macs. A great deal of work was created on Mac only software. I didn’t even take the talk of switching seriously because I saw so many huge problems. You can always underestimate people’s stupidity, I guess.
What a sad day.
I would love to see a short documentary on the two years of computer use. That would be a great school project.
A new mac user,
Hmmm, but you’ve used a Mac for over 10 years???
I can walk into any office building and there is a 100% chance that there are people using PC’s. There is an extremely small chance that Macs are being used.
That is the truth and no matter how much you hate that it still doesn’t change the truth that the kids are better prepared for the business world if they are familiar with the PC.
To the morons that want to bring up windows 3.1 or win98, when you got out of school that was being used in business at that point. You then migrated to the latest OS as it was made available.
Can’t you guys come up with a legitimate argument for the Mac? Apple has tried the school approach for years and it hasn’t changed anything, They have to cut margins to entice the business world, something they are unwilling to do. Until they do that they are going to continue to loose these battles. They have the product but they are going to have to make it priced right to get business to fork out the bucks.
1 On the local paper’s website, the page is sponsored by ECPI Technical College pimping IT/Networking & Security Management (Windows 2003 Server is in larger print and is highlighted). The schools’ (ECPI) website has a “best viewed with IE” logo on it. I guess the new grads will have jobs at least.
2 All the little Babbit suburban clone drones who so desperately wanted their children to learn Windows are getting ready to get a REAL education– and probably a tax increase. Hiring all those new tech support people should keep taxes up for a season.
3 They say you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him/her drink. Henrico County is full of people who equate Gap Brands ( Gap/Old Navy/Banana Republic ) with style, MTV Brands (MTV, M2,VH1,BET,CMT) with music and Wal-Mart with value. You know– Bush Country. People who quietly get their daughters abortions while voting against it and protesting it.
“Mildred, we cannot let the family know our kids are using Macs. Everybody will think that our son is a liberal or gay!”
Word of the day- Babbit
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
via OmniWeb on Mac OS 10.3.9 for the last time:
“Middle American, Philistine, anal character, arriviste, boeotian,
boob, boor, bounder, bourgeois, burgher, cad, churl, clown,
compulsive character, conformer, conformist, conventionalist,
epicier, formalist, groundling, guttersnipe, hooligan,
ill-bred fellow, looby, lout, low fellow, methodologist,
middle-class type, middlebrow, model child, mucker, nouveau riche,
organization man, parrot, parvenu, peasant, pedant, perfectionist,
plastic person, precisian, precisianist, ribald, rough, roughneck,
rowdy, ruffian, sheep, square, teenybopper, trimmer, upstart,
vulgarian, vulgarist, yes-man, yokel”
And the Henrico County COSTS are just starting… You can hear MS, Dell, Norton all wringing their hands.
Forget the costs of switching -after all we aim to make people endure those costs in reverse- I’m thinking downtime, lost productivity, employing servicing staff etc etc.
Please Apple pay a TV production company to document this execise in failure!
I hope they have a lot of IT support and I’m not talking about Dells piss poor support from a 3rd world country. They need people on site through out the school day every day. I’m a Desktop Support Technician working for a Silicon Valley company supporting PC’s which happens to be Dell. I have first hand knowledge of how these things work and fail! Viruses and spyware are going to get these poor kids and instead of doing there homework they will be calling tech support.
To bad for them.
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Greg,
Your analogy holds little water. Just 25 years ago, every company had typewriters. Does anybody have them now? Tools change. An education transcends the tools.
If you want an education, you get the best tools to support that education.
If you want training, go to a vocational school.
So, do you want to train Henrico County student on Windows? Or do you want to provide them with the best tools available to educate them?
If you think Windows provide the best tool towards an education, then Henrico made the best choice.
It just goes to show why American Education is such a joke. I don’t know why anyone makes the assumption that people on a school board are qualified to do anything. They are just as stupid, and ignorant about technology, as most other people. (This may sound arrogant, but I think that it is a given that people on a board such as this are most likely better educated than average, and definitely more technologically experienced)
UInfortunately, the educational system in this country is TOTALLY about politics. The teachers unions care about themselves and not educating the kids. On top of that, the school boards are elected, and have to keep both thhe unions and the voters happpy. In this case, I think that there was too much pressure from (1) ignorant parents that believe the “kids need to learn Windows because that’s what business uses” arguement, and (2) voters who are fed up with ever increasing school taxes.
If Dell was significantly cheaper, it is unrealistic to think that the school board can give their constituents a computer science course so that they can understand TCO arguements. Most of these people have had 12:00 flashing on their VCRs for the last 15 years and still can’t figure out what remote goes with what.
Also, the other sad fact is that the current board probably won’t be there when the total cost is ever figured out. Even if they are, they can just pass the buck and blame any problems on Dell for implementation.
In any case, this decision was more about politics than it was about technology or education.
Personally, I am of the belief that the school really shouldn’t be buying the kids laptops anyway. I’d be pissed if my district did and I had to pay for it. I’d rather spend the money myself and buy the best product, and also be able to keep it.
Force the school to put all classwork and school materials into platform agnostic formats (HTML, PDF, etc.) or use applications that are available on MAC and Windows. Let the parents worry about support costs and then see what decision they make.
I hope to God that these stupid programs are goone by the time my kids get older.
Greg,
The Windows monopoly <-> user relationship is an abusive one and continues mainly because it is considered “normal.”
In effect, you’re saying that it’s good to abuse kids because they will be abused as adults.
End the cycle when and where you can.
“They will learn the windows OS and also the shortcomings of it. By learning in a non critical environment they will be better prepared for the business world.”
Giving middle school or high school students windows laptops so they can learn “windows shortcomings” is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Do you realize how different the operating systems will be in 5-10 years when those students actually have jobs?
“Hopefully when their computers mess up the school will take the time to teach the students how to repair their own machines.”
Yes, thats a great idea. Lets give hundreds of students administrative rights, and they can spend hours at home trying to fix their POS instead of doing homework. GOOD CALL
Me,
The story is…?
Greg, I’ll give you a legitimate argument: The computers are brought into the schools to assist the students in learning in ALL subjects. They were not brought into the schools to learn computers, troubleshooting, etc. These are high school students, and the computers should be used as tools to learn. If these tools become corrupted with viruses, spyware, etc., the tools will be ineffective.
Operating systems change over the course of a few years. Very few of those high school students using WinXP will be using WinXP in the business world. Yes, fewer of them will be using Mac OS X 10.4. However, no matter which computer they get, they’ll have computer experience by the time they get to the “real world”, and that’s what matters.
If they want to take a class to learn the inner workings of the computer (troubleshooting hardware conflicts, viruses, malware, etc.) then that’s fine. But they should not be forced into dealing with these on a daily basis any more than we should inflict medical students with the flu just so they can experience what it’s like in the “real world”.
MW: “Now”, as in “Now the Henrico students are fscked!”
I hope Fred Morton V goes to public school.
Honestly, how hard is it to learn how to use Windows from OS X? This is not rocket science. On top of that, Microsoft Office, the most used productivity suite in the world is about the same on BOTH platforms.
So please Greg, tell me again where your argument holds water? We’re not asking people to learn how to troubleshoot Windows or etc. That’s IT’s job. We’re asking people to work, and whether on Windows or OS X, it’s not that hard to learn how to use the most widely available tools.
I can walk into any office building and there is a 100% chance that there are people using PC’s. There is an extremely small chance that Macs are being used.
Greg,
Depends on your industry profession. I can walk into any creative industry office and most if not ALL machines will be Mac’s. Just a simple fact. I can walk into any photographers studio and most will be all Mac. I can walk into a scientific research facitlity and most will be UNIX with Mac’s incorporated into the network (since they are migrating….others have been using Mac’s since OSX was born)
I can walk into an office (advertising agency) and most are using Mac’s. I can walk into an architects office. Most are using UNIX with Mac’s being migrated.
You are ill informed.
“…full of people who equate Gap Brands ( Gap/Old Navy/Banana Republic ) with style, MTV Brands (MTV, M2,VH1,BET,CMT) with music and Wal-Mart with value. You know– Bush Country. People who quietly get their daughters abortions while voting against it and protesting it.”
“A Couple of Telling Observations”, indeed… so easy, isn’t it? To believe bulls**t about people you don’t know? Anonymous posts
are safe for you, aren’t they? That way, you can be whomever, and nobody can see the little logos on the shirts your mom bought you, or your little P2P’d collection of complaint rock from Lilith Fair. Stop ragging on people you don’t know. You sound like an idiot.
did i miss it or did the people who suddenly (apparently) made this decision give a reason?
“…We’re not asking people to learn how to troubleshoot Windows”
actually, that’s exactly what students need to learn how to do. I switched in 2001 and would never go back, but many of the daily Windows problems I had to fix while on the dark side were not version-specific. Also, not every business that uses computers has an IT dept., and small business employers are going to want people who know how to maintain their own crappy Dells without calling for a geek. Greg has a point here…
Greg, what about the students that don’t plan to go into business? What about the ones who would like to be graphic artists. Have you considered their needs? Don’t assume all these kids are going to become office drones.
I live in bush country, voted for bush and would never use a dell or a Windows running machine. My dad has voted republican forever and still takes his powerbook to work everyday and uses his dell pc the company gave him as a paperweight….in fact…my father, a bush country republican, has gotten 5 of his co-workers to switch to a mac….one even bought my old ibook. My political beliefs don’t decide my computer purchase.
This is Apple’s fault… they had this contract, maintained it, and had every chance to make sure it was continued. If Dell waslooking to steal the contract away, then Apple should have known it and done something about it. In any business, if you lose a contract to the competition, it’s your own fault.
Ironically, this news is breaking on the same day that Cobb County, GA announced that they’ve officially approved their own deal with Apple:
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/cobb/0405/29laptops.html
Now, explain this one to me: Less than a month ago, Apple essentially had the Henrico renewal deal locked up by most accounts. Today we find that the board voted UNANIMOUSLY to go with Dell??
I can conceive of a 5:4 vote (or whatever, but UNANIMOUS? After the success of the iBook program over the past several years? On the very day Apple is launching Tiger?
I can only think of two possibilities: Either some sort of payoff, or else someone at Apple *SERIOUSLY* offended the Henrico board in some way (and is about to get canned). Any other possibilities come to mind?
Should be fascinating to hear these guys explain themselves at the press conference which is apparently going on this morning.
We’ll know if the school has more IT support costs, because it will be clearly indicated in the school’s annual financial reports.
If Dell picks up these costs themselves, then it may not be a great deal for Dell in the end.
scrap the whole laptop program and invest the money into something that will be a little more useful to the kids. Seriously, how much do the kids need a laptop in the first place.
Is it to provide a technological education? Most of the kids are already able to use a computer better than their parents and teachers. If they need a technological education, take a class for that.
Is it the software that’s providing the superior education? Hardly. Software is just another means to do what the teachers should be doing in the first place.
Is it to teach concepts that they will face in the real world? No because success in the real world isn’t based on how well a person can master technology. Technology is a tool, and it’s constantly changing. A person isn’t going to succeed because they know how to run a specific program or because they can avoid spam and spyware. A person’s success is going to be based on skills that don’t need to be taught using technology.
If they are going to use technology, they might as well use Apple, but they should really first consider how they are using the money in the first place.
Typical government stupidity. They didn’t even have enough common sense to wait a couple of days to checkout and understand what an immense benefit Tiger would be to any computer user. Now they’ll have to hire IT people by the dozen. Check the bank accounts of the dummies who voted. It isn’t their money they’ve piddled away it’s yours and mine. No-one will ever be accountable for costs involved. If anything is found to be under the table in this deal, the perps will get a raise. Typical government. AAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
Greg & Zupchuck,
What the kids need to learn for the business world is how to use a spreadsheet, a word processor, a presentation program, how to edit and insert multimedia data, and transfer and manipulate files. Those operations are NOT OS specific. If you’re suggesting that they need to learn to fix their own OS when it is corrupted by malware or crashes of its own weight then you’re sadly mistaken. The assumption that anyone, the business world included will put up with the present state of Windows for the next 5 years is seriously flawed.
It’s not like it matters. With our education system going down the toilet and the better jobs starting to be shipped overseas to places like Singapore, these kids won’t need to know how to use a computer in their jobs stocking shelves at Walmart. In a more advanced career path, they might need to know how to press the cheeseburger and fries combo meal symbol on the cash register or set the automated timer on the tater tot deep fryer, but that will be the extent of their needed computer knowledge.
Believe me, we’re wholesaling our children’s education in many more ways than choosing Windows machines over Macs.
You guys are completely anal, If thats what they choose, thats what they choose. Windows Based systems arent nearly as hard to manage as most of you so ignorantly agree.
600+ systems, not a single virus reported in 3 years.
Oh and one more thing, the most obvious reason they went with dell is on price. Apple still charges an arm and a leg for shit thats obsolete in a year.
Greg, you just don’t get it. computers are tools. This debacle is akin to giving the kids in woodshop (not that they have that class any more, it’s ‘how to understand your feelings now’), any way it’s like giving the kids a saw with blunt teeth to do woodwork, they’ll spend all the time sharpening the saw , rather than making the furniture. I took carpentry 60 years ago and now am a master sculptor and carver. Just love my powerbook (and President Bush) So there!
not that I am defending the actions by these public school officials..it’s just that I work in the public sector and have been for the past 15 years. With that been said, public sectors, be it school, transportation,police, etc all look at the bottom dollar..These entities are very short sighted and carry a very conservative way of thinking..This IMO explains why this school district went Dell/XP…Dell, really must have lowered the bid, to have won this agreement. I can only hope that the kids are not affected and that despite all the issues surrounding winduxs — they can effeciently study and be productive…After all it’s about the kids. (not the stupid education committee)
my two cents.
Re:
“A Couple of Telling Observations”, indeed… so easy, isn’t it? To believe bulls**t about people you don’t know? Anonymous posts
are safe for you, aren’t they? That way, you can be whomever, and nobody can see the little logos on the shirts your mom bought you, or your little P2P’d collection of complaint rock from Lilith Fair. Stop ragging on people you don’t know. You sound like an idiot.
I know the area and know people who live and have lived there. The county is hollywood central casting for the suburban American led-by-the-marketing-nose ‘culture’. RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). Live one way while espousing a different view. Want a car/watch/clothes/etc because it’s what everybody else wants or is getting. They don’t trust their own eyes/ears/heart/mind because they have been raised on too much TV and mass-market BS.
No wonder the parents were concerned that they were not using PCs. Now they will and countless hours of previously productive time will be spent maintaining an operating system rather than using applications toward a productive end.
BTW- There is no logo on my shirt, not one P2P song resides on any of my computers or iPod and I do know the area and people. 95% of them cannot tell you who their US Representative and Senators are if you offered them a million $ for the correct answer, but can tell you who Tom Cruise’s new GF is. This despite the fact that they pay half or more of their income in taxes, we are at war and are running 1/2 Trillion $ defecits as far as the eye can see. Now they have Dell laptops so they can be ‘normal’ just like everybody else. America used to be about individuality– not conformity.
I hope those kids lock the admin’s out of those machines, wipe them, and install some Linux variant on them. We all know they’re capable of it, too. Heh! 😀
I’ve seen Wintel laptop maintenance in several schools and it consists of re-imaging the hard disk. That’s it, no attempt to save any data. The technician (usually an over worked person in the office or library) will just erase and reinstall the standard load of software that the school contract specifies. It assumes that all the student’s work is resident on the school’s servers. When the students are at school they’re probability safe but then again when the laptops come home for the evening or the weekend and the student connects to the internet… Well we all know how long it takes for bad things to happen to even the best students.
BTW: most of those “re-imaged” hard drives were chalked up to the general term “software failure”, virus were almost never listed as a problem.
How many of those 600 + systems leave the premises every day?
also, me thinks that since Tiger is not compatible with .Mac’s Virex…this was what killed the deal..being that windows users are use to have virus protection…
Does anyone have any details from the press conference?? It was suppose to happen at 9am. I know I have a slew of questions including, why the deal with Dell is for only 15,800, when the original Apple deal was for around 23,000 laptops. Did they loose that many students and or teachers during the last 4 years?
Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see if they bring out that same old tired argument “PCs are what’s used in the business world”.
I thought schools were suppose to promote intelligence, not stupidity.
Guess Henrico is going to the “school of hard knocks”.
Greg,
You are an idiot. The best thing the schools can do is train these kids on Macs. Windblows is easy to figure out. At least the kids will all be exposed to the greatness of OS X and use it in their businesses down the road like I do. With your idiotic rationale I would never have been exposed to Macs and not known that there is a much better way. And they work great in business. I have over 100 networked macs in my high end constrution business and never, ever, have problems. The Windblows systems always are having problems with viruses and more work to maintain. Not fun to use either. Greg you are a tool.
Greg, not only are you a moron, but also an uninformed moron.
1. Virsues come from a variety of sources, not just mail.
2. Windows vXX, x.x or whatever is a operating system that will not make it to 2010.
3. Longhorn, Microsoft’s great savior is in serious trouble.
4. Dell, Gateway, HP, IBM and all the other INTEL sheep have no idea how to build a box and OS together. IBM’s one venture into this space with OS/2 and OS/2 WARP was a miserable failure.
5. The morons in Henrico County have done no analysis on TCO, tech support or student productivity.
At the end of the day, children are in school to learn the skills, not repair their computers or fight with the damn operating system. This is the key to Apple Research and Development. The job is not to supply another computer, but rather a computer that allows people to be productive during their entire work day. I use a Mac and have for the last 12 years, after growing up in your so-called mainstream PC world. Windows SUCKS….. that’s the bottom line. I no longer reboot my system, lose updates and changes or work longer hours because the f’in system crashed. My Mac is almost never turned off and only re-booted once a week for maintenance reasons.
Try that with a freaking PC running WINDOWS. You and the thousands of sheep that follow the windows platform just have NO CLUE!
Message for Greg,
The idea behind school laptop programs is to further the education of our children. Read: NOT to learn an OS.
It doesn’t matter which OS dominates the business world because our children will eventually use much different computers when they join the workforce.
What does matter is the students ability to use the computer as a tool. When the OS is plagued by security issues, it diminishes it’s usefulness in an education environment. As an education tool, the clear choice is Apple.
I believe this is really based on a huge problem that Apple Education still faces. Most Mac advocates would be amazed at how many schools are still in the realm of OS 9. It’s completely nuts but it is true. They have software that still runs in 9 and the companies are defunct and or are no longer developing stuff for the Mac at all. The other problem is that many very popular software and server-based products in schools are just now releasing X versions and they are wrought with problems.
I am not completely in the know but I did know that Henrico officials were very reticent to move to OS X about a year ago. I had some dealings with the district and I was shocked to learn that they were still using OS 9 at the time. I know a lot of school districts that have abandoned Apple because of OS X migration. The IT idiots use the arguments of “…if you’re migrating you might as well move to XP.” The very fac that this happened is horrible and causes my blood to boil. I really feel for the kids and teachers in this deal. The road ahead is going to be a very bumpy one indeed.
Does any one at Apple, who reads this list know the installed base of schools that are still stuck using OS 9? My guess is that it’s still above 40 or even 50%.
Let’s hope Apple continues to help districts migrate to OS X that are still hanging on in the OS 9 world.
JEB
Dell is desperate. That’s the bottom line.
In other news, another school district just signed up for 63,000 iBooks!
In any case, if you WERE interested in teaching them about the operating system, they’re more likely to understand how Longhorn will work by using Tiger now. Microsoft’s future moves will always resemble Apple’s present.
Wasn’t so long ago computer science classes were teaching MS-DOS because although mice and folders and little 3.5 inch disks were nice, it seemed clear that when these people graduated they’d wouldn’t have those things, they’d be using “IBM-compatible” stuff in 90% of businesses….
Some PC people just can’t see “a computer as a tool” argument, which is amazing. A computer is just an object that you use to achieve results. Some results are better achieved with different tools. If Greg had argued that some companies use softwares available only on Windows, I’d give him his point then and agree that Macs are not for everyone (though, how many Windows-only business softwares used by students? A lot of them only use Office, email, web browsers). His argument on preparing students for “real world” is rather weak. Desktop metaphore has been around for a long time and the basics have not changed significantly. You also need to learn once about the difference in things like how to set up a firewall. And as for learning the pitfalls on Windows, if Microsoft has not fix them in 5 years, is this the kind of OS you want to rely on? If Microsoft fixes them, what you learn is not applicable then.
He also ignores the fact that most Mac users are also capable Windows users. Knowing Macs do not prevent people from learning Windows, just as knowing English does not prevent you from learning French. However, it’s amazing how many Windows users are ignorant of other platforms. If anything, Window shuts people’s mind. Is it any wonder it attracts like-minded people, like those CTOs and IT people who can’t see past their own interests, who make decisions without proper studies, TCO analysis, etc..
Windows fanatics are like people who will teach students how to use only hammers because hammers are so great and used all over the “real” world and everyone knows how to use hammers. Want to sculpt a statue? Use only hammers. The TV is broken? A hammer will fix that.
This can be used to the Mac communities advantage. We need to document quickly how much time, effort, and money that Henreco has expended with the Mac program. In 4 yrs we should be able to paint a technocolor image of devistation caused by this screwup. Accountablity folks. Shine the light.
The arguments about needing training on the Windows environment holds little water.
My first computer was a TRS-80 that used a cassette for storage. I then moved up to a 64 KB dual 5 1/4″ floppy IBM PC.
At that point in time, the PC industry was just starting and I knew DOS 1.0 inside out and sideways.
The background info is relavant to the idea that the government was going to REQUIRE learning BASIC programming as part of the school curriculum. By the time it went through the various committees, programmers had moved from BASIC to C and the idea of teaching programming had been dropped.
Education should be to teach people how to learn not what to learn. And computer use is a skill, regardless of the OS.
No monuments were ever built for a commitee…
What do you think they drive? A yugo…….if THEY (The educated-used loosely) would only think of the computers as if it was their car…..Will I make it to work today???!!!
The mechanics’ are going on a very loooooong vaction to Europe soon!
It’s great! Fantastic! What a coup by Dell!
Now the whole world will see the quality inherent in every Dell laptop and in Windows XP!
*cough cough*
I don’t think that we’ll have to wait a year to hear about what’s happening with this program. By the time, say, October or November rolls around, we’ll be seeing stories about how big of a mistake this was.
Greg and others of his mindset are the types who drive most of these kind of short-sighted decisions in Big Education. I’ve consulted with K-12 and university clients alike on IT issues for the last 20 years and you would be aghast at how prevalent the mindset is.
At that bastion of “progressive” thinking, the University of California, XX (the specific school shall remain nameless), I saw first hand how difficult it is to get the whole notion of TCO across to even the most self-styled “platform agnostic” IT administrators. The really sad thing at UCXX and other institutions, both of lower and higher “learning, is that IT support sucks money away from critical educational functions. When it comes down to it, an IT support tech costs about the same (and often more) than a junior faculty member. However, the Windows support faction in educational IT cares nothing about that little fact. The JOB is much more important than whether the school has the resources to teach the students.
The next time you hear whining about the student-to-teacher ratio in a school check to see if they are running Windows or OS X. There will be PC techs running all over a Windows centric district while those with OS X will typically rely on a single Mac loving teacher to keep their loaner laptops running. At UCXX there is 1 OS X tech for every 3 or 4 PC techs on campus (while the split between Macs and PC boxes on campus is roughly 50/50!). I ran the numbers just last year at this university and found that they were wasting over $2 Million per year in labor costs by choosing to run, in those places where they didn’t need to, Windows instead of OSX. In fact, I found that we could have given every faculty and staff person at the school a brand new Mac every year for what they were spending on excess Windows techs.
At the end of the day, the notion that the students are “learning the negatives of Windows” by being forced to use it is delusional thinking. The kids don’t do the virus disinfections or reinstalls any more than the cubical shlub in your average office building does his own sys admin work. It is the IT people do the under-the-hood work in education just like they do in business.
Bottom line, hard/software; cheap, people; expensive. This is axiomatic. If the school board chose Dell because they thought they would save money then they are simpletons and way behind the curve. Just like at UCXX where students are buying new Powerbooks by the hundreds while the IT department is pushing PCs, school districts around the country are completely out of touch with where computing is going. Who knows, by the time a 7th grader graduates from college the tables may have turned. Microsoft could be the one with the 10% market penetration while Apple has the 85%. It could happen.
-B
From experience, Dell laptops are heavier than breeze blocks. Have they factored in that the kids aren’t going to have the strength to carry these things around?
If anyone wants to make a quick buck, over at Henrico they need 15,800 trolleys fast.
Ok.. people from what I’m seeing as of now, everyone is satisfied with dells. apples suck ass big time. can’t print at home.. cuz most people have pc’s at home. Also, most programs used to get rid of spyware are free. http://www.downloads.com… hello. dell=14 inch screen apple= 12 inch screen. sorry but apple is piece of shit.
and did anyone consider the option of simply system restore? Which apple doesn’t have sadly.
Well, if they really wanted to increase productivity they would use Linux
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”raspberry” style=”border:0;” /> heh. (Could imagine all the tech support needed for that lol)
But in all seriousness, most of the business world uses windows on their workstations and the microsoft variety of software, such as Office(tho you can get that on macs, I know). But to truely prepare them for the business world of tomorrow, it makes sense to be using windows. When I went to highschool(oh not so long ago), we used a mixture of macs/pcs for a variety of applications that you would find them in the real world. For video, art-design, and music editing we used Macs while on the other hand for office work and office-design, we used windows. I think that is a common trend throughout the business world. I, as a home user, use Linux and Windows because in all reality, the OS doesn’t matter… its what you produce with it.
-Pyked
People deserve good life time and loans or just commercial loan can make it better. Just because people’s freedom bases on money state.