“Just as panicked iBook buyers flooded through the gates, county offices have been flooded with complaints,” WRIC-TV reports. “County Manger Virgil Hazelett tells us Tuesday alone his office received up to 100 phone calls. ‘We’re very concerned and very apologetic for anyone who was in that crowd who became nervous or of course were pushed about and so forth,’ says Hazelett.”
WRIC reports, “Hazelett tells me county officials are trying to respond to every complaint. And he wants the public to know they are also upset and thankful no one was, in their opinion, seriously hurt. ‘I very honestly would not do it in this manner, there are any number of alternatives that we can consider in the future,’ he says.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In the future? Dude, your school system has switched to Dell. Do you honestly think people will be peeing themselves for four-year-old Dells running Microsoft’s porous Windows XP? Oh right, sorry, forgot who we were talking about, you (and a handful of other Henrico dullards) probably do think such a thing is possible.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Woman wets herself to keep place in line for $50 Apple iBooks – August 16, 2005
Apple continues to lead in customer satisfaction, Dell loses more ground – August 16, 2005
Henrico citizens stampede 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
I think people would buy $50 dells. They don’t care, just want a deal.
Dude, you gotta Dell – YUCK!
Good take MDN!
Magic Word: left – these Dells will be left for the binmen!
the real apology should be to the teachers and students for pushing the virus-spyware-malware alliance of Windows onto them and forcing them to become Windows technicians instead of spending their time learning about Math, Science, and language.
DudeMac –
Alomst sounds like getting an STD!
Lesson from this fiasco: Don’t get in the way of obese black women and their “bargains”
For $50.00? Yeah, sadly people will stand in line for those too. The 1,000 they sold were reported to be the ones that the system had the most difficulties with. That was ran locally in the paper and was common knowledge. The fact that the parts were worth more than $50.00 justified the desire to have one.
“County Man[a]ger Virgil Hazelett tells us Tuesday alone his office received up to 100 phone calls. ‘We’re very concerned and very apologetic for anyone who was in that crowd … there are any number of alternatives that we can consider in the future,’ he says.”
MDN is right.
Hey Virgil, nobody is going to want a 4 year old Dell P.O.S. when it comes time for you to get rid of them, so don’t sweat it.
What the ‘public officials’ in Henrico County should have realized is that: 1) Apple’s iPod is one of the ( if not THE) most popular consumer electronics device in the country and that 2) there are many people that would be willing to shank their grandmother (not that any of us would want THAT to happen) for a $50 Apple iBook.
How out of touch with reality are these guys???
Hey Virgil, nobody, I repeat, NOBODY is going to give a crap about a 4 year old Dell laptop when it comes time for Henrico County to unload those, so relax. One of your ‘alternatives’ would be to write them off the books and send them to the local landfill. That would be the best use for them.
The point is that when the Dell’s they just bought are 4 years old, they won’t be selling them to anyone because they won’t actually WORK anymore by that time. So no, there won’t be any repeat stampede in Henrico County in 2009…
MDN,
Yes, I actually do think folks would have clammoured for 4yr-old Dells if they had been offered. There are a lot of people in the surrounding area which could not afford a new iBook or Dell. The video clips of the people who were there could have clued you in. The $50 price would be attractive to quite a few low-income folks who otherwise would not have a computer in their homes.
Stop being a dullard yourself and consider the fact that not everyone can afford new computer regardless of the how inexpensive it is.
Your ignorance and racism is a shining example to us all.
Um, They have another batch of 1000 iBooks to sell…
But last week I was saying the same thing – no one is going to riot for a $50 Dell/XP.
Additionally, 20 folks returned from the iBook riot to find their cars had been towed and were forced to pay $180 to get them back.
Police had only authorized one car to be towed because it was blocking a fire hydrant.
Typical.
link
Lots of interesting letters to the Editor in the times dispatch too.
link
Also a funny cartoon:
link
I had a Dell notebook and it was a piece of crap. Talk about cheap. The screen wasn’t very good (although new ones are much better), the power management features did not work well, oh the spyware, the flimsy keyboard broke, and the joystick would get stock so the mouse pointer would run off the screen.
Unless I’m forced by management I will not get another Dell.
apologize to the taxpayer! Why did they sell them for 25% market value? THATS why there was a stampede. If they asked for $100- they would have sold them all, made more money AND avoided a riot.
…that the same people who:
1- Cried that they wanted M$ Office were too stupid to order it in the first place. The iBooks could have been purchased with Office.
2- Decided to replace Macs with XP Dells because they were concerned that their children would be hurt by not having the ‘experience’ of using a Windoze machine.
3-Decided to sell these machines for a VERY SMALL FRACTION of their value. Here is a link to eBay prices for 800mHz G3 iBooks
http://search.ebay.com/apple-ibook-g3_W0QQfclZ4QQfnuZ1QQfsooZ2QQfsopZ3
Given all that-
Why would you expect them to be able to conduct a simple sale without it looking like a casting call for the Jerry Springer Show?
Hey, I’ll buy a Dell for $50 in four years – I can probably get OSX working on it by then!
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Or, barring that, it would make a good Linux machine.
The real issue is that the school board had absolutely no clue what they were doing, by pulling a bait and switch from everyones welcome to just county residents are welcome and deciding that 6 off duty cops would be enough crowd control they put everyones life at risk. The choice of venue was a textbook example of how to cause a riot.
1. Restrict access
2. Have an agitated over heated underinformed crowd restless from camping out for 6 hours in spite of a poorly enforced no camping rule.
3. Open without adequate security
4. Offer useful consumer electronics for an insane price to the first 1000 that cross the finish line.
The county should have raffled them off,
or donated them to people on welfare or something other than say
“here are those laptops, dont kill each other too much getting them”
“Who’d a thunk?,
3-Decided to sell these machines for a VERY SMALL FRACTION of their value. Here is a link to eBay prices for 800mHz G3 iBooks”
only one problem with that search…. they are 500 MHz iBooks the they are selling. Fact check before running off at the mouth.
http://www.henrico.k12.va.us/ibooksale/
But the Dude does agree…. they should have sold for 100.00 and it still would have been a sell out crowd.
The Dude abides.
I don’t understand why they didn’t just have an auction.
The real sadness of the Henrico County experience is that county officials greatly underestimated the value of 4 year old iBooks.
They sold 1,000 iBooks and received $50,000 (before expenses). My guess is that they could have got $150 just as easily.
A price of $150 would have resulted in one, possibly two, positive scenarios for the District.
First they would have grossed 3X as much ($150,000 vs $50,000).
Second, being aware of the higher resale value for Apple iBooks, the District could have easily justified spending a little more for new iBooks, benefitting the District and students alike with a superior product.
The $50,000 Henrico County received for the iBooks (and then some) may disappear overnight should one of the injured people choose to sue.
Two words – personal responsibility. People need to start caring about how their actions impact others and act with courtesy and compassion. If they did then they wouldn’t run red lights and endanger other people or create the mob scene at the Henrico iBook sale.
A small percentage of those people acted like greedy animals going after a AYCE buffet and endangered/injured others. Unbelievable.
The iBooks include Airport cards (802.11b). ISTR Apple’s service part cost (no longer a retail item) is $129. Yet another reason why these were grossly under-priced.
Also, The riot occurred when the outside gates were opened. Then the crowd lined up again and the (new) first 1,000 were given numbers. Why weren’t the numbers passed out to the outside line first? That surely would have avoided the riot.
Also, those iBooks run faster with OS X 10.4 Tiger, provided they have sufficent (cheap!) RAM. How much better did XP run on 4-year-old Dell laptops when that OS was released? Ha!