Some Aussie schools dumping Macs ‘due to cost’

20 years ago

“The PC versus Mac debate has once again been ignited, this time in a campaign to raise awareness of the plight of teachers in Australia reporting a dwindling level of support for Apple laptops in schools,” Louisa Hearn reports for The Sydney Morning Herald.

Hearn reports, “Greg Sharp, president of the Australian Mac Users Group, said Australian education departments seem to have declared war on Macs. ‘It’s not a publicised war but none the less it’s a fight to the death,’ he writes on the Ausmug website.”

Hearn reports, “He said many teachers had come to rely on Apple Macs as teaching aids and were unwilling to move to the PC platform and sacrifice the specialist education tools and software available on the platform. However maintaining these laptops was proving increasingly difficult, he said. ‘Defence Forces and Secret Service organisations throughout the world have embraced Macs because the Unix core gives them much greater inherent security and virus immunity. Yet if those in charge of the Department of Education & Training have their way Macintosh computers will disappear from Australian schools,’ he writes.”

“According to Mr Sharp, he was first alerted to the situation by teachers in WA, but had since unearthed wider support problems across other states,” Hearn reports. “In WA, teachers complain of a stalemate between the DET and Apple in renewing the long-established “Laptops For Teachers ” program, while in NSW, there have been reports of seemingly generous schemes to exchange old Macs for new PCs, said Mr Sharp.”

Hearn reports, “IDC’s latest PC Tracker data names Apple as the number one supplier of notebook computers to education markets in Australia in the fourth quarter of 2005. However in terms of overall investment in hardware, the market has become increasingly fragmented with HP, Dell, IBM/Lenovo, Acer all claiming greater market share than Apple this year, said Phillip Allen, research Manager at IDC.”

Hearn reports, “”The Victorian Department of Education said schools in the state had experienced a decline in the use of Apple Macs from 20 per cent usage in 2000 to 7 per cent today. ‘Schools cannot afford to operate a dual platform system and most have opted to go down the PC route due to cost,’ said a spokesperson.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: What exactly is so difficult about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)? You’d think that the “educated” would be best able to grasp the concept, wouldn’t you?

Directions for Department of Education types worldwide:
1. Scroll down to the bottom of this page
2. Type in the word “unaffected”
3. Click the “Search MacDailyNews” button
4. Learn

Forget all of the other reasons (better quality hardware and software, the ability to run all major OSes and applications, lower support costs, higher productivity, fun vs. frustration, etc.), Windows’ constant, unending, and costly malware problems alone makes Apple’s Macintosh the only real choice for smart personal computer buyers, regardless of whether they’re buying for schools, businesses, or homes.