A virus has infected all PC-based computers in Ringgold School District in Washington, PA.
“Superintendent Lawrence Golembiewski said all PCs at the district’s three elementary schools and high school were corrupted with the virus. Golembiewski said the PCs in the district offices were spared because administrators shut down their computers immediately after the virus was detected in the district-wide network about two weeks ago. The district’s Macintosh computers were not affected by the virus. District administrators have spent the last several weeks reconfiguring affected computers, including five computers labs at the high school and three elementary labs. Each computer lab has about 30 PCs,” reports the Observer-Reporter.
At this month’s meeting, the school board approved the purchase of Norton Antivirus software for $4,659, according to The Observer-Reporter. $4,695 would also buy six Apple eMacs for education with about $200 to spare.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Another day, same story. Tedious, but still important to report. How much money is being wasted because they wanted to save a few bucks up front by going with Wintel PCs instead of Macintosh?
Buying PC’s on price is a false economy. I read the US Army is announcing a $500 Million multi-year contract with H-P for computers. I can assure you they will not be reselling Macs. Some folks just DO NOT get it.
<<At this month’s meeting, the school board approved the purchase of Norton Antivirus software for $4,659, according to The Observer-Reporter. $4,695 would also buy six Apple eMacs for education with about $200 to spare.>>
That statement pretty much says it all. And this is money well spent for our kids??? It’s a absolute freaking joke…
Six eMacs costs $4,500 at education pricing. Sales tax wasn’t added, assuming PA has a state sales tax.
Nice to see our school tax dollars spent so efficiently by these idiots on their school board. I’m so sure that Norton Anti-Virus software will do a lot more for educating those kids than 6 additional new computers would have. Idiots…
Norton Antivirus was not able to stop these viruses and many others since they add the signature after the fact.
6 eMacs at US$749 (modem included) education pricing = US$4494 before tax. There is also a US$699 Education eMac which would total US$4194. The point is that instead of 5 or 6 or 7 new rock solid Mac OS X machines, the school has Norton Antivirus and the same crappy PCs. And we wonder why our education system is in trouble?
And THEN, Norton AV will have to be updated regularly. Every week. Or every month. Or eventually they’ll end up in the same pickle again with some new strain of virus, and they’ll have wasted $4k and some will blame the antivirus software. And then it will happen again. And again. Will they be able to do updates remotely to all the labs with PCs??? Will they have the prescience to set up Norton to automatically update the virus files on machines that have internet connections??? Time will tell…