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Education Businesses Apple

School May Turn Down $43K In Free Macs 203

Posted by timothy from the hobgoblin-of-little-minds dept.
Longfeather writes "Tukwila, Washington's cash-strapped Foster High School may have to turn down US$43,000 worth of free Macs because of a PC-only IT policy already in place. Read here(1) and here(2)." Surely some school would be willing to bend (or rethink) policy rather than turn away new computers.
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School May Turn Down $43K In Free Macs More

School May Turn Down $43K In Free Macs

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  • Another deal with the Devil goes bad (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gruturo ( 141223 ) * on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @01:50PM (#6173884)
    I foresee that, as a result of this brilliant strategy, many of the parents might move their kids to other schools, and this story will add to the long list of people who signed a deal with the Devil and ended up pretty badly.

    (Hint: as the article says, 2 years ago the school won a $427.000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Sure, this is totally unrelated and I believe it)

    The fun part is that it says the refusal is due to the school's policy of only having Windows PCs in order to keep maintenance costs and staff down. Too bad they already have many Macs around.

    I hope Apple makes this story very, very public
    • I said it in the last Bill & Melinda post like this. THEY LET YOU USE WHATEVER YOU WANT. I was at a school that got a multimillion dollar grant and we bought 4 G4s for video editing and Final Cut Pro. They also fund a school that uses Sun thin-clients. They don't really care what you do because they have their own board of directors that isn't linked to Microsoft. They just want to see that you're doing something innovative in eduction. And as I said before I used my paycheck from Billy boy t

  • If I was a parent and paid property taxes... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Deanasc ( 201050 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @01:55PM (#6173926) Homepage Journal
    ...in that town I would throw a holy fit at them.

    Isn't this kind of government waste why god invented Fox News at 10?

  • I wonder if that school also has a "zero tolerance" policy where bright kids get expelled for having prescription cough syrup in their locker.

  • Variations of this story (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kawika ( 87069 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:02PM (#6174017)
    I know Slashdot is a hotbed of anti-Microsoft bias, but would you be as outraged by these similar stories?

    "School may turn down $43K in free Windows PCs; school has a Linux-only (or Mac-only) policy."

    "King County WA school may turn down $43K in free Macs; many parents are Microsoft employees and want to support their employer's products."

    • Maybe the district's original 400K grant from Bill Gates has something to do with this? Either way, it sounds like a political decision rather than technical.
      • You mean it was a choice between $400K or $43K? In that case it's even more of a no-brainer. :)

        If the "free" Macs come in the door, IT will be expected to support and upgrade them. If the school system has a site license for Windows products it won't apply to the Macs and IT will need to purchase compatible software. One or more support people will need to be trained in Macs. Additional hardware may be needed and won't be able to be pulled from their standard PC supply sources.

        These are all real costs. It
    • Well actually you do have a point but... if they have a Linux only policy they could simply delete Windows from all the free machines and install Linux on them instead! :-)

      That way they are not locked in by proprietary software and don't have to worry about their licences running out on them or having to upgrade to a new MS Office because Office XP files can't be read by MS Office 97! :-)

    • actually yes, i would be outraged.

      if ms decided to donate the PC's, i would expect them to accept them- delete the MS clutter on the hdd and install linux. also, if that same school got mac computers and the IT had a policy of linux only, just wipe the mac os off it and install linux.

      not hard folks, move along
      • So you'd also be okay with the school system selling off the Macs for money and buying Windows PCs with the proceeds? I don't think the donors would like that.
        • that's why it's called a donation. any proper donation doesn't have stipulations on what we do with the systems as long as they're being used for education. as for the donor, once it's out of their hands and it's being used properly for education, they have no business complaining.. no matte the donor

    • Re:Variations of this story (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fiftyvolts ( 642861 ) <mtoiaNO@SPAMfiftyvolts.com> on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:26PM (#6174271) Homepage Journal
      Or perhaps a better way to look at it is if Microsoft was in the business of giving that many computers to educators with "No strings attatched" do you think there would be a anti-microsoft sentiment on /.?
    • Um, no.

      Simply because Microsoft would never truly give away software licenses unless it was to tie someone down to thier platform. The headline "School turns down $43K in Windows PCs" could easily be turned into "School wins $43K is useless software, has policy not to promote closed source monopoly".

      And the second on you made up makes no sense. Um, hello, these are Microsoft employees. You know they don't have kids. They just assimalate other peoples kids...
      • Now that you mention it... I seem to recall that Microsoft's wondeful licensing arrangements require the site to pay for a copy of Windows for every computer, including Macs. On the other hand, their Office licensing means that Macs are automatically licensed for the Mac version of Office.

  • Fscked Up (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fordgj ( 522469 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:03PM (#6174022)
    I work in the seattle school district, they are very PC centric, but they would NEVER do such a thing. I feel sorry for the teacher, it is his class and his kids that will be most affected on this. It is utterly rediculous for bean counters who don't understand technology to make this decision. Their tech support is scared, they don't understand the macs and don't want to. I personally manage a mixed platform school and I by far prefer maintaining the macs, my life is easier because of them. The fact is, there are studies showing that macs have a lower total cost of ownership. Plus, they are just better computers for education, hands down. They would be foolish to turn down this offer. The school board, for its pompous attitude should pony up the money personally to substitute other computers if they continue to pursue such a stupid policy. They are wrong, only the kids will suffer from their bias and incompetence.

  • I find it funny that... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thatguywhoiam ( 524290 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:03PM (#6174033)
    .. the school would turn down free computers - of any kind - because 'its easier to support only one kind.'

    Well guess what, Sherlock - its even easier to support NO computers! Sheesh.

    • For that matter, why would anybody refuse a free computer of any kind? Because they're not free, that's why.

      People are always trying to donate old computers to schools. In some cases, you have a few tech-savy volunteers who donate the time (and it takes a lot of time) needed to reconfigure that old 100 Mhz Pentium so it can run some educational software. But most just end up gathering dust -- until the school has to pay to have them recycled. Needless to say, most schools are now cautious about computer d

  • This doesn't make sence (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zoloto ( 586738 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:04PM (#6174037)
    Time to burn some karma


    But even without the 30 new Macintosh computers, Foster will have a stash of Macs around the school. A caveat of the technology plan allows teachers to keep their Macs at their desks instead of getting a PC if they wish. In addition, the library and a graphics classroom can keep their Macs


    THe article mentions this rediculous policy for PC only systems because of their IT staff and quite frankly it's foolish. IT departments, personel etc. are constantly updating their knowledge to better deal with emerging technologies, right? Why an IT department can't have 3 of those in-DUH-viduals learn about MAC systems?

    I've worked in almost half a dozen IT departments and we constantly were exposed to systems that were good for various reasons, and we had to learn. Failure to do so resulted in eventual 'replacement'. That included MAC systems. And it didn't cost the department any extra, for us to learn and actually use with some degree of success these systems. Sure we brought stuff home to learn with (including a handy g4 tower, but that's another story) but isn't that a part of the job??

    The ignorant attitude of the administrative personel (probably influenced by the IT depts. unwillingness to learn mac's for some biased reason) shows their competence in the field.

    just my 0.02Â - mod on!
    • And it didn't cost the department any extra, for us to learn and actually use with some degree of success these systems.

      You're either fooling yourself or you just don't understand how much training costs a company. Hardware costs are usually only the tip of the iceberg. You have to factor in the time (time=money, remember) it takes to do training, lost productivity during that training time, reduced productivity while training is initially being put into practice, etc.

      While it can often be worth the inv

      • true, time does equal money. but in each of these instances i mentioned for my old employers right after the .com burst and even today with "downtime" in our company vs' laying people off, we're given the opportunity to stay on and learn while doing regular maintenance, upgrades, repairs & whatnot- sometimes at a slight paycut for those "training days" or we just get a few less hours during the week while still learning at home or at work, but off the clock if we so wished.

        so time does = money as you
    • "The ignorant attitude of the administrative personel (probably influenced by the IT depts. unwillingness to learn mac's for some biased reason) shows their competence in the field."

      Or they just realize that you can buy software for a Mac that won't run on a PC, or vice versa. That's where the problems start happening. That has nothing to do with how ignorant or non-ignorant the IT staff is. It's just the reality of mixing computers.
    • Keep your eyes peeled at the districts website, maybe they'll have IT positions opening up soon.
    • Schools (Public, Private, Higher Ed, etc.) IT Departments are amazingly closed minded individuals. Why do you think that a lot of colleges are still running an outdated VAX or a Prime Mainframe, because the head of IT is so stuck on themselves and any technology that they don't know becomes a threat to them and they work to prevent if from creeping into their institution. The reason for this is usually the more flexible administrators usually work in the corporate sector for more cash. While the people wh

  • If they don't want 'em... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nycroft ( 653728 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:04PM (#6174039) Homepage
    I'll take 'em! What's wrong with that school? They're free! for cryin' out loud.

  • $43,000 worth of macs! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:04PM (#6174041) Journal
    Wow! That's like, what, four whole new Macintosh computers!

    (Proud owner of an iBook. Just sayin'.)
  • Why don't they accept the Macs and trade them (maybe with another district) for some PCs?
    • Because at that point they would get a bill for $43,000.

      Apple is giving them the computers to use not to give away for something else.
    • Here's what they totally should have done:

      1. Accept donated computers.
      2. Trade them / sell them / get rid of them for profit.
      3. Use the profit to buy PCs.
      4. Come up with some story about how the Macs were a disaster for their IT department, completely unusable, etc., and sell it to Microsoft for some extra cash.

      Somebody oughta give me an MBA.

  • I can understand (Score:3, Insightful)

    by booch ( 4157 ) <slashdot2010@@@craigbuchek...com> on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:11PM (#6174126) Homepage
    This actually makes a little bit of sense. Training is not free. If their IT guys don't know anything about Macs, they're going to need some training to get up to speed. That could easily run into the $10,000+ range. Perhaps that still makes sense in total dollars, but finding the money for it could be difficult -- the $43,000 worth of computers doesn't add any money to their available budget.

    • Sad IT guys. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:45PM (#6174470) Homepage Journal
      If they cannot spend the two days it takes to figure out 99% of how to run a Mac they should be fired. It's not like it's linux or something that is *more* difficult to admin than windows, it's significantly easier.

      I am a software engineer and I use DOS, Windows (DOS based and NT based), Solaris (2.6, 7, 8, 9), Linux (2.2, 2.4 kernel based), OS 9 and OS X. There are more similarities between these systems than differences.

      I guess the line should be "Schools turn down computers because IT support staff is either too lazy or too stupid to figure out how to use a computer that most 4 year olds can use."

      Pathetic really.
      • If they cannot spend the two days it takes to figure out 99% of how to run a Mac they should be fired.
        I agree. I've used a Mac, on average, once every two months over the last 5 years, but as IT officer for an educational organisation, I'd take 30 free Macs over our leased PCs in an instant. So, it would take me a few months on and off to get them humming along as well as the PCs are, so what? Sounds like fun.
    • Who said they have to pay for training. My old highschool hired a student to administer the macs. The kid went on to know more about the network than any of the IT people. All the school has to do is put up an ad in the library for a student familiar with macintosh computers.

    • In my first job... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jotaeleemeese ( 303437 ) on Friday June 13, 2003 @04:25AM (#6189132) Homepage Journal
      .... I handled a reasonably big network of mixed Macs, Solaris and Windows stuff supporting TCP/IP, IPX and Appletalk protocols.

      I had no training whatsoever but a big willingness to learn and try things.

      They nicknamed me "The Guru" after a few months in the work and kept calling me back after I left for ad-hoc small work.

      Anybody that is working under unfavourable conditions but with reasonable management should be able to learn this stuff by themselves if needed.

  • It's not that they don't already have Macs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dafz1 ( 604262 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:15PM (#6174169)
    According to the article, there are already Macs in the school's library and graphics classrooms. Also, teachers can have Macs on their desk. This school is part of a re-organization to have three academies geared toward student interests. Expand their minds, while making them use one OS? Sure.

    This gets back to a number of old (mostly bad and uninformed) arguments. Total cost of ownership, applicability of OS in the "real world", etc. I'm sure that all of the IT staff have MCSE certifications, and with that, the attitude that "Macs suck". Which was why the policy was created in the first place.

    The reality is money is not getting spent on education. If it is to be believed(and I doubt it), the Gates Foundation grant doesn't specify what kind of computers are required. I applaud anyone, whether I agree with how they run their business or not, that donates large sums of money or computers to schools.

    Schools shouldn't be stupid and turn away new computers, even because of some short-sighted IT proposal.
    • Because we all know that all software that a school would choose to use has equal parity on Mac and PC platforms. Riiiight.

      The district probably asked, "which is cheaper to buy?" The answer was something like, "Mac's go for about $1500 each, while PC's are under $999."

      Apple has lost traction in the schools for many reasons, not the least of which is cost of machines, upgrading software (OS 9 -> OS X), availability of software (free or not), cost of maintenance and poor warranty services compared to D
    • Now be nice. Some of us have MCSE certifications, run Microsoft servers, support Microsoft products, and read and post to Slashdot from PowerBook G4s. I am one, and so is one of my coworkers.

      Oh, and we recently got our CIO (son of a career IBM employee, biggest cheerleader for OS/2 ever) to ditch his boatanchor of a ThinkPad and get a PowerBook.

      Please don't file "MCSE" under "ignorant" - some of us have much broader horizons that you might expect.

  • This is why schools need to get on the track of Opensourced software. So they could use any hardware, even low-end pentium 1s that people are throwing out everywhere. To a kid, the Linux interface is the same no matter if the underlying hardware is an RS/6000, iMac, Athlon or Dreamcast.

  • School Districts have interesting problems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stevew ( 4845 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:25PM (#6174263) Journal
    I advise my son's elementary school concerning all things that are computer related. School districts are interesting entities - There are so many dynamics running around (and different turf wars) it isn't even funny.

    1) Many teachers are computer illiterate. They don't like being shown up by their students who are mostly not computer jocks because they've grown up with them!

    2) Software used on campus has to be approved for use by students. This is required because teachers need to be trained on the software, hardware & OS compatibility needs to be assured, and the appropriateness of the application need to be accessed. All this usually costs money.

    3) The support staff has to know how to support the hardware and software that you already have. Someone earlier said - IT guys/gals are ALWAYS upgrading their knowledge. You probably don't work for a school district!

    4) School districts typically under-estimate the cost of an IT infrastructure by orders of magnitude. They have extremely in-adequate support for staff, software, and hardware support issues. Our district has roughly 50 schools at the K-12 level. Assuming about 100 computers per site you are talking 5000 machines. The district has 5 staff people to support all of this. Further, they don't budget for the up-keep of anything.

    These staff are responsible for the district internet infrastructure, the network infrastructure at each school (much of which was put in place by volunteers with no documentation), repair and up-keep of all computers both at each school site and the district office. Just 5 people do all this. Yeah -right.

    Let's say you get a donation of 20 Macs - that's great. These machines are going can be expected to have a 10 year life time. There are still Apple II'c in use on my son's campus!

    5) Planning a district infrastructure is a nitemare because school budgets are a moving target, you receive donations from all over the board. It's a true patch-work. It's amazing anything works!

    So - I'm not suprised they turn something like this down!

    • 1) Many teachers are computer illiterate. They don't like being shown up by their students who are mostly not computer jocks because they've grown up with them!

      It is ironic that many teachers are very stubborn to learn new things. A teacher can teach algebra or state history for 25 years and retire. They probably think once the subject textbook is learned, why put forth any more effort?

      It is probably inevitable that some form of core technology curriculum will form along side the other subjects in publ

    • no wonder our nation's schools are overpriced and underperforming.

    • Many teachers are computer illiterate. They don't like being shown up by their students who are mostly not computer jocks because they've grown up with them!

      That may be true, but it has nothing to do with the story. If you read the article, it was one of those knuckle-dragging teachers who applied for and won the grant to get the new computers. The school may have to turn down the computers because of a school board policy. If you honestly believe that the teachers at this high school are the ones blockin


    • I advise my son's elementary school concerning all things that are computer related. School districts are interesting entities - There are so many dynamics running around (and different turf wars) it isn't even funny.

      You hit that point on the head. I am the lone tech support person for a small-ish school district (1600 students, 550 computers) and I see the other points you brought up everyday. Running technology in a school district is a nightmare, and one that I would really like to get out of. Our

  • Unbelievable (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:35PM (#6174374) Journal
    Unfreakin' believable. I'll admit, I've got a slight Mac bias. I've worked on PCs, I've worked on Macs. I know what's easier to fix. I know that studies have shown you need something like one technician for every 50 Macs whereas you need one technician for every 25 PCs. Downtime costs money too...

    But the main point...it's just dumb to say "you can only use one computer system". What if they said "you can only use Ticonderoga pencils" even if you got a whole shipment of Bic mechanicals for free? Or who knows how many other goofy scenarios could happen.

    Our schools are having a hard enough time as it is. To turn down free materials is just plain idiotic.

  • One computer, one book (Score:4, Insightful)

    by presearch ( 214913 ) * on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @02:48PM (#6174494)
    If they were offered $40k worth of free textbooks,
    would they request that they were all the same book?
    It would certainly be easier to track and catalog
    multiple copies of that one book than to have dozens of
    new additions to the book tracking system. If one of those
    multiple books were lost or destroyed, it's replacement
    overhead would be negligible.

    Think of the overhead of having to provide different
    teachers for the variety of subjects that multiple books
    would require! Multiple teachers teaching multiple subjects,
    how inefficient and inflexible. If every class in every grade
    covered the same subject, thousands would be saved in salaries
    and scheduling costs.

    The cost-efficient school, it's the wave of the future.

    Yes, this is an absurd argument, so is denying young minds
    the opportunity for exposure to more than one way to approach
    a problem. What makes this whole thing really stupid is that
    there's not that much difference between a Mac, a Windows
    box, or a Linux system. If the IT staff can't handle learning
    something new as part of their job (and this is not that hard),
    then they should hire people that are more capable. With the current
    job market being what it is, it shouldn't be that difficult to
    find people that can handle supporting Macs and Windows and Linux
    and still be cost effective. If the school superintendent can't
    figure that out, then it's time to replace them as well.

    Maybe they can get some extra funding by eliminating student
    drug testing and locker searches.

    Or, heaven forbid, reducing the budget for sports activities.
    How many of these kids will be working with computers,
    directly or indirectly, vs. playing for the NFL or NBA?

  • Bi-lingual (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tipbg4 ( 680693 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @03:10PM (#6174743)
    When I went to highschool long ago (2 years ago) we had a computer science teacher/system admin that firmly believed in being bilingual as far as computers were concerned. He himself being a Mac guy obviously knew what their advantages were, how easy they were to use and maintain. But he also knew that not every place in the world supported macs (including our own school board that forced him to resign after they had enough of him proving their purchases of large ammounts of windows boxes to be erronious and far more costly) However, while I was there, I did learn to be bilingual (and picked up his personal prefrence for macs) Now that I am out of school, I work for a web page company that runs totally windows boxes. This was fine, except that I had a far superior titanium laptop at home that was being largely unused while at work. So (with the boss's permission, I got a few help articles together, and brought the TI into work. within 5 mins my computer was connected to the server just like all the other computers, with one major difference. My computer has yet to be nearly as problematic as the rest... kinda funny considering its a windows server...

  • When ignorance attacks! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Outland Traveller ( 12138 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @03:17PM (#6174841)

    There more [operating systems|programming langugages] one knows the more the similar they seem to be.

    Any so-called IT professional who only knows one solution and refuses to learn another is a moron and a dangerous liability, because the whole nature of IT is keeping up with change and knowing more than one solution to a problem.

    What a horrible example these people are setting for their students!

    I don't see how anyone could turn down free Macintosh hardware. It is generally of higher quality than typical PC systems sold to pre-college institutions and requires less maintenance, plus apple has one of the best support services in the industry.

    On top of that MacOS X can be used for all the usual user applications, and you get a full-fledged unix development environment built in for classes that can take advantage of it.

    Show me someone who willingly turns down systems like this and I'll show you someone who doesn't deserve their job.
  • One is tempted to suspect money under the table from Microsoft, but it is probably simpler: The school's IT people don't know anything about UNIX, and are too lazy to learn. But they don't want to lose their jobs, so rather than arguing "We're too lazy to learn another system," they say "It's too expensive to support two different systems." And the school board wasn't technically sophisticated enough to realize that they were being taken.
  • ... I'll gladly take the $43,000 off their hands.
  • ...they will only make this mistake one time.

    The eventual lynching will occur, and when it does, anyone involved will rue the day.

    Money decisions like this are one thing for schools, but having a closed mind in terms of long term resources never goes without attention.
  • It's like someone turns down a brand new BMW because he doesn't know how to drive it and refuse to learn the skill.

    What's particularly stupid is that the school already has lots of Macs, so they should know Macs are easier to maintain. To deprive the kids of 30 computers rather than changing a senseless policy, he guy is clearly irresponsible and an idiot.
  • If Microsoft gave their OS away, you'd call it"dumping" [slashdot.org]
    • Except this wasn't Apple giving it away, it was a grant that could be used to buy Macs. Probably a private Mac-promoting organization. Yes, I agree. Usually when MS gives software away, it's 'dumping'.

      If MS were to give away the whole thing, it wouldn't be so big a deal. If they were to do it willingly, it wouldn't be a big deal. But when they try to give away software as 'payment' of fines, that's not okay. MS giving away '1 billion dollars worth' of software isn't the same as paying 1 billion dolla
    • ... what part of the following sentence are you unable to grasp?:

      "MS is a convicted abuser of its monopoly position".

  • and how is this different than the Ballmer going to Europe to pursuade people to use windows?

    Oh yeah, in our reaction to it. Boo MS, too bad for apple.

    I just wish things would work seemlessly enough for people not to have exclusive contacts of any kind.

    • Re:hypocrisy (Score:4, Informative)

      by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMstango.org> on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @09:08PM (#6177758) Homepage Journal
      and how is this different than the Ballmer going to Europe to pursuade people to use windows?

      RTFA, dummy. This grant is coming from a nonprofit organization, not directly from Apple. Ballmer's "persuasion," on the other hand, comes directly from a Microsoft slush fund.

      The $43K grant was presumably open to all qualified schools, with a single winner. The Microsoft slush fund only comes into play when a subsidy is needed to block non-MS products from being purchased somewhere, with a single winner: Microsoft.

      ~Philly

  • Armchair quarterbacks... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by weave ( 48069 ) on Wednesday June 11, 2003 @07:41PM (#6177078) Journal
    Lazy sys admins? Stupid administrators? How can everyone jump to those conclusions without knowing anything about the situation?

    As an admin at a college, one of my biggest problems is academic departments that put in for grants for stuff, get them, then tell us we have no choice but to support it.

    Like, for example, some SGI Fuel station running a 3D projection system we were recently notified we have to support . Did anyone build in tech training into the grant for this? Of course not. Just plug it in, forget about it. What about security patches, what if it won't boot, etc, etc...

    Or the famous trick of grants everywhere. Many grants require some sort of "in-kind" donation from the institution. So they calculate up IT staff time and cost, use that as the in-kind donation, then expect IT to absorb it into their existing duties.

    Now in my shop, we are over a year behind in many projects and have to be restrictive with new ones launched due to budget cutbacks that have cut IT staff while numbers of equipment needing to support continues to climb. So it's possible that even a little extra effort (if it really is that) would not be possible without slashing support to someone else's project.

    Now, I admit, if this is a political issue, it is assine. And, since no one really cares about IT load, I would bet that this is the case.

    But please, try to temper the ole "lazy sys admin" criticism. It's most likely not warranted.

    • But please, try to temper the ole "lazy sys admin" criticism. It's most likely not warranted.

      I don't know about your experience, but as someone who has had to support both Wintel and Mac boxes, it takes a really incompetent/lazy sys admin to not be able to support a bunch of Macs in this environment. Any sys admin worth his weight in O'Reilly books should be able to get those Macs running just fine in a day or two.

      Think about the needs of a high school. You have to get them connected to the network. This
      • OK, I'll bite. Since I have experience with students in labs. One of the biggest issues is security and consistency. How does one roll out labs quickly? Prevent students from altering settings? If you use standard user logon security, then some method must be employed to have each student have a logon. Assuming the school has an active directory server, then someone needs to figure out how to make OS X authenticate against it, to somehow mount the user's windows home file share on the mac client. What abo
    • A "windoze only" policy written in 2000 was pure politics and one built on lazyness. Any admin not learning about free software by then was incompetent and just plain lazy. Anyone who's seen License 6, the XP EULA and the W2K EULA who still thinks a Windoze only environment is a good idea is demented. Use the best tool for the job, this other stuff is bullshit.

      As for the support these machines will need, they only have to shoot a few windows boxes to make time for all the Macs. Nothing but nothing tak

  • Anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dacetone ( 177878 ) *
    Pay taxes in Washington? King County? Tukwila even? Even bought a Washington lottery ticket? Feel like this is a waste of your money? Write a letter (Tukwila School District 4640 S 144th St. Tukwila, WA 98168), or email or call the Superintendent (Michael Silver, silverm@tukwila.wednet.edu, 206.901.8009). Sadly, the actual board members or chairman have no contact info listed, and email to lastnamefirstinitial@tukwila.wednet.edu bounces for the Chairman. As a person with a few years of tech support experien

  • Longfeather writes "Tukwila, Washington's cash-strapped Foster High School may have to turn down US$43,000 worth of free PCs because of a Mac-only IT policy already in place. Read here(1) and here(2)." Surely some school would be willing to bend (or rethink) policy rather than turn away new computers.

    If the terms "PC" and "Mac" were swapped in this story, would the comments would be the opposite of what they are now? More power to the loyal Mac school, refusing the "free" PCs that Microsoft is offering s

  • If studies are correct that enterprises deploying Macs versus PCs only require 1/3rd the amount of full-time IT support staff, the answer is for the school district to fire 2/3rds of their IT staff if they want to cut down support costs in order to accept the grant for Mac computers. The IT staff are either contract employees or probably fall under the same union protection as the janitors and bus drivers. Firing them would be easier than firing teachers (which I'm not advocating). So, fire 4 of their 6

  • 6 people on the IT staff!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gozar ( 39392 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @10:11PM (#6187873) Homepage

    According to their website, they have 2,600 students. I'm the technology coordinator for a school district with 2,200 students and ~700 computers (97% Mac).... Guess how many IT people we have?

    One.... I handle everything from setting the machines up to networking to adding users. Every student gets a file server account that follows them from 1st to 12th grade. All students in 6-12 get an e-mail account. Every computer is networked.

    This district will be getting a call from me tomorrow, and a letter to the editor to the King County Journal.

  • Assbackwards.

    Things like this is an everyday occurance in this state.

    Dolemite
    _____________________
  • If they find PC's with Windows simpler to maintain, a statement that I can only believe in if they have no experience with any other OS, then they have an entirely different problem on their hands: The IT staff is incompetent. That the IT staff is incompetent is something I can believe if the district is so poor that they simply took the 6 cheapest "technicians" they could find. This district would do well in replacing the IT staff with people who could, at the least, support Linux. Their costs, since this

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