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education

05/03/2004, 7:35am, EDT

Monday, May 3rd

Arlington, VA public schools move away from Macs

A memo from the Office of the Superintendent of the Arlington Public Schools says that the company will move to a predominantly PC platform, while "Macintosh computers will be retained for specialized applications such as the Arts curriculum, the iLife suite including iMovie and Special Education. I found persuasive the conclusions that in the absence of any particular advantage or disadvantage to instructional effectiveness or to teaching staff, the move to one predominant platform will result in lower costs (both in direct outlays and in opportunity costs to enhanced services) and to more effective and efficient technical support services."


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I.T. Shills for Dell?
0
05/03, 8:01am, EDT
Ah yes, the same old saw and ignorance of the lower costs for a unified platform. We KNOW it's the IT drones pushing for job security and the ignorant (or paid off) and clueless administration falling for the con job.

In these days of falling education budgets, it makes SO much sense to steathfully triple your IT budget.

The question remains: Where is Apple through all this?
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Joined Oct 1999
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Where?
0
05/03, 8:29am, EDT
"The question remains: Where is Apple through all this?"

Where is Apple? They're off making a new set of dancing iPod user commercials to tell everyone how they're "providing music fans with the best digital experience on Mac or PC."

Market share? Who cares about market share? Look, we have DANCING IPOD USERS!
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technical support
0
05/03, 8:35am, EDT
...and boy are they ever gonna need that!
GUI Punk
Joined Jan 2002
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Re: Where?
0
05/03, 8:46am, EDT
What do you people think, that if Apple had a couple of customer reps talking to these people, somehow their minds would be swayed and switch to all Macs or something. Hell, they're lucky they got to keep any macs. Most schools decide to just toss all of them. (Oh, and don't be surprised if the tech support staff derides the macs everytime they have to deal with them).

And when apple gets surpassed in the music market, you'll be whining that they spent too much time ignoring the iPod and such, and now they've become also-rans. You make it seem like these people can't do more than one thing at a time.
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If you must
0
05/03, 8:49am, EDT
ANYONE BUT DELL. Their computers are garbage, plain and simple. You will be sorry with the level of un-support you get from them. Run away from then and into any other PC vendor if you must switch.

And, that report was full of so many inaccuracies and half-truths that it's not funny.

Oh Well, one more "cost savings through unified platform" BS - once they get hit with one virus/worm, the cleanup cost will erase any cost savings.
Senior User
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It's a lame excuse/reaso
0
05/03, 8:49am, EDT
Period.
d.
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nat
good luck
0
05/03, 9:07am, EDT
i used to work at a think tank. the big "it" guy had ms so far up his hiney his eyes were windows logo's. he convinced everybody to dump the sun's and switch everything to windows. within a year the really smart guys were saying "told you so!". unfortunately the powers that be are dumbass's and the sink hole keeps getting bigger. when you got dumbass's that listen to dumbass's who want nothing but to keep their jobs, you get dell'd.
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yep
0
05/03, 9:16am, EDT
typical. Worst part is, except for thier "approved" departments for Mac, they will force every teacher to switch, even if a teacher doesn't want to switch AND doesn't need tech support. Stupid.
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More news like this...
0
05/03, 9:17am, EDT
needs to be heard by managment and decision makers

http://www.macnn.com/news/23026

But the hill may be just took hard to climb with so many Dell/MSFT developers and environments in business and government locations. It may or may not be Apple's intention to seriously move into these markets but for now I'm happy with my OSX box and Apple's digital video software. Perhaps if Apple commands the entertainment industry some years down the line, perhaps they will start to overflow into the business community and eventually see their marketshare tick up.
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2 words
0
05/03, 9:18am, EDT
"bought" "off"
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