... people in a crowds act stupidly, but it was the fault of the Henricho School District to set it up that way!! They are stupid enough to switch to Dells and then give away laptops that look like big iPods for only $50?!?!? How is that supposed to be as fiscally responsible as they claim the Dell deal was?!?!

When they start to calculate all of the maintenance costs that the Dell's will generate, maybe they will reflect back on their decision making process and maybe, just maybe learn somethings. THEY are the idiots.

They could have EASILY sold them for $200 each. They'd have grossed 4x as much money, and they probably would've spent considerably less on crowd control (while still selling every last one).

Next, someone should sell off 50 iPods for 30 bucks apiece.

And the 5,500 figure (people lined up) would have been easily reduced to 25% (~1,400) of the original turn out.

And, not only would the iBooks still be sold with increased price, but perhaps a 25% less likelihood of violence.

Ridiculous.

I've seen worse at Best Buys in Tennessee during the holidays. Please.

now that there are newly 1,000 mac owners in henrico county...its going to be one of the highest percentage mac ownership in the country...

probably clamouring for the school districts to buy macs next year.

didn't they have the brains to hand out vouchers BEFORE the sale to folks on line. That would have eliminated at least 3000 of the 5000. Heck, if I'd been hurt in this poorly managed fire sale I'd hire a lawyer and end up with a brand new PB and a whole lot more.

These idiots run the school system? Those kids are in real trouble.

This was really dumb. Create line, then open a gate and make people run 200 yards to where the iBooks are.

That is just the dumbest thing I've heard. I can't believe that who ever knew of this plan didn't see this problem coming.

The $50 iBook was a great deal. The Dells they are buying are also a great deal, especially for all of the IT guys in the school system. Just wait until 30-50 teenagers download that iTunes file that is really a trojan horse. Then the real fun begins.

There is no way I would have waited six hours for a chance at a used/abused iBook. They probably need RAM, bigger hard drives, and wireless cards.

When they start to calculate all of the maintenance costs that the Dell's will generate,

Except the contract with dell covers maintenance, so there isn't some 'increased maintenance cost' coming into play. And their deal, IIRC, included a percentage of 'extra' machines to hand out when a laptop has a hardware/software issue. [What would be really funny, however, is if on school day one, all the laptops got infected by some new windows virus, bringing all computers to a halt.]

And its not like the iBooks are known for their long-life (I'm on my third motherboard for my two-year-old system), and other mac systems have their own issues (iMac G5 problems, anyone).

The computer industry would be boring without Apple!

Re: Next, someone should sell off 50 iPods for 30 bucks apiece.

Yes, and sell water to the people in line and you will pay for the iPods....

...that doesn't work in Safari.

Sheesh!

It's amazing the school system underpriced these by ~$250 ... that's $250,000 they lost. We looked at comps on eBay at Independent Sources.

Does anyone know how close the Dell bid was to Apple's? Under $250k?

Given how quickly/easily the mob mentality governs a crowd these days, I suppose I agree. However, let's not discount the fact that these people could have been a bit more civil. Great bargain aside, there's no good reason to trample over others for a computer. And frankly, it sadens me to see how quickly common sense and general decency dissipate when personal gain/loss is at stake.

heres an idea: sell each laptop for 250$ and give the difference to charity if they really dont want the money. basically given the low price people, wanting a laptop or not, went there and now theres a ton of people taking their 250,000$ via ebay.

If a private sector company had pulled such a stunt they would have been cited for presentating an atrractive nuesance and made libal for all the damage. As it was, it was a public school (a government school), so probably no one will be held accountable. Further, with demand like that, clearly the iBooks were underpriced. The taxpayers of Henrico County should be furious at the school district for essentially giving away hard earned tax money.