education
02/10/2006, 9:10am, EST
Friday, February 10th
Apple renews Henrico iBook contract
Apple has renewed a contract to supply Henrico County middle school students with new iBooks for another four years, beating out Dell and other PC makers. The new Apple contract follows a controversial school board decision last April that chose Dell to supply computers to every high school student and teacher next year. The four-year iBook program renewal, which begins on July 30th, is for 12,675 iBook laptops at a cost of $1,246 each. The report notes that Apple's bid was higher than an expired Dell bid from last year that offered 14,000 machines to middle schools at a cost of $1,111 per unit; however, that bid expired on November 1, 2005 and the Times Dispatch did not provide any details as to why the higher bid from Apple was approved Thursday night by the School Board.
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Guess they were wrong.
Some kids and parents tasted the smoothness of OSX first, then had Dell, and it was a no brainer for the district, with or without any pressure.
Perhaps the GPA dropped for the kids or the Dell/Windows maintenance costs reared its ugly head.
Or maybe the lust of another frenzy when it's time to auction off the next batch of iBooks.LOL
In any case, Apple wins in the end and so do the kids and the education system. Just in time for iBookIntels. or iSchoolBook Pros.
BTW, the contracts include maintenance and repair, so its not like Dells cost the district more for breaking down more (although, since they used to use iBooks, I can't imagine the Dells breaking down more, what with those freakin' mobo/video issues those iBooks have had for like 5 years).