Despite price, Henrico chooses Apple
updated 12:05 am EST, Tue February 21, 2006
Henrico chooses Apple
Pricing was only one of concerns that helped Apple renew its contract for supplying Henrico County's middle school students with laptops. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that both laptop size and "breadth of add-ons" were also crucial to Apple's bid for the four-year contract for students in Henrico County, Virginia. Earlier this month, Apple won the Henrico iBook contract, beating out five other companies including rival Dell, who last April had snatched away the landmark contract for Henrico's high school students. While Dell offered a lower priced bid, the size of Apple's 12-inch iBook, the slot-load optical drive, battery life, and other factors were important in the committee's decision to give Apple'e the nearly 13,000 laptop contract for $15.8 million: "Apple included some attractive extras for instruction, such as certain software and an operating system with built-in features for special-education students, such as text-to-speech and zooming capabilities."
Smart move!
02/21, 01:12am reply
Finally a smart decision! Hopefully many will follow the example.
jarod
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Apr 2005
Hey, it's either a...
02/21, 01:23am reply
A stampede or a huge garbage barge in four years. Pick one.
Paul Huang
Forum Regular
Joined: Sep 1999
stand by...
02/21, 04:42am reply
... for allegations of impropriety, or lawsuits from some superintendent that didn't get his payola.
ZinkDifferent
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jan 2005
good decision
02/21, 07:06am reply
I think its a good thing.
I am a 27 year old man, who has dyslexia. Whilst this does not stop me going to work or holding down a job, if you have ever tried to use Windows with third party applications you'd understand how important it is to have a fully integrated access-ability system. For writing coherent work e-mails, word documents, Mac OS X offers invaluable features which whilst replicated on Windows are often buggy and fail to live up to the hype. Anything that will not only introduce kids to something other than Windows and also benefit those with Special Education needs, can only be a good thing.
In fact if it wasn't for text to speech now, I would have had trouble composing this. The same applies to the essays and dissertation which I wrote for my degree.
misterjoeblack
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Feb 2006
Hope they are waiting
02/21, 09:31am reply
With the transition to Intel schedualed to be complete this year I hope they are getting the Intel iBOOK replacement. As schools tend to keep there equipment longer than most this will be very important.
jstephe
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Feb 2006
I might visit VA again..
02/21, 09:37am reply
Since the Henrico "only country residents can buy these notebooks back off you out of towners h*** bent on buying our gas, eating our food and spending your out of state money on our guady theme parks and other tourist traps" stampede over the last set, this move proves they aren't totally boneheaded.
ibugv4
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jun 2003