St. Francis U switches to the Mac

St. Francis Xavier University of Antigonish, Nova Scotia is officially announcing that it will move away from Windows-based PCs and standardize on Apple's Intel-based Macs beginning this fall. The school will swap out Windows PCs and replace them with Macs in labs, classrooms and offices throughout the campus. St. Francis will also openly encourage students to purchase and use Macs as their personal computers. School officials say that the motivation behind the change was partially an increase in student choice for Macs, saying the academic environment will be more relevant to students with a full Mac set-up. St. Francis has placed an order for 350 new Apple systems as the first installation of the new technology for the campus. This will include 250 iMac systems for the computer labs and 45 MacBook notebook computers for faculty members. The school has more than 4,300 students.

St. Francis follows in the footsteps of several other universities that have decided to go all-Mac. In February, Wilkes University in Pennslyvania announced plans to get rid of all its Windows-based computers in the next three years and replace them with Macs. Apple also overtook Dell in the UK education market earlier this year, and announced the acquisition two large higher education accounts late last year.

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