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Hope this helps the stock price!!!!!

Even more idiotic than changing from one platform to another in mid-program is using two platforms at two different levels. Way to serve those kids, Henrico!

I rather they serve two platforms if it means keeping Apple one way or another.

Henrico's board has finally come to their senses! I hope they can somehow correct their previous erroneous decision for the sake of their high school students.

Sweet. Just sweet.

Imagine graduating into high school... and having your iBook taken away and replaced with a Dell!

Only dunces buy Dells

Henrico huh?
The hits just keep on coming®

If this is accurate it is good news. 'Anyone hear how the Boulder Valley School meeting went Wednesday?

I guess they got their annual budget report with the years use of the Dells factored in.

Say-Haleluyah!

Kids need to learn and work with the computer of the future, not the past. Even if they work with Windows when they grow up, it will look and work more like today's Mac's than today's Windows computers.

The C students will rule the world.

Maybe they learned something from buying Dells.
I'm sure they can get rid of them if they give away $50 with each computer.

kenpet

PTL! This is great news…wish I could get the service contract!

I seriously hope there is news about how the Dell roll-out went.

It must have gone badly, or why else would they go back to Apple after less than a year.

If this is the case it augurs very well indeed for Apple in education...

Now start counting the money you'll save, having less call-outs from your IT department. You can go buy another 1000 Macs...

I don't think Apple should keep courting these fools. They obviously don't have the kids best interests in mind, and there will be only more bad publicity for Apple next year when parents complain that their kids aren't getting viri and what is the world coming to and we want our old familiar computers that act predictably and break every other day.

MDN Magic Word: "cost", I shit you not. How does it know???

Let the lawsuits from parents begin! I wonder how busy Steve Berman is these days.

Cool!

Also: congrats to MacDailyNews for breaking this story a full 10+ hours before anybody else!

Guess the school thought it was best for the students in high school to learn PC's like they will find in corporate America and the pain associated with them.

They also probably figured out how much this pain is compared to a Mac and decided it's cheaper for the middle and grade schools to keep Mac's.

Of course the lone dissenter is probablly on the take from Dell anyway.

Be surprised how much illegal behaivor goes on in the corridors of power.

After all John Scully sold out to Bill Gates early in Apple's history, he just couldn't make it appear like he did so he could collect as much money from Apple as possible.

Since this program begins on July 30th I guess the new laptops will be powered by Intel. Correct?

Hey MDN,

The new font layout on the page looks great!

Dude, you didn't get a Dell

if MDN would let us post images here we could have some nostalgic fun.

clicky

Apple stock is headed to $43, i will buy it then.

Henrico probably forgot to factor anti-virus software and IT-admin downtime into the Dell deal.

Hopefully they got a taste of Dell-Hell and wanted to get back to Mac OS-X goodness.

Quit worrying about the damn stock. It's just a market correction. The company is doing great, so it's nothing to waste time getting upset over. Be patient and wait a little while and it'll be headed back up again soon enough.

So the lower grades get the advanced computers and OS, while the higher grades get the USSR-quality OS and computers. Go figure!

Maybe they heard how Dell is heading south

Picture it, 2 years down the road with the Delsl and NO DELL !!

http://www.bvsdwatch.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=47

elow are notes from the colorful BVSD Staff and Community Meeting held Feb 8th at 6600 Arapahoe, Boulder, Co.

First and foremost, somehow expensively dressed HP & Microsoft sales people were in attendance. How they could show their faces is beyond reason. They know they are bilking BVSD out of a cool million+ each year, and playing the BVSD staff like puppets, scary. Several people towards the end of the meeting vocally opposed them speaking at this "Staff & Community Meeting" and left the room in a huff.

HP had two people there, a pure sales guy that had nothing to say and little knowledge of computing in an educational environment. Then a rather meek sales lady, also without much to say. A third older mystery man, that kept his head low the entire time... so hard to say who he was, other than his sensibility & dress reeked of taking taxpayers money and running. Then 1 Microsoft guy, who was licking his chop$ at the ignorance of the BVSD IT Department. A nice enough guy, but little vision of why Apple is far better in the schools.

The weakness of BVSD staff was everywhere, the meeting was haphazard, started 10 minutes late, and little focus from Dave Williamson and his minions. Robert Hammond, mainly led the meeting, a likable enough guy, but no backbone. He is the "me too" in all of this, a very "bureaucratic guy" that should go ahead and retire. Teresa Steele was also there, hiding in the background, she seemed to be quite uneducated in this matter, and is probably the key error in this process.

The good news is this group (of Six) has little power to enforce the "HP MANDATE", so all you have to do is say NO to any HP's brought into your school. If they try and install them, make sure they don't work the next day, etc. You don't have to go with this poor decision, just FIGHT IT. They don't appear strong at all, so just ignore them until they wise up to the FACT the current plan will NEVER happen.

As the meeting unfolded... only 4 schools had any representation. The "exception process" needs to be more of a "grandfather your existing Macs in" exception, and will be reworded as such. Only a Dual Platform compromise will be accepted, so that was agreed upon. Make sure your school keeps all of their current Macs, just upgrade what you have since they wobbled when it was explained that PCs just aren't up to the tasks that Macs do with aplomb, so they were kinda embarrassed by each school explaining the problems. Bottom line, these are "admin computers" designed to PEER into your classroom, with no thought given to the actual "teaching" that will go on with them.

Some parents spoke, ALL against the (behind closed doors) decision, they are now gathering others to fight the Board on this issue. The point that no bids were requested, will be the downfall of the Board and IT Staff. Apple was only asked for a bid of "1 Unit" which they got a quote of $1,240 for an iMac with 1GB of Ram. So to compare the purchasing power of 2,500 HP PC's to "1 iMac" is laughable. Apple would of matched HP's price in a moment IF THEY WERE ASKED. And as we all know now they weren't!

Several Mac advocates spoke with some "passion" and that had an effect on the IT people and the paid HP / MS shills in attendance. They began to realize this plan will NEVER happen in its current state. It's a Dual Platform Plan or nothing.

Many in audience at the end started to realize the WHOLE problem is this is a pure TOP DOWN decision, when to be successful with something like this, it MUST COME from the BOTTOM UP! Oops! Rolling Eyes You can't install a bunch of computers (any brand) and have them work without internal Teacher approval, the BVSD Staff now understands this and are altering their stance. If the Board was smart, they would divvy up the $2.5 million... per head of student, per school and let the TEACHERS decide what to purchase. That's the correct way to do this. Nothing else will work. The IT Staff is only there to install and maintain machines, they should have little say otherwise.

We want every staff member, teacher and student in the BVSD District to have a Flyer, and to get involved. You can either call the Board Members, send emails or make your voice ANONYMOUSLY heard on this Website, contact the Daily Camera and ignore all attempts to place problematic PCs in your school. You can download all Flyers below. Every school, teacher, student, family, tax payer needs them, so print as many as you want. You can email BLAST them as well, they are simple PDFs.

http://snipurl.com/mcpn

continued:

We will call for a Referendum of 3A unless a DUAL PLATFORM compromise is achieved. They have finally realized they have a CLASS A Problem on their hands, a public call for a referendum on ALL 3A money is being discussed and WILL HAPPEN if they do not change the initiative to a Dual Platform strategy. They have a CHOICE, a Dual Platform choice, or all of them will leave the District, along with the MONEY in years 2, 3, 4.

So everyone get CLEAR... this plan will NOT WORK the way they think it will. National News starts MONDAY. Join the fight!

All the Board has to do is understand they made a MISTAKE, we won't hold that against them. PROMISE! They just need to fix this now, or we will only grow LOUDER until this is resolved.

My mom works in a school district in Illinois. A few years ago there was this big announment that the district was going Windows. Gateway had given a big "gift" of 50 or so new free computers in order to get the district to buy from them.
Thankfully the Gateways were so crappy the switch never happened to much degree. All the "free" gateways were thrown out in the garbage last summer. Yes the garbage. This in a district that is still using some pre-power pc macs. A friend of mine is a tech in that district and he said that every single gateway broke at some point. My mom said that her building no longer has any windows machines of any brand anymore. And she got a new imac G5 last fall.
Sometimes folks have to learn the hard way, I guess.

The are using Mac in middle school so they are ysing outdated crap.

Just to clarify, the iBooks they replaced with Dell's last year were running Mac OS 9, not Mac OS X.