“The logo will change, but the tool is the same. That was the message from Henrico County school officials, who said yesterday that they hope for a smooth transition next year in the switch from Apple iBooks to Dell laptops for all high school teachers and students,” Olympia Meola reports for The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
“Dell Inc. and Apple Computers Inc. were neck and neck until the home stretch, according to school officials. But a combination of factors — including a $4 million price difference — gave Dell the advantage,” Meola reports. “Dell offered the county 15,800 machines at $1,131 a piece compared with Apple’s $1,386 per-unit cost. The four-year, $17.9 million deal with Dell will still push the School Board over budget by about $250,000.”
Meola reports, “Meredyth Hoggatt, a history teacher and selection-committee member, said the move to Dell should be more of a transition than an attempt to reinvent the wheel… Adam Hall, a sophomore at Hermitage High School, said he is pleased with the planned switch to Dell, because it has a better operating system. ‘They’re better than what we have now,’ he said.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Amazing Ignorance Alert! “The logo will change, but the tool is the same.” A Dell with Windows XP “has a better operating system” than they would with Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger.
We’d say that these dolts deserve what they’re going to get for the next four years, except it’s the students and the teachers who will suffer instead of the morons who were snowed by Dell and made this deal without looking past the initial sticker price.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Henrico school board dumps Apple Macs, picks Dells with Windows – April 29, 2005
PC World review gives Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger 4.5 stars out of 5 – April 30, 2005
Ars Technica: Mac OS X Tiger ‘at least twice as significant as any single past update’ – April 28, 2005
CNET: ‘If you’re tired of Microsoft’s promises, Mac OS X Tiger may be your best incentive to switch’ – April 28, 2005
BusinessWeek: ‘Tiger bolsters Mac OS X’s edge as the best personal-computer operating system around’ – April 28, 2005
Associated Press: Mac OS X Tiger ‘provides another excellent incentive to switch from Windows’ – April 28, 2005
Mossberg: Apple’s Tiger ‘the best, most advanced personal computer operating system on the market’ – April 28, 2005
InformationWeek columnist: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘a compelling upgrade’ – April 28, 2005
NY Times: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger is the most secure, stable and satisfying OS on earth – April 28, 2005
Wired News: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘full of welcome surprises’ – April 27, 2005
Frist
these lost out big time
What’s great is that after the first week of operation, when all the computers have viruses and porn ad on them and after the first year, when tech support has been living at the school fixing the dells, the parents in the school district and the rest of world won’t hear a single peep from the school board about how bad a decision they made.
“Okay kids, time to scan our hard drives for spyware…”
jeez, how much is support going to cost?? and what about liscensing for windows server? or maybe they didn’t run a server before, and just used laptops to internet…either way, totally sucks
and they did this all because of a $55 price difference.
idiots!
The point about needing microsoft office is completely valid. All dells will come with it.
er…make that a $255 price difference. sorry, i was using a Dell.
Typical union speak.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”cool grin” style=”border:0;” />
Vote for vouchers and get this lousy layabout loser union out of our once great education system. Just read some of these comments and the spelling in the same. I would venture a guess that one or two of the posers-sorry- posters, even went to college.
Now watch that price difference slowly, or perhaps quickly, melt away with support cost overhead. So much for educators being visionaries…
School officials said “The logo will change, but the tool is the same.”
Ever wonder why home school kids get the top spots in educational contests, could it be the ignorance of school officials?
Guys, this is the school distric’s web site. It has a link to why they switched to the Dell’s. Man, this is a funny read! They are that stupid!
http://www.henrico.k12.va.us/
HENRICO COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENT
P.O. BOX 23120
RICHMOND, VA 23223-0420
JOBLINE: (804) 501-5480 We need 200 IT people right away.
FAX: (804) 652-3763 Don’t use this. We’re not sure how to use it yet.
PHONE: (804) 652-3664
TDD: (804) 652-3932 What’s TDD????
Give them a buzz.
Yup, Vincent, very funny read indeed. Here’s the Director of Technology:
“Lloyd Brown, director of technology for Henrico schools, explained the features of the new Dell Inspiron 600M laptop. The screen is 14 inches compared to the iBook’s 12-inch screen. It has two USB ports and a track pad for moving the mouse. The Dells will utilize a Windows XP operating system.
Brown also addressed the question of security — how to prevent students from accessing inappropriate web sites. First of all, he said, “The type of laptop does not have anything to do with security — it’s your filters. Therefore, security will be a challenge with any product.”
Strange, and the iBooks don’t have two USB ports and a track pad? The Dell would utilize outdated technology like Windows XP. They could have had TIGER! But most of all, the type of laptop does not have anything to do with security, just filters! Filters, that’s all Windows users needed all this time. Who’d a thunk it?
This dork doesn’t know the difference between web content blockers and anti-virus/worm software! Sad. Sad.
“The logo will change, but the tool is the same…” They’re about to find out what ‘tools’ they are.
Too bad about the kids. Don’t have much sympathy for the teachers or parents: as adults in this topsy turvy world, they need to be better informed and engaged in the shit that affects their kids and their money.
Come on office …. pay too much for what you can gaet for free neooffice is sweet … even appleworks is better than that junk , i think iWork is almost perfect …. i doubt that those students whill use excell that much ….
Sorry bad english .. I’m brazilian ….
I like this quote:
“The type of laptop does not have anything to do with security.”
Wow, and all along I thought Macs were more secure. I guess I was wrong.
“What’s TDD?”
A Telecommunication Device for the Deaf allows a person to transmit typed messages over the phone lines to another person with a TDD. Most TDD’s include a keyboard for typing messages to send and a display and/or printer to receive messages.
This might not be such a bad thing. There are apparently some Apple fans in Henrico, ones that will keep a close eye on the Dell program. At the end of a certain term, I’m sure an analysis will surface- hopefully unbiased (thanks to the Apple fans in Henrico). This will be a perfect opportunity to compare total outcomes between the two programs. This could be good for Apple (even if they “lose” in the analysis- they would be given an opportunity to learn from mistakes), or it could be GREAT for Apple- they could win in the analysis, and stick a big, fat Cupertino tongue at the naysayers, and at Dell. Personally, I think Apple will win big.
There are plenty of other pilot programs across the country, and Apple is leading the way in many of them. The Henrico Experiment will only enrich Apple’s devotion to such programs.
About the above article, I gotta feel for poor, clueless Adam Hall. To say that XP is better than Panther is, at the very least, a stretch of the imagination (a debate in this is beyond the scope of my note). But compared to Tiger, XP really doesn’t stand a chance. He’s obviously a victim of the Redmond FUD engine….
this was about money, plain and simple. the it guy now has job security. just wait till all their dell get hit by a virus and all the elementary and middle school kid’s ibooks keep chugging along. someone will eat crow.
macvspc.info. Enough said.
ron: Interesting information you’ve provided. To answer your question about TDD, that is a telephone device for the deaf. It allows the deaf to communicate to a person on the other end via live text messaging. In the years before, they used a TTY.
I don’t know if the annotation after the jobline number is a real request or your comment. Assuming that it is a real request, the cost of 200 additional IT people should hover around $6 million annually. That will digest the entire $4 million savings in one year alone. The school district claims to have overshot the budget by $250,000 to get the Dells – wait until they see the IT costs to come. Furthermore, 200 additional people will be sorely insufficient for the needs that will soon clobber that school district. I suppose they figure that the teachers will gladly fill in for needed extra IT personnel.
Unfortunately, this being a public body means that no-one is ever likely to admit a mistake. If the systems end up as 15,800 doorstops, they will harp on about the $4m saving rather than the extra $17.9m it will cost to replace them.
I’m typing this on an iMac DV 400, purchased just after they came out in 1999. It’s running Tiger beautifully at nearly six years old. Do you think those Dells will be still useful at that age?
Rhetorical question. Don’t bother answering.
Obviously the price difference is the cost of Office for Mac versus the free OS and Office from Microsoft to help Dell get the contract. When Dell asks for a bigger maintenance contract in 6 months because they are losing their shirts on the existing one no one will ever hear about it.
Jdoc has posted my exact view. This could be very good news for Apple.
DULL must have nearly burnt themselves to clinch the deal.
If the DULL computers prove to be a virus infested pain it won’t take long to find out. The true cost of ownership will then be exposed.
If Apple prove to be better then the next run off won’t force Apple to burn themselves to clinch the deal. My experience is that long after you’ve forgotten the ticker price saving you will experience the true value of the deal if reliability and useability are proven to be better.
How did they arrive at the figure of $1,386 per iBook? A 12 inch with Combo bases at $949 with the educational discount. And they obviously would get them cheaper than that.
So, an extra $400 in maintenance and software? I doubt that students need the $400 Professional version of Office.