Michigan To Purchase Record 130,000 Laptops 641
goombah99 writes "The Detroit FreePress reports that Michigan state is planning the largest single laptop purchase/lease ever, over 130,000 wireless laptops--enough for every 6th grader. And of course future purchases for each new class. The main competion is between Dell and Apple, with Apple having the edge in classroom integration experience. But price points will matter since the school districts may have to pay $25 per pupil. And the Gates foundation has a foot in the door. No word on what OS the Dell laptops would run. What would be your choice for middle school classrooms with minimal sys admin?"
Here's an artical about (Score:3, Informative)
Durable enough? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Here's an artical about (Score:2, Informative)
Dell (Score:3, Informative)
-J
They're not... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'd buy Macs... (Score:1, Informative)
i would say go Apple.
Maine (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My choice (Score:3, Informative)
FWIW, my company spends about $65,000/month on repairs for lease replacements. And these are adult users. 6th graders are much less forgiving.
And what about battery life? A typical lithium battery will go through about 500 charge/discharge cycles before failing. This is normal. A 6th grader is going to see a dead battery after about 6 months.
Sigh... what they need is a good set of terminals in every classroom. The laptops aren't going to work.
Re:My choice (Score:2, Informative)
here [macworld.com] is some non-anecdotal evidence.
Re:Durable enough? (Score:4, Informative)
When I was in grade 6, I would have lost my head if it wasnt attached to me.
How the hell are they going to insure these lappies arent stolen?
"Give me your lunch money....errr.....laptop! Or I will give you an ultra-mega-uber-wedgie!"
Hoards of kids handing their laptops over to bullies will follow.
How can a grade 6 student be responsible for a laptop.
Re:Durable enough? (Score:4, Informative)
Office for OSX is far far nicer than horrible Office XP/2003 for Windows. It's like everything on Mac that MS makes - IE is another example. IE can support transparent PNGs on Mac, but it can't on Windows.
Anyway, Apple are supposed to be preparing a new office suite for mac os X (have you seen keynote? I'd die for a *nix port of that), and it will be mighty good. Apples track record for inhouse software has been excellent so far. Final Cut Pro, Keynote, Safari, OSX... the list goes on.
Ah - to be in 6th grade with a laptop... (Score:4, Informative)
Back when I was in 6th grade, in 1976, I think we might have had portable manual typewriters as the bleeding edge technology. I didn't see a computer, outside of video games, until 1980.
Back then life was simple - you just had to remember stuff and use your brain - and you actually went to the library if you wanted to find out about something - or for entertainment in the form of Fiction. The librarian would be there as a guide to help you with difficult searches - and the card catalog would suffice in most cases. As a result, there was this built-in filter (as a result of having limited access at a measured pace) that allowed you to focus on what was important.
Now there is terabytes of crap we have to sort through to get to the kernel of truth on the net. The counterpart of the knowledgeable librarian are few and far between, and information has to be taken with more than a grain of salt.
While I applaud providing computing resources to children - I think it is more important to now start looking at ways of taking those resources to the next level beyond simple hierarchies of filesystems - to a real collector and recorder of critical knowledge for everyone, tailored to their specific neural wiring. I think that will be the next great leap in computing - and now that we have machines capable of making it a reality, we will see it happen.
Information is not static - lets build applications that take that idea to its fruition.
Re:Does this really make sense? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and to answer the main question in this thread... they'll probably run whatever OS a majority of Michigan schools are already running. If the kids are learning how to use XP in the computer labs, it's the most practical (though not necessarily the best) solution to stick XP on the laptops too, for consistancy's sake. As beneficial as it would be for kids to leave middle school knowing how to use both XP and OSX or Linux, it ain't gonna happen.
Re:Does this really make sense? (Score:3, Informative)
It makes plenty of sense [freep.com]. Or was that cents?
Re:Does this really make sense? (Score:3, Informative)
There are 3 distinct groups in the teachers:
-No idea. These people have had such fun as 'ripping DVD/CD combo out of chasis because it won't open' and 'oops, my LCD screen has fell off'. That's about 50% of the teachers.
-The 'I'll use it way too much' group. Enjoy shitty powerpoint presentations? Well, these people have every lesson with a crap powerpoint presentation. They also use it for email and generally messing around when they are bored.
-Then there is the I can use a computer ok. Mostly IT teachers or maths teachers, they use the laptop sensibly and don't bore everyone to death with powerpoint #24.
This is TEACHERS. The school has had budget cuts this year, but they are rolling out more WiFi AP's and giving more laptops out. The IT department is completly overstressed, 2 people for about 300 computers in the school, and 50 LCD projectors (and they are all about 1 year old so most bulbs are starting to go). I used too work there, now I don't. I feel sorry for the 2 guys left there, and both guys are on the verge of quitting. Sadly 'desktop' PCs/Macs are going out of fasion fast. The school used to have a 3 year maximum PC life for the IT rooms, but they haven't replaced any for the last 2 years. Some rooms are stuck with P75s and P2 233mhz.
Re:Durable enough? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not a fan of Apple, but it it's between Apple and Dell, I say go for the iBook!
What argument from Dell? (Score:2, Informative)
- Clean OS with simple use and easy adoption by "non-computer-friendly" people (I believe not all the kids love computers)
- Powerful way of limiting some harmful use (even improved on Panther), with clear experience from schools specialists (macosxlabs for example [macosxlabs.org]) and from Apple
- All the basic tools necessary for class/fun are included and some other can be found for free on apple.com [apple.com].
But robustness is also and important issue in the hands of kids. Basically my experience with Dell computers is clearly not as happy as with Apple's ones.
I imagine the cost is an important matter at this scale and Dell can really go low on big quantities, but Apple proved to be able to. On that specific "price" field, I recently searched for a small (second) computer and compared iBook to Dell (and some others, but those 2 arrived in short list) and I realized that the world had changed and, for my needs, Apple was cheaper than Dell!
So perhaps is it the time to say, like in Virginia (G5), that Apple is the choice on the price...
Re:I'd buy Macs... (Score:2, Informative)
I replied to this earlier in another post, but I'll speak as a small-district IT director (at in Bishop, CA [k12.ca.us]).
In our districts, Macs do not have lower TCO (as nebulous as that term is) compared to our PCs. The reason is simple - Norton Ghost. Our largest manpower sink is when a classroom computer gets hosed completely, and requires a clean install. With Norton Ghost, we re-image the drive in MINUTES, from anywhere on my network. I can VNC to our server, re-cast the Ghost image to the proper computer, and voila! The classroom computer is back online.
This is, of course, our last resort, but it does make centralized managment simpler for very serious problems. Additionally, if you aren't familiar with Active Directory, you can tweak pretty much every OS feature through it, and roll out different profiles on a per-user basis. This is excellent when teachers and students use the same classroom computers. Each profile can be roaming, so that teachers can work on their gradebook software on any computer on our campuses, or the students can get their documents from the same "My Documents" folder because they're all redirected to network shares by user. Cool stuff, and for a staff one one (me), it rocks.
I have previewed the Apple OS X server hardware and software (it was sent free to me by Apple, for evaluation), and it wasn't as tweakable, and I never did find a Norton Ghost equivalent for Apple OS.
Just my two cents.
Joe GriegoBishop Union High School District [k12.ca.us]
Bishop Union Elementary School District [k12.ca.us]
Re:What a stupid trend (Score:3, Informative)
The pervading attitude is akin to "teach kids about car maintenance by getting them to clean the bodywork".
Kids should be taught how the things work (not down to fetch/execute cycle level) in terms of hard drives, networks, and maybe some simple programming (but not anything which makes it too easy).
Re:Won't someone PLEASE think of the teachers?! (Score:3, Informative)
Their job is to talk to children, they're accountable to no one, and they work only 3/4 of the year
Christ, you're probably trolling, but if not you're a fucking clueless moron. If you think teaching is nothing more than "talking to children," you've got your head so far up your ass it can't be extracted. I know many teachers, and they ALL work 60 to 80 hours a week. It takes a lot of work to keep up with cirriculum changes, develop lesson plans, create assignments, set up projects, talk to parents, deal with behavioral problems, grade papers, write grade reports, lead extracirricular activities, and fight with administration to get needed supplies - in addition to teaching class. They all spend from $500 to $2000 per year out of their own pockets to buy supplies the district can't afford. Then they have to listen to morons like you talk about how easy their job is (one that requires a Master's in our state), and how overpaid they are at their $30K salary. Roadside construction workers who spend all day rotating a sign from "Stop" to "Slow" or pounding concrete with a jackhammer make more than they do.
Believe it or not, most teachers really care about doing a good job - and they get mediocre pay, and few thanks. Oh, a lot of them work all year as well.
Apple Remote Desktop (Score:2, Informative)
Plus, Macs are very easy to lockdown. You can specify what apps a user can run, give them disk quotas, etc. Use an LDAP directory for network login (just use the OS X Server GUI admin tools) and you're set. For people who haven't had the pleasure of working on a Mac network, it is a breeze.
I know schools mainly look at price, but you simply can't do most of this stuff on a PC and you definitely can't do it as easily or as cheaply (OS X Server w/ unlimited client licenses is $999; how much would the school pay in client licenses if it went with a Windows solution?). That is why Apple has been winning a lot of the EDU deals.
Physical access == root access (Score:3, Informative)
For Windows NT:
Tools/devices needed: 3.5" USB floppy drive and a 3.5" disk
Software: NT Password Boot Disk [eunet.no]
1. Download floppy image of NT Password Boot disk, write to a floppy
2. Boot from floppy
3. Change the local administrator's password
4. Log in as Administrator and add you to the local Administrators group
For MacOS X:
1. Power on
2. Hold Apple+S during the startup chord
3. Release keys after text screen appears; wait for the shell prompt
4. WARNING: YOU ARE SUPERUSER !!
Armed with a google search and some free time, all sorts of things can be done. The most important criterion is that they have physical control of the box.
Re:the ONLY Choice-Win-studies. (Score:2, Informative)