[Back up 15 and punt]

How many college students are having problems with their Mac's on campus. The following article implies the problem is nation wide.

http://www.houstonianonline.com/medi...nianonline.com

[sknapp351]

I think the problems on that campus are largely due to the IT Dept on that campus. I worked for my schools IT dept for a year on a campus of 20 thousand students, and I will tell you that a majority of the calls I received were PC people trying to figure out how to eject the cd. If there is a problem with the OS or problems with sending mail, it is a problem created by the school. I also wonder why the IT dept would feel the need to create different accounts for students to log into the macs. Silly people.
SAm

BTW, That is a confusing poll.

[SierraDragon]

Those poll questions are phrased such as to be worse than meaningless. I guess it could be a thread topic like "Is anyone having problems with campus networks?" but not some kind of a PC vs. Mac poll.

-Allen Wicks

[Sherman Homan]

There are some quotes in that article, well, how to put it? Who is that stupid?!?! From the opening sentence, the author seems to have no grasp of computer terminology. He probably shouldn't have even written this mess.

[mac128k-1984]

Why is this even in the PM forum. I suspect it will get "tookinated"

[goMac]

Having actually worked in College IT, the opposite is true. PC's had issues constantly, while I was lucky to ever have to repair a Mac lab. We had a few G4's die from bad PSU's, but that's about it. I was the Mac Specialist and most my time was spent on PC's.

[besson3c]

This is a really useful poll.. we can deduce so much from it!

[Gossamer]

Oh my goodness...that is one of the most biased articles I've ever read:

They may be more appealing to the eye, but Macintosh computers have yet to produce any real educational or basic functional value for the majority of college students.

But then how do you explain what you say here:

Because of their editing and design capabilities, Macs are king in the world of art. Many courses and projects in the art department require the use of programs and capabilities only available on Macintoshes, giving many students a big incentive to pick the Macs over a PC.

"We definitely receive at least two to three calls a day for help with the Macs," Kaleb Cuevas, sophomore psychology major and Computer Services employee, said. "It's usually because of something like the operating system messing up. But it's often because of user error too."

I work in tech support and we do get 2 or 3 calls for Mac support a day...and at least 10 or so calls for PCs, in an area with equal numbers of each. And the Mac calls are nearly always due to problems with Microsoft software (I hate Entourage sooo much).

So as Computer Services continues to deal with Mac complaints and photography majors continue building their masterpieces on exclusive Mac applications, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will keep getting richer off students buying iPods and universities purchasing bittersweet Mac computers.

Wow. I don't want to be an Apple fanboy so I'm careful to say stuff like this, but this guy's off his rocker.

[Gossamer]

Looks like they all ripped him a new one in the comments

[goMac]

For more reference, right now I work in an all Macintosh school district where every middle and high school student is given a Macbook.

The only real problems we have are:

1) Sudden Shutdown syndrome on the Macbooks.
2) Kids who drop the Macbooks.
3) Kids trying to get around the security and install Halo/Macsaber/MyDumbApp/get to Myspace.

[Googer-Giger]

Damn kids, don't respect the Macs.

[sek929]

AFAIK my Mac will connect to any network......wait what the hell is the question?

[andi*pandi]

sounds like the mac users are having problems because the IT folks aren't supporting them. Special mac user account to the network? what?

[Gossamer]

Originally Posted by sek929

AFAIK my Mac will connect to any network......wait what the hell is the question?

It won't work on anything using ActiveX, since that's Windows only stuff, but almost no one uses that anymore.

[sek929]

Way to ruin my fun Goss, thanks alot...

[King Bob On The Cob]

I'm at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and we have pretty equal numbers of Macs and PCs, The only time I've ever heard people complaining about computers was because this woman sitting next to me on an iMac couldn't figure out where the start bar is or how to delete things off the computer, but then again, we also have a rather large group of CS majors at just about every locale that has computers who will jump in and help anyone with computer problems (Yay for Oracle and donating craploads of money to make our CS department good!)

[bstone]

I spent 4 years as a Systems Engineer for the Univ of Chicago. I was a mac specialist. There were departments which a majority of the computers were Macs but the assigned systems engineer for the past 2-3 years was a PC only person. Yeah.... I spent almost a year whipping one department into shape.

The problem is on the end of the IT departments who don't hire Mac people. This is why Macs suffer.

[cjrivera]

Hey King Bob. How's U of I treating you?

Is LaBamba's still there on Green St.? If so, have a "burrito as big as your head" for me...

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by sek929

AFAIK my Mac will connect to any network......wait what the hell is the question?

Actually, it is possible to totally preclude Macs from connecting to the Internet, if the ISP in question is sufficiently incompetent. After a system "upgrade" at my cable ISP, I could no longer connect to the network - even though I go through a router. PC people had no trouble. I was told that some modification was screwing up Mac clients. I never got a satisfactory explanation as to why that occurred.