[RWoelk]

Having read a recent posting at a site specific for PowerBooks, I felt more than a little distressed in learning this poster was selling his new FireWire PowerBook on eBay. He represented that his need to do so was because his unnamed college of choice will only allow Windows notebooks. This certainly isn't the first time; I have read of this rubbish. It seems to me, not long ago that one of the Ivy League schools back east tried to institute this nonsense, and there was so much back lash from students and staff that they elected to retract their policy and now continue to support the Macintosh platform. Sorry, memory fails me as to which one.

This strikes me is completely ABSURD, given the ease that one can run cross platform with software packages like virtual PC. I suggested to the poster that he try to appeal the decision with his chosen University. A subsequent poster suggested that he obtain a copy of virtual PC, and actually bring his PowerBook to the University for a demonstration. I know in my area regarding K through 12, Dell is offering such competitive pricing that my beloved platform is struggling to stay alive. Apple has always had a strong foothold in the education markets and it kills me to see them lose market share. Obviously, I want students to truly have a choice in thinking different.

I would be most interested to learn from those of you who are in the know the following:

1. How many of you parents and students are facing this issue with institutions of higher learning? Feel free to name the names of these offending institutions. Not for the purpose of harassing them (PLEASE DON'T)! but rather, to learn their definitive reasoning beyond the obvious of simple continuity. My own biases aside, I really try to see both sides of the issue. In doing so, perhaps, something could be done to aid in these institutions' enlightenment.

2. Have any of you successfully appealed this discriminatory practice, and if so, how?

3. Aside for what these institutions might see mistakenly as an advantage in terms of price points, support and simple continuity; could their reasoning have anything to do with tracking a student's activities on line? Pardon my ignorance, but it is it more difficult to try to track or limit a student's online activities with a Mac? If so, why, since TCP/IP is pretty much cross platform? I should think this may be more of a concern for K through 12 students, but it seems worthy of asking? Are there other reasons here that I am missing?


------------------
Rocke "Why yes, I have brought our
network down." Woelk

Only the educated are free!-Epictetus

[This message has been edited by RWoelk (edited 08-24-2000).]

Originally posted by RWoelk:
Having read a recent posting at a site specific for PowerBooks, I felt more than a little distressed in learning this poster was selling his new FireWire PowerBook on eBay. He represented that his need to do so was because his unnamed college of choice will only allow Windows notebooks. This certainly isn't the first time; I have read of this rubbish. It seems to me, not long ago that one of the Ivy League schools back east tried to institute this nonsense, and there was so much back lash from students and staff that they elected to retract their policy and now continue to support the Macintosh platform. Sorry, memory fails me as to which one.

Yes, it is sad to see such rubbish. It's a good thing that *I* wasn't one of these students who the schools are trying to bully around. They would find themselves with a hefty discrimination lawsuit on their hands, and I would make sure it was quite publicly known. It's bad enough that a school would require you to buy a computer to begin with (thankfully this wasn't true when I went to college, even though it was a mere 7 or 8 years ago) but to force you to use a certain model or brand is just absurd! IMHO there is only one response to these kinds of actions, and that is public outcry and putting a spotlight on the offending party.

And what if these schools are offering degrees in fields like design and the arts where Macs are the preferred and most prevalent platform? How could they justify making you purchase a Windows machine then? It would certainly make me think twice of going to that school (esp. since I never bought into the thinking that you needed to go to such and such college, to me one is as good as another, it's the student that makes the difference)

Of course one other thing you could do is buy a Windows machine, then return it once you were accepted and use the PowerBook. Boy wouldn't that make the school look stupid when you waved it in the dean's face at graduation day

[RWoelk]

Thanks for your post. Yeah, I think it's time I call my old university Temple U. I would like to know where they stand these days. My days as a student there preceded personal computing, but I would still like to know where they stand.

[This message has been edited by RWoelk (edited 08-25-2000).]

[Demonhood]

How exactly can a university "not allow" a machine based on operating system? They can refuse to support it, but it's not as if they can prevent it from gaining access to the local network and pulling power from the wall.

I believe that they would be perfectly within their rights to deny access to their LAN to any unsupported platform if they wanted to be butts about it. If I found myself in this position, knowing what I know now, I'd just beg for forgiveness if caught, and support it myself. Of course there are probably a lot of college students who don't have the know-how to pull it off.

[yoyo52]

The school was Yale. And the policy came from a new system administrator who thought that uniformity was necessary. He soon learned better. My school is perdominantly windows, but we have a very strong computer graphics program that's entirely G4s. There are also some G3 B&W is an all-purpose lab, and some older machines in another all-purpose lab--really a mix of several different models. In the faculty, about 20% or so of us use Macs. We also tend to be the people who are most computer literate--except for the folks in physics and comp sci. The system admin is pretty PC (pun intended), but tolerates Macs. Some of her staff are very anti-Mac, but some are very pro-Mac. It's a mixed bag, in short.

I am an administrator at a very large and well respected private university on the East Coast. My first computer, bought as an undergrad in 1990, was a beloved Macintosh LC. I plan a personal iMac purchase in 2001 (Graphite or Snow . . . Snow or Graphite?), but for now make do with PeeCees both at home and at work. Groan.

My forward thinking institution prominently features Macs in labs, internet access stations, and certain departments throughout campus alongside those other machines. As a university employee, I can even purchase a new Mac for about $500.00 with paycheck deductions to follow over an extended, interest free period of time. Just yesterday I witnessed the delivery of eight Macs to one building's lab, and another dozen on the curb in front of the computer store just waiting to be snatched up by new owners as we kick into high gear for the Fall semester.

While a Windows awed student of our business school could very well snicker at the Tangerine iBook an arts student might tool around campus with (and vice versa for that matter!), you would be amazed at the general perception that exists out there that a college student MUST be sent off to school with a PC unit. Parents are especially brutal and ignorant on this point. Some - not all, but way too many - think that there indeed exists a certain computer "requirement", and thus shy away from the best computer on the planet.

Until Apple - and believers like us who know better - continue to convince users that Macs aren't losers (a rhyme!), colleges and universities may not only be PERCEIVED to permit a certain type of platform . . . but even institutions like mine just might actually buy into the misconceptions and enforce such arrogant, unwarranted regulations! Egads.

Education and enlightenment is key. Thanks to this board for keeping the faith and spreading the word for the sake of all the great, tech saavy students I know and admire.

- iMight

[Ca$h68]

My school, UW of Platteville, has a CRAPLOAD of macs... but here's the thing. They dont get any good software for them, and they have those CRAPPY 1 button puck mice on them, so nobody ever uses them. There is one lab with over 30 B&W G3s collecting dust, complete with monitors... and.... since nobody uses them, I would SOOOO love to just borrow one for a semester. Think anyone would notice? Oh man. That'd be freaking cool.

Ca$h

[AAPl Shareholder]

I hate east coast schools.

Almost every school in CA is a Mac school. I know today in class a teacher asigned a Windows program and over half of the class got pissed. It was great!

Over on the east coast there are a lot of schools that focus on stupid material that most students will never use. Students simply jump through hurdles in order to gain a BA or MA "status". I'd much rather be tought by old "did too much acid" hippys in CA. At least they try to improve your soul and they use macs.

[bojangles]

I go to Purdue University (the main campus, in West Lafayete, IN). Every summer, PUCC (Purdue U. Computing Center) upgrades a bunch of the labs. When I got back, this past Monday, I stopped by one of my old favorites ��a PowerTower 120 Lab in the Physics Building ��only to find that they had actually downgraded the lab to a bunch of crappy Compaqs! That was the last PUCC Mac lab in that building, so needless to say, I'm ticked.

(There are still countless Mac labs ��including several Yosemite and/or iMac labs ��in the building, but they each require enrollment in a certain course, to get in.)

Anyway, as a Computer Graphics student, I've often complained about the School of Technology and their refusal to use Macs. Every CG lab on campus is stocked with 200-MHz HP's and Gateways running NT 4. Even the so-called "high-end" lab runs NT (although there are a few IRIX stations); it just has scanners and jaz drives.

Bottom line: Purdue has Macs, but they're inexplicably dying out. The English and Physics departments are fighting hard to keep them (I know of one Physics professor with a G4 in his office, and my Technical Writing class is in a Yosemite lab), but the School of Technology has gotten rid of them under the guise of "making it easier."

So if that's the case, then why, in one of my summer classes, did every zip drive in the room refuse to work on a regular basis? And why did I have to take an Incomplete in a class (I finished it a few weeks later) when five different NT stations in the "high-end lab" kept me from finishing my final project? (Between the five of them, I suffered 17 debilitating crashes in just over an hour.)

Whenever something like that goes wrong, the techies just say, "Oh, that's NT acting up again."

Do me a favor, guys:
Get a life. Get a Mac.

[This message has been edited by bojangles (edited 08-25-2000).]

Originally posted by RWoelk:
Thanks for your post. Yeah, I think it's time I call my old university Temple U. I would like to know where they stand these days. My days as a student there preceded personal computing, but I would still like to know where they stand.

I just left Temple University, where I had been a faculty member in biology. I can tell you that they are tolerant of Macs, and support both Macs and PCs. However, all of the campus-wide purchases are for Windows machines -- the library, for instance, is crammed full of PCs for student use. As you might guess, that does send a message to the students.

One interesting exception: there is a faculty resource center that provides equipment to instructors for preparing presentations and that sort of thing. It's almost all Mac.

[drewbert]

Well a few days ago here at UNC-CH was the first day that incoming freshmen were required to own a Windows laptop. Some of us fought long and hard a couple years ago to stop that restriction, based on a wide variety of objections, but the administration won out.

One of the various problems we had with the whole idea was that they never spelled out exactly what they planned to have students *doing* with their computers in the classroom. Laptops would be impractical for note-taking, not to mention noisy, and problematic if any crash.

Finally a few months ago, an English class of students using laptops as a test case had a small presentation on their experiences. During class, they were networked together, passing writing drafts and comments to each other over the network. The students seemed to enjoy the experience, but I'm not sure how it was supposed to be an improvement over verbal communication.

The only reason I can see where Macs might be at a disadvantage here would be in the realm of file-sharing - which unless I'm mistaken would require DAVE, which I find too expensive and difficult to set up.

OS X might rectify that situation, though I doubt that that alone would change the minds of any university suits.

I go to RPI where this will be the second year they require incoming students to purchase laptops. They are overhauling the curriculum to make use of them in all the classes. For my major, electronic media, it is quite useful to have in class.

However, the school has cut some sort of deal with IBM and they provide quite a deal for students. 2,500 for a top of the line thinkpad stocked with software. They do not FORCE you to buy this one however, so last year I bought the powerbook 400... evidently only 1% of students did not buy the ThinkPad. At least we have a choice, and a small contingent of mac users.

Apple needs to strengthen its Apple Campus Rep program so wintel users can see the advantages to using a mac...

ketan
[email protected]

[tombarta]

There are a number of important issues here.

1) Is forcing people to use Wintels discrimination? Well, yes, it is-- and it is cruel but not unusual. But I DOUBT that it would count as any kind of LEGAL discrimination.

2) Do students NEED the Wintels. PROBABLY not. I work for a very evil Mac-hating Luddite fortune 500 company. You know what? I can do 95% of what I need to do from an 8100/80 in the library, albeit using Microsuck stuff like Office 98 (which I HAD TO PURCHASE myself, on eBay). Mostly I use the Dell piece of s**t 200/ PII Optiplex in my office for dealing with my NT password.


3) Can alumni make a difference? Probably! Schools LOVE alumni. Alumni= donations. We should ALL make sure our Alma Maters are not run by Luddite IT guys. Mine is OK-- MIT-- as far as I have heard.

4) It would be GREAT to have a comprehensive database of univerities and companies that are technology-firendly. MacNN, Maccentral and others comment on "forward" and "Backward" migrations, but I wiosh I could get one big list. I would be out of MY company in an instant, if I had a list of friendly places to look towards. Unfortunately, most companies in my field have been Wintel-ized. Apple's dark years, around the time of flaming 5300's and the introduction of that lipstick-on-a-pig OS, Win95, have greatly thinned the ranks in enterprise.

5) Contact Apple. Probably a useless action, but, you never know.

My 5 cents....

[Oneota]

I'm a student IT worker at Gustavus Adolphus College, and I would say we're about 40/60 as far as Macs/Windows percentage is concerned. While the CS department has Intel hardware, there's not a Microsoft logo to be found--it's all Linux.

Much of the IT department here is Mac-friendly, with only a couple people bantering about the Mac's shortcomings (and they're just kidding around; no one here really cares what kind of computer you use).

One of the advantages of a small Midwestern college, I guess!

[tombarta]

Addendum:

Oh yes: DAVE IS REALLY hard to configure-- no doubt due to stupidities involving Windows networking-- but once you do, it is a GREAT product. It took me 2 hours to get my copy running...

I work and was a student at the University of Minnesota and I am happy to say that they, one of the largest(in terms of enrollment) Universities in the US fully support both Macintosh and Windows platforms.

<br><br>The majority of centrally funded computing facilities have a mixture of MacOS and WIndows(even NeXT in some cases!).

<br><br> We also have email kiosks around campus which are all iMacs.

<br><br>How does the saying go: The world speaks IP. It has been my experience that IT departments which say they cannot support Macs just plain don't know anything about the platform. It has been proven here, and will continue to be proven as proprietary networking disolves and applications become web-based, that the Macintosh can work effectively within a windows or even more disparate OS environment.

<Br><br>Don't give up the fight, the MacOS is coming back into the game and this time it isn't leaving.

<br><Br>OSX will out do them all.

I agree with ketanvakil, I graduated from University of Northern Iowa, and the Apple Campus Rep needed a major upgrade. I worked at getting a 7100/80AV from this "system" for an entire summer just to save myself $200-$300. The Apple Campus rep never returned my calls, and I had to be "pushy" just to get my Apple loan info in (I just finished paying for my 7100 last month).

I still keep in touch with some of the Graphics faculty, and the Art department is still entirely Mac, but Macs have become extinct in all other areas of the school.

It would be really nice to see some REAL incentive pushed by Apple into University-level awarness of Apples benifit and presence.

At Ball State University, where I am a Macintosh Systems Administrator and Consultant, there is also a bend towards the Windows platform, but they recognize that the University has an obligation to support students and faculty, not computers.

Our public labs are about 40% iMac, and students are welcome to use Windows or Mac in their dorm room, or in off-campus University housing.

Students accepted with distinction are given computers here at Ball State - and an iMac is one of the choices. If you prefer a laptop, they will give you the credit and you can buy one.

For a midwest University I think BSU is pretty open-minded about this whole Windows-Mac thing. For anyone to try to force a campus to go all one way of the other shows (a) a lack of willingness to do their job, or probably worse, (b) ignorance of how to do their job.

When a student comes to a University, they are not told what to major in, or really what classes to take. They are not told how to study or do their work. These are choices. Computer platform is as much a personal decision as what clothes to wear, and which car to drive. The important thing is that the task is completed, not how.

It is high time that we learn that there never be one computer for all of us. Those in the position of support must dismiss their personal bias and do what they are being paid to do - support faculty and students' use of computers on campus. If you don't want to do this, find another job and get out of the way.

Richard Human, Jr.
Macintosh System Administrator & Consultant
(Yes - I do Windows!)
Ball State University

Our IS people shove Wintel boxes on students, largely for two reasons:

1) They only know Wintel, and fear/resist/resent the retraining involved in working with other platforms.

2) The arcane nature of Windows enhances their own position and job security. (For instance, every fall one IS worker subcontracts to hook students up to the campus network at $50-$150 per machine. The subcontrator is the IS worker herself.)

I believe Apple can make major inroads by providing side-by-side const-of-support and total-cost-of-ownership figures directly to financial officers, bypassing the IS people. At most schools these days, financial considerations are primary; and in this respect Apple makes a compelling case.

I work as a support tech at another school in Minnesota, University of St. Thomas. (Minnesota really seems to be a fairly un-anti-mac state as far as Higher Ed goes.) Here at UST, were are about 30% Mac and have good Mac support. Almost every decision made takes into account how this affects both platforms. Unfortunately, we are an NT and MS Shop, and have a campus agreement with MS, so that really affects how Mac's are supported. If there is a solution that is NT based, that's 99% what will be chosen.

Now we have come up with some fairly ingenious solutions to some of our problems, while others we have no control over. We use Outlook (not OE) accross campus and have no control over how crappy the Mac version is. On the other hand, each student, faculty ad staff member gets a personal storage space and a personal web space. These shares are automatically mapped when a user logs into NT, but on the Mac side, there was no good easy way for a user to get to their space. So we made one. Using Dave for Windows networking, we developed an Apple script that launches at start-up in which a user can log in, on any mac on campus, and have their storage and web space automatically mounted on the desktop. It works really well, and brings Mac's as close to level with PC's as we can manage. Now it's in MS's hands to fix the rest.

Go Mac Go.
ijohn

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in higher regard those who think alike rather than those who think differently."
--Neitze

[gregn]

I attend a very prominent west coast university which is primarily Mac based. All residential clusters and other campus clusters are Macs, and most engineering or comp. sci based courses require work to be done on Macs. PCs are invading the administration side slowly, but people are pretty happy with the Macs. Students are allowed to have any machine they want, and all are supported. It seems absolutely ridiculous that schools A) require computers, and B) require a specific type of computer. Many people cannot afford a computer, much less a new one. In the interim, you can probably bring your mac and hook it up to the network yourself.

Anyway, I wouldn't have gone to a school that was PC based. I wouldn't be able to handle it.

[Fyzycyst]

I just took my daughter to start her freshman year at VCU (Va. Commonwealth Univ.) yesterday. Next year is when they start requiring all incoming freshmen to have computers. They seem to be platform-agnostic (I don't know the distribution of CPUs on campus.)
The interesting thing was that it looked like a fair percentage (25-50%) had G3 or G4 Macs, so at least in this limited environment, the media-reported marketshare numbers are WAY off! BTW, I don't know if all schools are like this, but there's an ethernet connection in every room in almost all the dorms.
Comment: VCU's "recommended" system is really pretty much top of the line. On the Mac side, we're talking G4's for desktops and 400+MHz G3 for laptops. *GULP* All I did was get a Duo 280c, minidock and a few other trinkets off of eBay, put it together w/ my old Stylewriter and that was it. It can use an older version of Office and Navigator 4.06 for the web... She can write papers, do web browsing & e-mail, so why is the bar set so high?? It's not like she's going to be doing physics/engineering or anything CPU intensive. *sigh*

Why is every one being so secretive about the school they're talking about? I go to the Univ. of Oregon, and it sounds like it's pretty much the same here as far as some Macs in a Windows world. The thing that frustrates me is that Intel and Microsoft and just giving the school money, lots of it, in the terms of free hardware and software. We're talking to the tune of millions of dollars. There is no way the guys at the school are going to turn down that kind of gift. Problem is, they turn around and expect the same thing from Apple. So they've got new machines from Intel, then they have to spend the money that they would have spent on new Apples supporting the new Wintel boxes and buying software for them. Turns out they "free" gift wasn't so free anymore.

Oh yeah, here's the kicker: the department that took Intel's cash: graphic design. Let's show all our kids how to use Windows because when they graduate, they will only be going into an industry that is at least 75% loyal Mac users.

[macntory]

A few years ago I had a conversation with Jack Rubinstein, an Apple VP, I believe of Marketing. I told him that very often during our periods of high success we unwittingly plant the seeds of our own destruction. I mentioned that Apple was losing ground at our school site. This was two-fold: (1) Apples were getting the reputation of crashing all the time and (2) Apples reputation for prompt and reliable service was diminishing. Looking back over these last two or three years, Apple has gone fromn 7.6.1 to 9.0.4 and everyone of these systems started out with bugs that took the joy out of computing and during which time Apple went to a very limited service mode. Look at the other platform during the same time: Windows 98 remained the one program, no new OS, and it was stable (more than any one of Apple�s) and Dell has replaced Apple with its comittment to lifetime free support. Hello Apple...
I am a proud owner of a Powerbook Firewire. I still love my Apple products; but, my hand is not buried in the sand! Just consider me the Loyal Opposition, a very important function as Apple decisions may be made behind moated gates.

[mjpaci]

I went to William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA. At the time I graduated (1994), the labs were 90% Windows (3.1 on 386s). The college has since moved all labs and administrative stuff over to NT. Faculty can have whatever they want to do their jobs. I believe students can have whatever they want as well. I also think support suck whether you have a Mac or a PC.

Right after I graduated the Physics department set up a lab with then top of the line PowerBooks and other Macs. One night someone broke in and stole all of the PBs and some of the desktops. At least they had good taste.

Also, few people know this, but William and Mary is a state school, so they were required to do Windows for some/all Administrative tasks as per some state contract.

I've taken classes at Harvard in the evening and got to know a bunch of their techies. Mac's make up a decent proportion of the machines on campus. Harvard has enough money to support whatever platforms the students want. Linux, BSD, VMS, Minix, NT, whatever.

A good lithmus (sp?) test for the viability of the Macintosh platform is Dartmouth College. If they ever go PC, it's time to dump the Mac and move to Linux.

--Mike Paci

PS: Why are people being secretive about the names of their colleges?

I encountered this same situation at the University of Iowa business school. At one time, the UofI was one of the largest installed bases of Macs, I recall seeing it at #2 on the MacWeek 100 list, #1 was Dartmouth, I think. But anyway, the Business school required all students to buy a Windows PC. A friend of mine wanted to buy a Mac, but was afraid he'd be locked out of assignments.
I investigated the situation, and it turns out that their "Windows" requirement was really a "Microsoft Office" requirement. And of course, MSOffice runs fully crossplatform, so there was no legitimate need to force the draconian Windows-only rule. I told him I'd personally support him, and if there was anything he couldn't run on his Mac, I'd find some way for him to run it. I never had one single call for support, everything ran fine. His professors never knew he wasn't running a PC. He spent his time at school doing his work instead of wasting all his time keeping Windows up and running.
I don't have a problem with requiring specific applications, but these ARE crossplatform apps, there is no reason to require a specific OS.
It might interest you to know that I'm currently doing a web-development job on my Macs, the client is a mixed IBM AS/400 and Microsoft shop, they have no Macs. I set up Virtual PC with Windows 2000 on a Powerbook G3/500, went up to their office and plugged right into their network. I have it plugged into my home office, I can prototype the web pages in Dreamweaver UltraDev on MacOS, write ASP scripts on the Mac, then shoot them over to the Powerbook, where they run on MS IIS 5. I take the laptop into their office, demonstrate the pages running on the Windows environment that they are familiar with, then close it down to make revisions on Dreamweaver. Then I plug into their net, dump all the data over to their AS/400 and IIS servers, and the user with a PC version of Dreamweaver can take over and make revisions.
In this day and age, everyone has to be crossplatform. Locking people in to one platform is professional suicide. The Mac is the king of crossplatform work, and it always has been. Currently, on my Powerbook, I'm running MacOS9, Linux, Windows2k and Windows98SE. I can go anywhere, plug into any net, and do anything. I'd like to see a PC user make that same claim.

Here in the School of Music at U. of Oklahoma, I'm happy to say that we're essentially ALL Mac. I'd say well over 90% of the faculty offices have Macs, the administrative offices have a mixed bag of iMacs and beige G3s, and our 2 computer/midi labs are full of Mac clones (in one) and the all-in-one G3s (which are butt ugly in my opinion, but oh well...). The only PC's I've seen are just catalog terminals in the music library and one professor who obviously isn't with it . No G4s to speak of yet, but there are a few new iMac DV SE's, that I got to set up since my professor knows I'm a Mac guy and spread the word .

In the rest of the campus I can't say Mac representation is quite as strong. The biggest computer lab on campus has about a 2:3 ratio of Macs (Beige G3 towers) to PCs (all Dells), which is quite good really, but most of the smaller labs are either entirely PC, or have a few ancient Mac 7100s that just aren't a fair comparison to the newer PCs.

I go to Boston University, and have found myself much in the minoroty with a Mac. I am a loyal Apple Lover, though, and refuse to switch over. There is no requirement that students buy PCs, but of the many labs on campus, only a few of those in the College of Communications are Apples, and one in the College of Arts and Sciences. The COM labs that are Macs are reserved for classes save one, which is made up of ancient machines incompatible with modern software!
Printing was often more of an ordeal for me than writing the papers in question.

I teach for a campus in the California State University system. Not very long ago, M$ virtually very nearly bought the entire CSU (I suspect only the DOJ filings caused their exit from an alliance that would have made a very few companies the IT 'standard' for the 20-odd campus system).

My experience is that the CSU largely snorts at Mac users and has all but eliminated them due to the following 'argument': (1) we need to 'standardize' on one platform (why is never justified). (2) there are more apps for Windoze systems than for Mac. Therefore, we will (3) standardize on PCs and (4) force everybody, regardless of disciplinary needs, to use the same 5 Microsoft apps.

And who's making these sweeping decisions? On my campus, it's largely a committee of everybody *but* folks who know anything whatsoever about computers. We just hired an IT manager who has NO formal background in technology because he was the campus president's buddy. This is a guy whose division approved the purchase of PCs for a 'multimedia' lab comprised of machines costing $3,000 each but HAD NO SOUND CARDS, machines that were placed in a very small room that, in winter, was a good 85 degrees.

How bright are these people? Well, when they dumped our aging VMS system, real techie people advised them to go unix. However, being devotees of the M$ religion, they bought an NT box to handle email for 20,000+ students and 3,000+ faculty/staff. One NT box couldn't do it, so in came a second NT box. Only, now we needed something to coordinate the two NT boxes and so ended buying, you guessed it, the unix box we should have bought in the first place. Think of it as 1 system for the price of 3 at the public's expense.

Mind you, we're considered a 'model' university for going high tech.

[pdot]

My school has been trying to save money by using only Gateway computers. Yes, they support all wintel machines, but they standardize on gateway machines (for labs, library, etc) to make sure parts are compatible, etc. We lost AppleTalk last year. Funny thing is that the chemistry dept. is made mostly of macintoshes and that's one of the depts. that we're most proud of. Oh, I'm a MacOS person myself, in case that wasn't obvious.
You guys can try to do a survey/petition of how many students that use the MacOS and see if it's a large enough percentage that it'll give the right person the right idea. I'm in a really small college so it doesn't work for me. I personally don't care about MacOS support here because I don't need no stinkin' support. Most the the "Mac support" in the past were Wintel support people anyway so they tend to be naive about the ways of the Macintoshes.

The College where I work is implementing a laptop requirement next year, PC only.

Now before you riot, keep in mind there are some good reasons. I should say I'm a Mac person by birth and have had to become cross-platform to survive. I know what I will have in my home (mac), but I also know what I have to use with at work (mac+pc).

The reasons are due to the profession taught at the college: Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Regionally, the firms are mainly PC. Students graduating from this program tend to work in the area and need to have PC experience.

It is also driven by the software taught in the curriculum. Several years ago almost every class was in the Mac Lab (we have 1 Mac Lab, 1 PC Lab, and 1 mixed lab). The PCs were used for a few special courses. With the PPC AutoCAD stopped devloping for the Mac (hopefully with OS X this will change) and that led to a decline in Mac use in the courses. Fast forward to today and 90-95% of the classes using the labs are using the PC lab. The main software -- autocad, 3dStudio viz, lightscape, arc/info -- are PC only. Students do use PageMaker and Photoshop on both, but NT's multithreading/multitasking/crash-proofness makes them "feel" faster to the students.

Now I am familiar with the Architosh site and am even linked to it off the lab web pages -- before you ask.

I guess my point was that sometimes it's almost out of the hands of the institution. The profession may drive the platform and the schools need to prepare students for their chosen profession.

But it's good to hear other people's stories here.

[RWoelk]

I wish to thank each and everyone of you for taking the time to reply. I am not sure I have come to any conclusions, but it's fascinating reading all your experiences. Keep'em coming



------------------
Rocke "Why yes, I have brought our
network down." Woelk

Only the educated are free!-Epictetus

Al of those are not as bad as teh case of the University of Moncton..

It used to be a hard place for Macs since they were unsupported.
The biggest users were art department, student councils, chemistry and multimedia departments.
Now this year is tortally different.
The university's administration got RID OF ALL THE MACS. They didn't listen to any complaints and it is now illegal to use a mac on campus.

The main issue for this is mostly DHCP support. There has been a petition and the onloy thing the different user groups could obtain was for two macs to be used in th emultimedia department... and they must not be connected to th enetwork at any time.

They are now thinking about starting a laptop program... of course it wouldn't vbe a big loss that mac's wouldn't be allowed in those cause macs are forbidden on campus anyway..

Anyone aware of a situation as bad as this?

I must say that Apple has no reps in that area and that support from the only local store is really crappy.. But still..

[MacOS761]

The only reason I can see where Macs might be at a disadvantage here would be in the realm of file-sharing - which unless I'm mistaken would require DAVE, which I find too expensive and difficult to set up.

Of course, it's really easy to network and fileshare between two Macs... Airport network with filesharing on and you're set! And if the network is set up correctly, you don't eve need DAVE, we have an NT server at work that handles file sharing between macs and PC's.

Anyway, I've been at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) for a whole week now, and the situation is pretty average. I don't know what the percentages would be like across campus, but judging by the labs I have seen, I'd say about 40/60. Lots of the "PC's" are UNIX boxes of course...

Intel has given us a lot of money too... we have a chip fabrication facility that was funded by them... very interesting. Hopefully some of our students will take the benefits and then use what they've learned to get jobs at IBM or Mot! After all, Mot headquarters are ony 2 1/2 hours from here (5 min from where I come from ). That kind of bothers me, but there are good signs. The computer store at the student Union is MAC ONLY and they have posters up all the time and even demo stations sometimes. They even have huge ads in the University papers.

I've said it before, but... with UNIX being the platform of choice in engineering departments across the nation (world? -- btw, I'm a CS major) and the recent flood of interest in Linux as a desktop OS, the Mac OS is set to take a large portion of the college engineering base by storm... and we all know where programmers and system designers and so forth come from, right? Colleges, of course! That's why it's so important for Macs to be on college campuses... idealistic or not, college students set the tone for the next generation of everything.

Doing my part...

------------------
We're supposed to sing about piraty things!

This topic is quite timely; yesterday I was skimming my college's computer center website. (I go to Knox College, a small liberal arts college in Illinois, by the way.) I noticed something that hadn't been there in the past: a little notice "strongly encouraging" the use of Windows PCs to ensure compatibility with the school network. This distresses me, quite frankly.

Being a loyal Mac user, if I had read this as a prospective student, I would have been "strongly encouraged" to apply elsewhere. As a first-year student last year, I was a little discouraged to hear that, during the summer, the school had gone from 50/50 Mac/PC to 30/70 Mac/PC. Still, Macs were welcomed. The 30 percent Macs were primarily brand new Grape iMacs, and some of the profs were using B&W G3s. I hear that some G4s reside deep in the science building. Macs can access network applications, print to networked laser printers, and access Appletalk zones and servers. Now, I'm scared that these services will slip into obscurity over the coming years.

Like some of the rest of you, I have to wonder why. The Macs on campus can access the NT storage accounts the computer center sets up for students. While Windows is the dominant platform on campus, for both faculty and students, there is a decent number of Mac users. The computer center would certainly be alienating a sizable chunk of the school if they dropped Mac support, or worse, forbade the use of Macs. Last year, when I moved into my dorm room, I was on the network without a problem in less than 5 minutes. Meanwhile, I listened to Windows users complain about difficulties with network configurations several weeks into the school year. With the announcement of the $799 iMac last month, Apple has further strengthened the iMac as the ideal computer for computer labs--quiet, easy to set up and move, excellent mouse and keyboard, built in ethernet, excellent screen, compatible with MS Office, extremely competitive price, fashionable, etc. Schools can set up a 30 iMac lab, complete with a few laser printers, for under $25,000. Easy set up, easy maintenance.

I plan to talk to the head of computing services upon my return to campus next week and inquire whether I'll be able to keep using my B&W G3, or if I should transfer. (Well, maybe that't too extreme... but we'll see.)

joebotx

[pmcd]

This is an interesting topic and one which is important for the future of the Mac. The main reason why universities have been scaling back on Mac support has been software. In almost every academic area developers have frozen Mac suppport. Most engineering software is no longer available for the Mac. In addition, SAS, SPSS, MathSoft (Splus/MatLab) all stopped supporting the Mac. Scientific Workplace (a frontend to LaTeX and Maple) stopped support at version 2.5 . Given these facts it is hard to imagine universities not being careful with respect to platform support. Years ago the Mac was well ahead in networking but fell behind in tcp use around the win95 time. At one point the Mac made a great frontend to Unix workstations but this became less important as NT took off and Unix itself had competition in the workstation environment (with NT). If people really needed a client then NT, or even win9x, made logical sense.

Had the Mac OS continued to evolve along the lines of System 7,8, etc...then it would have been a rapid end to the Mac in higher education (and then down the line). The lack of protected memory and preemptive multitasking (though perhaps less important than the memory management issue) was becoming unacceptable. Programs simply could not be run properly on an OS that couldn't handle memory management properly. Porting became the norm as opposed to development first on the Mac. What I am saying is that universities outgrew the traditional MacOS and Mac's were then relegated to media services and the like (a first step towards the end, almost similar to the Amiga).

Fortunately, Apple is back in a great position at this point. OSX, essentially nextstep in consumer clothing, provides Apple with an OS that will interest universities and will encourage development of unique programs. Having a complete BSD (and hopefully Apple doesn't do something crazy like restricting shell use) and the NeXT frameworks makes it likely that the cheap ports from windows to the Mac will stop. It is absolutely essential that the Mac regain a unique personality and have development return to it. If all the Mac OS does is to run late and weak Windows' ports then there is no point in having Mac's at all. The path that the new Apple has chosen is the optimal one to ensure this does not happen. For this to work though traditional Mac users will have to adapt a bit and Mac developers can go a long way by committing themselves to true OSX software instead of the rather lukewarm reception they have given Apple so far. Carbon is there as evidence that they were unwilling to support the Mac when it was necessary. But that's history and having Carbon (and the Finder written in carbon which is terrible) is better than nothing.

Linux has given Apple some breathing room. If Apple gets the the pieces together properly, the future will indeed be bright for OSX in universities. Unix has always had a great appeal to academics and it has usually been with a great deal of reluctance that people have gone the Windows' route.

The very best way to get Mac's back in force in universities would be to have academic bundles of software provided with the hardware. An example would be Appleworks, Textures, X-Windows and Mathematica. In addition, Apple should buy some key scientific software companies and include the software free with Mac purchases (while continuing to sell to PC users). Microsoft has been using the opposite approach: sell software with cheap hardware. Apple is in a unique position to sell hardware with inexpensive/free software.

Philip McDunnough
Professor of Statistics
University of Toronto
{My opinions are mine alone}

[Jaharmi]

I work in technical support (among other hats ...) at regional university in Western New York.

We have a large number of Macs, but the percentage is dwindling in the student and staff areas. While we've gotten more Macs on campus in the last year than any other, we've also been dropping in overall Mac percentage. We're about 30% Mac, 70% Windows now.

Standardization, from my point of view, is driven by costs. It costs money to support lots of platforms, and you must realize that most large academic institutions have a broad range of things to support. We still have DEC OpenVMS, we have UNIX, and lots more ... before you even start talking about desktop computers! So that translates into big costs, a lot of which are in personnel, to support lots of computers.

So standardization, because you limit what you're supporting, can save money.

I do like the comment waaaay up there about supporting students and faculty and staff, not computers. Sometimes it's hard to see it that way when your IT budget is under assault, or when you're shortstaffed and can't meet your mission. Believe it or not, it can also be difficult to find really qualified, enterprise-level Mac support professionals. (I know a lot of ex-Apple people ... ) There's generally a bigger pool of people who've support the various Windows platforms, or people who think they're qualified because they have Macs at home. And, heaven forbit, getting a Mac support person who doesn't know what he/she is doing can leave you exposed to problems while you search for a replacement.

Plus, in academe, you often have two kinds of people to provide support -- one for your faculty and staff, and one for your computer labs.

I lay part of the blame on Apple and the way it has developed/dominated this market. Apple does not do a good job, except at the local level, of providing system administration support. Apple focuses its attention on consumers and educators and media professionals and developers. There's very little help coming from the greater Apple in dealing with system administration and making Macs work in an enterprise. And higher ed is becoming, if it isn't already, an enterprise.

Look at big problems universities are facing. File sharing and transfer. Human resource and financial systems. Employee time cards and payroll. Single sign on. Roaming profiles. Technology support. A lot of the big solutions in these spaces simply work better (or at all) and/or are easier to deploy on Windows.

Apple could gain a lot of traction with a few simple things:

Support Windows file sharing standards -- SMB/CIFS.

Get vendors like Oracle, PeopleSoft, and Kronos to have really, truly Mac-compatible client systems for their big back-end database applications.

Build Kerberos support and logins into the OS. Support roaming profiles stored on Windows-centric servers. Support logins to Windows servers. Provide pluggable/replaceable ways to log into your system.

Get help desk software vendors to suppor the OS, somehow. If you have Mac support, but your IT department has to have PCs to check problem tickets from around the university, you're screwed. (We went with Peregrine ServiceCenter for its Mac support, now cancelled ... )

Yeah, a lot of this can be done on the Mac. And some can be done in Virtual PC (but if you have to resort to that, you've lost). But Apple has missed all of these things repeatedly over the past, and is seemingly doing no better now.

Another thing Apple misses is training. By not focusing on the IT market, Apple fails to provide the kind of training you get through Microsoft Press and the whole Microsoft training infrastructure. Having a Mac-oriented equivalent to the MCSE would be a big step. And advertise great software you have that will make administrators' lives easier -- Apple Software Restore (macsetup.editthispage.com), Apple Network Assistant, stuff like that.

It's not that higher education is not accepting Macs. It's that higher ed is faced with increased technology demands, the same budgets, and frankly -- even I can see it, and I'm as thoroughly MacAddicted as you can get -- the interconnectedness sought nowadays at universities is just squeezing Apple out. If you can't accomplish your work on a Mac, or if the software to do it won't be out for another year, why not get a Windows PC?

In many cases, it's just vendors failing to support the Mac. They do that for various reasons, but whatever those are, they feel its in their best financial interested. In some cases, it's Apple's lack of infrastructure in the OS that makes it harder to write the software.

Don't expect Mac OS X to be the magical savior, either. Although I hope it will alleviate some problems, it's not the immediate answer.

------------------
Jeremy J. Reichman, aka "Jaharmi"

Not related to schools but business. I work for The largest radio broadcast company in the world(over 900 radio stations) and last year we were told we could upgrade to an NT version of ProTools for our production studios but not a Mac. After some strong arguing we were allowed to get 3 new G4's. Two I set up, one for me and 1 for another radio station. both have been pretty much flawless. The third which came from a well respected audio workstation vendor had problems which I fixed a few months ago.
Work gets done, low probability of virus which brought our corporate Outlook e-mail system to a grind this year. Many pc's in company got zapped by those while we continued to work away.

The new 500mhz Dell pc's would not shut down or reboot without freezing which I think after 6 months IT finally got figured out. Duh.

And the school system my daughters attend is slowly phasing out the platform. Yet the Compaq's they bought are filled with bugs and crash much! So they hire more IT support to fix the problems! stupid.
I would love to go in the computer lab at the elemantary school and set it up new iMac's for them.
Part of the problem is Apple's distribution.

I live in the center of Cleveland but you have to drive 20-25 minutes to east or west side to find a Mac at either CompUsa or Microcenter. So in a suburb of 76,000 there is a Best Buy or Circuit city within 10 minutes plus many other pc stores. Out of all my daughters friends only 1 has a Mac the rest are pc'd. Hopefully before Christmas CC will begin selling the Mac again. Can't say I completely blame the school systems. Kind of a supply and demand issue with parents For the hardware and software.

Even though we know there are many fine programs available the public perception is still not a lot of software available. Where would Coke and Pepsi be without massive marketing campaigns and having their logo's everywhere. I see Compaq, IBM and Dell spots along with the clone infomercials everyday on TV.
Apple does very limited TV, Print, Radio advertising usually only in 4th Quarter. There are many more cracks in the armor that contribute to the attrition. They are back but not far enough. And we could use more CIO and IT Managment from the Mac sector in positions of power at major universities and Company's.

Bill



[This message has been edited by MDB (edited 08-25-2000).]

I am a senior at the University of Florida. I am a computer science major, and about two years UF tried to implement a Wintel requirement, but that has since been only a *recommendation*. The university was at odds with quite a few departments (namely the art department) and so each department makes its own reccomendation.

Many of the professors in the CISE department hate M$ and use Solaris. The great thing about that is that almost everything for Solaris can be found for the Mac (MATLAB, etc.)

I am a die-hard mac and linux user and will never switch to the dark side.

FYI-

There will be a new carbonized version of SPSS coming out in September! This will bring the Mac version equal to the Win version.

-Todd

I am a Ph.D. student at Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis. In my field (I am a biologist), Macs used to be really hot around here. It seems that, ever since Microsoft gave the University one million $$ and free Office and Windows, things have gone way downhill. Now, Macs are still well in use and not 'illegal" because of a few Mac faithful holdouts who refuse to give them up. However, most departments will not purchase Macs for investigators any longer. A friend of mine in the Pediatrics department wanted a mac, but the department would only get her a PC.

Macs continue to have a presence, but it is not at all because of support from the school or administrators. Its because some of us will never, ever be able to stand windows or give up the mac experience.

Its all based on $$. Make no mistake, the platform usage in education is absolutely critical, and MS as well as Intel know this. If Apple loses this war, they will completely lose the ability to grow their platform, period. I personally think it is all a big MS/Intel conspiracy, not so subtle here as 1 mill into the pocket of the university is a fairly obvious payoff. And I'm sure that whoever makes these decisions gets some benefit.

Apple had better get their shat together here, cut some deals with some universities or something.

[pmcd]

Well this is simply a port of the windows' version. In addition it does not bring the Mac version up to the Winodws' version. And, an OSX version will apparently be simply a Carbon port. This is a good start but SPSS10 has been available for the PC for some time. I wish SPSS's return to the Mac would have made me more optimistic. It didn't.

Philip

Originally posted by toddg:
FYI-

There will be a new carbonized version of SPSS coming out in September! This will bring the Mac version equal to the Win version.

-Todd

[pmcd]

I don't know about the conspiracy part but I agree in large part with your note. Higher education is a critical market for Apple. If Mac's are shut out there then it will filter down to high schools and then elementary schools and finally homes. It would be hard to justify buying a computer that is not used in business and not used in education. The stakes are quite high and it is all about $'s . Apple has to make the platform attractive to universities. One way as I mentioned above woul dbe to have academic bundles of sw included with the hardware.

Someone mentioned support issues. This is not in my opinion that critical. Universities are places for diversity. Moreover, having more MCSE's floating around universities is hardly the way to advance scientific thought. I'm not saying that people should avoid getting an MCSE, but in my opinion this type of person is typically not one that fits in well in an academic environment.

Finally, I have to mention the issue of a runtime Mac environment for workstations. This used to be a very appealing program for Sun, etc...users and it has never been replaced.

Philip

Originally posted by Bri:
I am a Ph.D. student at Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis. In my field (I am a biologist), Macs used to be really hot around here. It seems that, ever since Microsoft gave the University one million $$ and free Office and Windows, things have gone way downhill. Now, Macs are still well in use and not 'illegal" because of a few Mac faithful holdouts who refuse to give them up. However, most departments will not purchase Macs for investigators any longer. A friend of mine in the Pediatrics department wanted a mac, but the department would only get her a PC.

Macs continue to have a presence, but it is not at all because of support from the school or administrators. Its because some of us will never, ever be able to stand windows or give up the mac experience.

Its all based on $$. Make no mistake, the platform usage in education is absolutely critical, and MS as well as Intel know this. If Apple loses this war, they will completely lose the ability to grow their platform, period. I personally think it is all a big MS/Intel conspiracy, not so subtle here as 1 mill into the pocket of the university is a fairly obvious payoff. And I'm sure that whoever makes these decisions gets some benefit.

Apple had better get their shat together here, cut some deals with some universities or something.

[gmsmith]

Well I work for a small private university in the midwest. We are a 60/40 PC to Mac campus. Up until 3 years ago we were almost 90/10 Mac to PC. Want to know what the big change was attributed to? Our director (new 3 years ago) started asking what people wanted on their desktops. What TOOL did they need to perform their job functions. At times the decision was left to the Dean or Director of the department, but I think now it truely represents the usage patterns on campus. I am one of 2 people in the IT group that uses a Mac (the other one is the Webmaster).

I can see why universities would want to standardize on a particular platform or even a particular model. The reason is simple, support costs are lower when you support one platform as opposed to many, or one type of machine as opposed to all those mom and pop brands in the Intel world. We have also encountered a few problems where we wanted to roll out a new service to our clients and during the testing/developing phase found that service wasn't solidly cross-platform (we are still looking for a good cross-platform calendaring solution for 5000 users that ties to LDAP).

On the other side of the coin (the side I lean towards), we are an institution that should encourage learning and promote diversity. We can set out guidelines as to what you can and can't connect to our network, but it is important that they be inclusive. We are just this year (on a trial basis) supporting Linux in the residence halls. A university is about learning, not conformity. But at the same time the IT department needs to have good acceptable use and support documentation because we all work with limited budgets. And a department spread to thin, can be like the film that forms on the top of pudding in the refrigerator - REALLY BAD

And finally folks, let's not lose site of what we are talking about. A computer is a tool to do a job, it is not a religious debate, it is not a global issue...just a tool. It just so happens I prefer the BMW of tools

Peace,
G

I started out with my first computer just
2 1/2 years ago with a Win95 Compaq box. At the time I bought the machin, a friend of mine, who had formerly worked at Apple during their darkest days and is now at HP, told me that I wold not be hapy with the decision to get that machine. Needless to say his 'prophecy' came true and in only 6 months time I made the decicion to buy an iMac. (I just bought a PB 400 3 weeks ago too :-)

In the Spring of '99 I began my first semester of college at Adirindack Community College and to my great dismay I discovered that the computer labs were all equipped with Windows machines. The only exception was in the main lab where they had 2 PowerMacs that they had sitting in the corner that they didn't know how to properly set up, and as a result had no software installed on them and, for that matter, were not on the campus network.

I have since been able to get the Macs set up and running well, though I never did have time to get the machines onto the network, which runs Novelle 4.X.

I do find it disconcerting about the level of ignorance that is displayed by Windows users at the school. The administration is absulutely opposed to getting Macs on campus, even though there are a couple of people that I talked to that had cut their teeth computing on Macs.

One slight gleam of hope lies in the fact that the network admin. at school is a very open minded guy that will bend over backwards to get anyone who wanted set up with the computer of choice, if he would only be asked. This guy, I know from experience, will not let anything get the better of him and, if it poses a challenge to him, he will rise to the occasion and get it going one way or another.

I will soon be moving to the DC area and signing up at a new school. Does anyone know how the schools in the DC area are for suporting Macs? I am looking to sign up for Southeastern since I am getting a late start this year and need a school that starts late September. Does anyone know about Macs at Southeastern?

kreschurb

[pmcd]

Some people regard computers as tools, watches as tools, etc...Others have a certain attachment to the things that they work with. It isn't just about efficiency and certainly a university should be encouraging students to use the things which work best for them. The support issue is complicated as there are different types of support. One of the things that IT groups should keep in mind is that the systems are meant for the users and not for the IT group. That is, the object of the support group should not be to minimize their work but rather to make things better for the user.

I find it incredible that there would even be an issue over Linux being allowed on the network.Of course things become easier if you just have one OS, one manufacturer, one configuration and so on...This is everything a university should not be. The savings you get initially translates in small ways to less creative graduates over time.

The real danger in all of this is that knowledge is being moved to the digital arena at a very fast rate. Allowing one company to have control over that is somewhat distressing. The business efficiency types who have temporarily taken over the university system would have us all operate in ways which optimizes the bottom line. Learning for learning's sake has become a negative thing. It appears as though "relevant to whatever" is a requirement for things to be funded. Every now and then we go through these anti-intellectual moods. Now seems to be one of those.

One would hope that IT groups would slowly disappear from the student support part of their work. As computers are increasingly used in homes it will be less important to have network specialists for the student body. In fact you don't see groups on campus handling, in a major way, cable and phone support for students and that is the way it should be for computers.

A computer can be very personal, much like a watch or a pen, and I resent IT groups having any major say in personal computing. Let them simply handle the plumbing and support required for the day to day administration of the place.

Philip

Originally posted by gmsmith:



On the other side of the coin (the side I lean towards), we are an institution that should encourage learning and promote diversity. We can set out guidelines as to what you can and can't connect to our network, but it is important that they be inclusive. We are just this year (on a trial basis) supporting Linux in the residence halls. A university is about learning, not conformity. But at the same time the IT department needs to have good acceptable use and support documentation because we all work with limited budgets. And a department spread to thin, can be like the film that forms on the top of pudding in the refrigerator - REALLY BAD

And finally folks, let's not lose site of what we are talking about. A computer is a tool to do a job, it is not a religious debate, it is not a global issue...just a tool. It just so happens I prefer the BMW of tools

Peace,
G

Essentually, a Powerbook running Virtual PC with any of the windoz platforms installed is a windoz notebook. The young man has no reason to sell his Powerbook and buy an inferior pc notebook.

[pmcd]

I really doubt that. VPC is nice but it has limits. Try running Linux on it. The faster in MHz PC's become the harder it will be for VPC to run even routine applications. Unless the PowerPC speeds up a lot you really have to think in terms of hardware for emulation. Unfortunately all the hardware emulation products we have seen for the Mac have been far too expensive and they never did seem to get it right. It would be nice to see a VPC sw/hardware combination.

Philip

Originally posted by sewolf:
Essentually, a Powerbook running Virtual PC with any of the windoz platforms installed is a windoz notebook. The young man has no reason to sell his Powerbook and buy an inferior pc notebook.

[MacNZ]

All I am going to write is that I am starting college in the states soon and am buying a new PowerBook specially for the occassion. I don't care if the college gripes about it, I am takin it and using it.