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Henrico ditches Apple for Dell
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Nov 2003
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http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet...=1031782431108
From the local rag in Richmond, Henrico County, the first public school system in the US to distribute laptops to all HS and MS students, is ditching Apple in favor of Dell computers.
Any bets on how long they last on Windows?
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
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Oh, they'll last a good long time. As long as they're on the payroll, that is.
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You are in Soviet Russia. It is dark. Grue is likely to be eaten by YOU!
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Yeah, that hurt reading that news this afternoon. I hope other 1-to-1's are not going to follow suit...
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Clinically Insane
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They'll go broke in support costs. Just like at my new job. They have to buy spare parts constantly to fix the PCs that are just out of warranty. It's just terrible.
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"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
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Addicted to MacNN
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Originally Posted by olePigeon
They'll go broke in support costs. Just like at my new job. They have to buy spare parts constantly to fix the PCs that are just out of warranty. It's just terrible.
The same thing happens when you have an Apple (or any other) 1-to-1 initiative unfortunately, I know from experience.
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Clinically Insane
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Oh, few more things. Now that they've bought the laptops, they have to set up a multi-thousand dollar support contract with Lavasoft for Ad-Aware, or maybe Spybot (or both?), another support contact with Norton for AntiVirus.
Let's see if they're stupid enough to get the support contract through Microsoft. That's $316,000 in annual fees for XP Home edition, and another $158,000 for Office. So they're going to spend $474,000 a year, every year, for as long as they keep those laptops, on top of however much they're paying a year for the $17.9 million.
And the second they stick in a Windows Server on campus (which they probably will), uh oh, here come the CALs! There'll probably be about 20,000 devices around connecting to the server. I just selected the Desktop Suite one. Includes Office + Windows. So that's another $980,000.
Welcome to Windows Licensing! How do you wanna go broke today?
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"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
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Administrator
Join Date: Apr 2001
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Dell typically provides a full-service support commitment for schools. They do everything they can remotely, provide all the management and security software needed, and can even provide training for the sysadmins. It's not a bad deal, though it's not as cool as having Macs throughout the school system.
The market battleground is now in the schools, and it's one-on-one between Apple and Dell, since none of the other PC players is even bothering. Note that Dell's corporate and governmental (that includes schools) support is radically different-and much, much better-from their home/consumer support.
It could be worse. They could have gone with HP. They'd be belly up within the first semester. HP still makes Compaq laptops, and they're still merde.
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Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
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Do you realize how "GREAT" this is going to be for all the kids going to schools out there? From what I've heard, everybody HATES the apple computers and wants windows.. shame huh?
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Aloha
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Baninated
Join Date: Dec 2004
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They should not be allowed to vote.... or drive cars, or procreate.
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shouldn't take long before some kid downloads a virus from a porn site or email and takes the whole school down/
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Mac Enthusiast
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Originally Posted by Link
Do you realize how "GREAT" this is going to be for all the kids going to schools out there? From what I've heard, everybody HATES the apple computers and wants windows.. shame huh?
Unless this is sarcasm, I'm wondering how many Henrico county public school students you know. My fianc� used to teach in Henrico county, and a couple of my friends still do.
I don't think they're going to be too thrilled.
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Oh. My. Gosh.
Did anyone read one of the threads recently where we have gone through DELL HELL trying to get help for a brand new laptop UNDER EXTENDED EXPRESS WARRANTY?
Here is the thread to refresh your memory: DELL HELL.
All I need is 1 minute, just ONE MINUTE, alone in a room with the person who made the decision to put Dell in their schools.
What a huge disaster.
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Join Date: Apr 2001
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Cody, their school support structure is far different from the "kinda/sorta corporate" support structure you had to deal with. Completely different and of course worlds better.
nredman, any school worth the price of a pencil will have a very robust firewall and proxy system to keep the kids from downloading anything like that. In fact, the firewall at my son's school is locked down so tight that there are truly legitimate sites that they can't get to. No porn is getting there that way. And viruses aren't just downloaded-most of the time they're contained in malicious web sites (which will be in the firewall's "banned" category) or from emails-and that will be heavily monitored. The last time I used a school computer to browse the Internet without the school having a firewall that I was aware of, I used Linx-because that was ALL there was.
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Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
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Those poor children. Would someone think of the children.
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Originally Posted by ghporter
Cody, their school support structure is far different from the "kinda/sorta corporate" support structure you had to deal with. Completely different and of course worlds better.
nredman, any school worth the price of a pencil will have a very robust firewall and proxy system to keep the kids from downloading anything like that. In fact, the firewall at my son's school is locked down so tight that there are truly legitimate sites that they can't get to. No porn is getting there that way. And viruses aren't just downloaded-most of the time they're contained in malicious web sites (which will be in the firewall's "banned" category) or from emails-and that will be heavily monitored. The last time I used a school computer to browse the Internet without the school having a firewall that I was aware of, I used Linx-because that was ALL there was.
But they get to take the laptops home!
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Seaford, Virginia
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Originally Posted by olePigeon
Oh, few more things. Now that they've bought the laptops, they have to set up a multi-thousand dollar support contract with Lavasoft for Ad-Aware, or maybe Spybot (or both?), another support contact with Norton for AntiVirus.
Let's see if they're stupid enough to get the support contract through Microsoft. That's $316,000 in annual fees for XP Home edition, and another $158,000 for Office. So they're going to spend $474,000 a year, every year, for as long as they keep those laptops, on top of however much they're paying a year for the $17.9 million.
And the second they stick in a Windows Server on campus (which they probably will), uh oh, here come the CALs! There'll probably be about 20,000 devices around connecting to the server. I just selected the Desktop Suite one. Includes Office + Windows. So that's another $980,000.
Welcome to Windows Licensing! How do you wanna go broke today?
If they're smart, and we already know that they're not because of going with Dell, then they'll load Ubuntu on every single laptop. Free OS and then load the free Open Office on them all.
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Originally Posted by ghporter
Cody, their school support structure is far different from the "kinda/sorta corporate" support structure you had to deal with. Completely different and of course worlds better.
nredman, any school worth the price of a pencil will have a very robust firewall and proxy system to keep the kids from downloading anything like that. In fact, the firewall at my son's school is locked down so tight that there are truly legitimate sites that they can't get to. No porn is getting there that way. And viruses aren't just downloaded-most of the time they're contained in malicious web sites (which will be in the firewall's "banned" category) or from emails-and that will be heavily monitored. The last time I used a school computer to browse the Internet without the school having a firewall that I was aware of, I used Linx-because that was ALL there was.
This is simply not true. I used to be a sys admin in a company and we had Dells. Around 5% of the machines had hardware problems on arrival. Dell wouldn't take them back. Their hardware repair all around the world is outsourced. In Switzerland that means the technicians are from Unisys. The techs were so incompetent that after 7 service visits onsite, and after having replaced almost every component in the machines, including motherboard, cpu, ram and power supplies, they still couldn't find the source of the problem. I finally discovered that the problem was due to the fact that there was a design fault on the motherboard. During the time that those machines were down, Dell gave us no replacement machines. Their call center (in Germany since Indians don't speak German much) could not track our problems over a period of time. each call was basically a new attempt to fix the problem.
Now, this might just be Dell in Switzerland, but I doubt it.
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weird wabbit
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Quark has their call support center in India. It's imossible to understand most of them over the phone. Troubleshooting the QLA server took 3 days. Kept calling until we could get someone that we could understand.
The reason those kids "hated" the iBooks is because they coudn't install Counter-Strike. They actually had to use those laptops for *gasp* work.
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"…I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F. Roberts
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