[P1] Please help to stop the conversion to "Windoze".......

[David]

On 11/5/03 9:25 AM, "Ken Anderson" <kanderson at theglobal.net> wrote:

> Hello listers,
> 
> Please excuse the cross posting as I am again trolling for information.
> 
> I know on one of my lists I have read about the comparisons of Macs to
> Windows in both hardware and software.  I thought I saved every link
> that I came across in those threads but I seemed to have only a few.  I
> need all I can get right now.
> 
> At out school the new principle is a 'Windoze' guy and wants to start
> getting windows machines to mix in with our Macs network "because they
> are cheaper." Myself and others are wishing to stop the insanity but we
> are in need of information and sources of information that can be
> analyzed and an assessment made as to the TRUE costs for both platforms
> not to mention potential problems with the network or overall in
> general.
> 
Here are a few little tidbits to fuel the fire. My school made this move
officially last year although we could see the writing on the wall two years
ago.

So, we have about 150 machines in my building and about 400 district wide.
(We're a small rural school system.) With the exception of my lab there are
no more Macs in the building. That's 130 PCs - about twice as many as we had
last year.

Fact 1: Starting with the first day of school, job one for the technicians
has been running around putting out virus fires. We have Norton's anti-Virus
- a new subscription starting this year. However our superintendent knows
just enough to be dangerous. He has decreed that no automatic updating of
software can be done. It must be done by hand. This would be sad except
that:

Fact 2: Also starting with the first day of school, job two for the techs
has been to keep WinXP updated. This, as I'm sure you are aware, has been
quite fun for them. The superintendent's decree hasn't made the job any
easier but at least when the patch installation fails and the computer has
to be rebuilt, the tech is there to do it.

Fact 3: For the last 4 years we've had two fulltime techs, a technology
coordinator, and 3-5 student techs (who I train). This year the techs are so
snowed under that we've hired an outside contractor to augment them. Since
I'm on the district technology team I've seen the budget breakdown. We've
entered into a contract and pre-bought *discounted* service hours. (Yeah,
right.) That contract for the rest of the school year and the cost of the
cheap PC computers is more than the cost of the iMacs we didn't buy because
they were too expensive.

This doesn't count the number of computers that were DOA, that have died
within the first 9 weeks of school, the headache of training staff, plus the
additional decree that everyone must use Office. Gee, funny that no one
thought to buy software that could translate AppleWorks files into Word and
Excel files. And where did the database go? Oops, lost your presentations
too?

Interestingly, my memo to the technology coordinator, superintendent, and
board president (who pushed for this move) detailing the problems we would
face and how they could be avoided surfaced during the board elections this
year. My memo, which was branded as alarmist by the outgoing board, turned
out to be optimistic.

david