Maine buys 38,600 ibooks for Public Schools

Anderson Silva writes "I just found this piece of news on MacSlash, and since I live in Maine, and I own an ibook, I thought I would pass the word along: The Maine Learning Technology Endowment has announced today that Apple has won the bid to provide Maine 6th, 7th and 8th graders with Apple iBooks and Airport wireless connection points."

Comments

Re:They're not giving them away

[90XDoubleSide]

They're not giving them away, Actually the school has to pay for those ibooks

Will someone please explain to me how you can read the headline, "Maine buys 38,600 ibooks for Public Schools" and infer that they were giving them away!

Also they did not sell laptops, they sold the entire solution, with networking, hardware, and support. If a company wanted to put in a bid to provide a solution using Linux laptops they were more than free to do so, but there are several advantages Apple had in a contract for wireless labs:

• Apple has been doing wireless in all its products longer than any other major vendor
• Apple has the most hassle-free 802.11b software and hardware
• iBooks are made to be very durable and fit into backpacks
• The cost savings running Linux are much lower on laptops
• The Mac's extremely low TCO gives them an advantage in offering support and repair
• iBooks are a great deal right now, at $1199, plus a $50 educational discount, and they no doublt got a substantial volume discount