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Buy College Education, Get Free iBook
kraksmoka writes ""The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about how Saint Leo University in Florida is offering an iBook laptop to every incoming residential student and full-time faculty member. '... the draw of the iBooks has encouraged some of the more than 1,700 students at the university's main campus who would otherwise commute to live in dormitories, which makes the program a success in the university vice president's eyes.'" The students do not keep the computers, unless they finish two years in the honors program.
At least they are giving away the new ibooks. If they gave away the old school ibooks then they would never need to spend money out of the maintenence budget for toilet seats
Have you ever even touched an iBook with OS X? Hardly doorstop material.
slashdot!=valid HTML
They do this at a lot of colleges in Michigan in order to attract more students. It's really not anything new, why is this news?
They demand two years work for a $1,500 computer? Shit, I could make enough to buy one working at McDonald's for just a couple of months!
Education? What? I'm missing something? Huh?
when I started college, all we had were labs full of z29 and wyse terminals. and we liked it. so there.
must... stay... awake...
Apple should jump on this as a marketing tool but spin it the other way: Buy an iBook, get a scholarship to the third-rate college of your choice!
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The reason people commute is to save the >$5000 cost of room and board. Why would they trade that savings in for a $2000 laptop that they can't even keep? One would be much better off buying their own iBook and commuting -- total savings of $3000, rather than plunking down $3000 ($5000 room/board minus laptop) for the 'rental' of an iBook.
The students do not keep the computers, unless they finish two years in the honors program.
Wow, at my old college, they are forcing all the engineers to have laptops (even have a used laptops for sale), but you have to buy them. And even if they supplied them, giving them away is -huge-. Think about it. If you get an iBook for free, its equivalent to going to school for a free semester...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Call me cynical, but: How much did the tuition increase to pay for this? For some reason, tuition wasn't mentioned... What's the rate of theft on campus? Now with tuition and "student fees", they can pay both a Mac and a Microsoft tax. Great. Any what does any of this have to do with receiving a higher education?
Look how they copy Microsoft's tactic of giving away computers with their OS.
Give students your OS, get them convinced that it's the only way a computer should work, and you've got a loyal userbase that *should* continue to use your OS and buy upgrades from you, instead of your competitors.
I'd like to see this program offer a choice. Do you want a MacOS, M$, or some flavor of unix on your free laptop?
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I think all the students should get to keep them. When returned, they would have to be refurbished, and who would want to be the freshman who gets a 4 year old Ibook? I would want a new one.
Although I didn't see anything in the article about it, the money for these things has to come from somewhere ... and that eventually comes down to higher tuition. Not only that, but only a subset of the students get the computers -- I would be willing to bet that the cost is subsidized by all the students. Why can't they just let students buy their own computers (possibly through a school program) rather than raising prices so that they can "give" everyone a school-authorized laptop?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
You give school iBook!
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
I wish they had this program way back when I was in college. I lived on the computer science floor and our benefit was dial-up access to the mainframe.
/dream sequence
dream sequence
Me talking to my grandkids. Ah, you kids don't know how good you have it. Why, when I was your age TV was two-dimensional in black and white. And we only had four channels and no remote control. And we were glad to have them. Heck, if we wanted to change the channel we had to walk two miles, through ten feet of snow, barefoot.
I wouldn't say I'm a bad gambler but the last time I went to Vegas I even lost a buck on the soda machine.
"Free doorstop here I come!!!"
I think he dosen't understand. These laptops won't have windows pre-installed. No need to put them into doorstop duty so quickly, you could wait till you find a lack of applications for the laptop before it keeps your doors oepn for you.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The iBooks are pieces of furniture, in our eyes," says Mr. Mezzanini.
We struggle on celerons with 64 mb ram running windows nt. (dont forget the crappy belina monitors). Thank goodness i run linux at home.
They don't exactly have a Masters in Business. How can you expect them to do such complex addition and subtraction with only a puny high school diploma?
End of Post
You are at the end of the post. To the north lies the post.
There is a sig here.
I'll take 4 iBooks. Make a beowulf cluster out of them and then I won't have to imagine it.
8 years of college is nothing.
and i am convinced that my new iBook 800 with combo drive is the best Mac i've ever owned. It took about 2 days for me to belive that.
(PB 100, Duo 230, 280c, 180c, 520c, 660AV, 7500, G4/450, and TiBook 550 if you really care to know)
It is cheap (as in beer), its fast, its rock solid construction, its got a sexy bright screen, its got very good wireless coverage, its light (in grams), it has every port i could ever want, and its simple in design which doesn't lend itself to breakage of parts (like my work's Thinkpad with now broken USB door and broken PCCard buttons)
so what?
This is a great plan and gives students a great leg up with the ultimate college computer. I wish that i had had the opportunity 12 years ago when i went to college to get a PowerBook 100 (included with tution price).
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
My college only offers residence to undergraduate students. So if they did offer this and you're graduate, then not only you can't get a cheaper (erm...) roof, but also you can't get a free version of OS X. No switch from me...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
but it doesn't seem to be attracting the brightest students. Since they are really just *lending* the ibooks to the residents, they can keep recycling them each year. Remember the original toilet seat ibook? Even if some students do complete the honors program and keep the ibooks, that expense is made back many times over by increased rent income for the school. A smart investment, definitely, but who are these people? Persuaded to spend a lot more for on campus housing for a $900 value spread over four years? That's about $18 per month, maybe the school should just offer them a few 12 packs.
for about five years now... you get a laptop upgrade every two years, and you get to keep the laptop you graduate with. Granted, it's not very good machines (except the Dells this year, I have to say) and you aren't allowed to change the OS as long as they are still school property, but still...
One of my co-workers is in the Masters of Technical Management program at Embry-Riddle University(Daytona, FL), and included with tuition you get a Dell/WinXP laptop, that you get to keep. The cool thing is that with my company's tuition reimbursement plan paying 100% of tuition, it's like the company is buying him a laptop!(and the graduate degree is a nice bonus too)
This is very true. My friend goes to Villanova and he spends $32,000/year and they give him a laptop. His laptop is the biggest POS ever and it just sits next to his desktop in his dorm room. He wouldn't even take it out of the closet if it weren't for the fact that some classes require that he bring it.
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
I know this screams offtopic, and I know these are just slashdot trolls, but does anyone else get a slight snicker out of these "Soviet Russia" posts? I've never made one, and I'll never make one, but occasionally I can't help but laugh.
Anyone else have a guilty pleasure of occasionally enjoying trolls? Come on, fess up; I just did.
In the experience of my peers, school-supplied required laptops are bad. Usually, they're cheep pieces of ()@#$, with 0 support from the school. In fact, in the case of a Winnipeg-based college, the software that the students had licenses for (supplied by school) wasn't compatible with what they did in class.
For engineering, etc, having a laptop is great. BUT, if they school wants you to have one, they shouldn't provide it. I mean, 99% of engineering students know more about the computers then the school does!!
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
Sex - Find It
What the hell is up with this joke?!?!? I keep seeing it everywhere now. The only only reference I can find in mass media is on The Family Guy.
Or is Smirnoff's Branson theater that big of a cult(ural) hit? Please, please, for the love of god. Explain why this bad joke is on the rebound.
----------
I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
I know some bioengineering graduate students at my school (ASU) also get Dell laptops for their research. Technically, they're supposed to be returned to the university upon graduation, but since most of them are obsolete by that point, few (if any) are required to.
"We are far too easily pleased." --C.S. Lewis
Meanwhile....fee's to attend this college go up the exact price of an Apple IBook.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
The students do not keep the computers, unless they finish two years in the honors program.
;-)
So this means that one would have a pretty good chance of getting someone's old iBook, full of pr0n and cached slashdot posts, right?
sudo eat my shorts
I've been able to recruit strong research students by giving them iBooks as well as a decent stipend, and Airport works so well that it's saved me the trouble of worrying about wiring the lab they use and they love using Airport all over the place. I've got some dedicated and loyal students who are doing lots of cool things and being able to give them good machines is definitely responsible for part of that.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
Well back in my day we had to count on appendages. Women could count to 2^20 and men could count twice as high as that. It was just OK.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Just sell whatever they coat their Macs in to Microsoft. What ever it is it insures that once you have a MAC nothing bad is ever said about it.
With that kind of price difference, he could even buy a beowulf cluster of those lapt... *smack*
*ouch*
*wince*
Quite the shock to check /. and see yer dad on the front page :)
Maine has started a program giving iBooks to 7th graders. Their goal is to eventually loan one to EVERY middle school student in the state. I did a quick google search and here's the first article I found.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
There's a study incentive if I ever heard one. I slacked like Bob Dobbs for the first three years of my college career because there was no instant gratification for doing well. If scoring a 4.0 got me a free computer when I graduated I would have done the boring busy work and maybe even gone to lectures.
Yeah, I know I was paying out the ass to fail, I know now anyway, but when faced with the freedom to bust my hump or stay in bed all day I took the latter. A simple thing like offering me a hawt computer would have been enough to wake me up. Funny how that works.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Man with free laptop merely waiting for dancer.
these kids got it lucky,i had to buy my own sliderule...but at least i didn't have to give it back..
Steve Jobs
Apple Computer
I graduated in the mid 80's, please send me one of your iBooks.
Thank you,
grubby
Trolling is a art,
For that matter, I once ran across Sally Jessie Raphael while flipping channels and recognized a friend's wife as a guest. The topic of the show?
Married Prostitutes. I'm not making that up. The friend died of AIDS last year.
KFG
Quite the shock to check /. and see yer dad on the front page
Hey, my dad works for Alexa Internet (a few stories back), I was pretty amazed to see that there (the company is probably around 50-100 people).
Course, your dad is cool and 'giving away' laptops, and my dad is working for an evil company who is trying to take over the world. But, hey, whatever. =P
If a and b in c, and a can create b, and a can create a, and b can create b, and b cannot create a, then a created c.
It works best when you read the joke in your best Russian Accent
It work best when you read joke in best Russian Accent
Use broken English, also.
The students do not keep the computers, unless they finish two years in the honors program.
My college has these iMacs that we used to use for our homework assignments. One day, I editting my photos and downloading to my iPod on it when all of a sudden a letter from the registrar's office came in. They said I flunked out, and they took my Mac. All of it! The printer, too! I had to move out back to my dad's house quickly. Needless to say, dad's house isn't nearly as good, and I blame that iMac for failing out.
I'm happy to report my dad has a PC and it crashes too much to actually do anything fun on, so now I just rush my papers and they're good enough for the local community college, and my grades have all been really good.
Thanks a lot, Apple.
Ellen
whoa, sarcasm went WAAAAAY over your head, sir fucko.
We got Thinkpads at the college I went to. I formatted it and installed Redhat as soon as I got it. I left the school after one semester and gave the laptop back. I've been contacted by them 5 or 6 times since (that was fall of 2000) demanding that I pay them for the machine I "broke" because they can't figure it how to reimage it.
I think you need to take a basic economics course. Your math seems a bit off.
And that's only for *tuition.* Remember, this program posits paying room and board for two years as well to get the "free" computer.
KFG
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Also the Simpsons, King of the Hill and Futurama recently. slashdot was a bit late picking it up from them (the King of the Hill Branson episode probably aired last year).
But their plumming would be a complete disaster in a matter of minutes...
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I can understand one ignorant bloke skimming over the summary and not reading it correctly, but then having people mod the post up as insightful... don't be fools!
You DON'T have to give the iBook back unless you drop out/flunk out of the program.
Maybe it's like the shaving razor thing: give away the razor, but charge a fortune for thblades. Maybe the school gives away laptops, but charges a ton for power, internet connection, etc...
_______
2B1ASK1
a local county(Henrico County) here is issuing ibooks to all of their high-school students. the students dont keep them, but its still a good initiative for every student to be able to use a computer at home
the history of the world
that my college, Purdue, doesn't do that.
Live in the residence halls, get free food!
(Hope you like raw oysters, it's all we serve, and you have to pay for it the next 4 years whether you want it or not..) Hmm, now there is an incentive to go to school there.. for the 4-6% of the population that prefers Macs at least.
I think I'm going to start a campaign to get a bank of WinXP Pro machines that are *only* usable for remote desktoping into; about 10% of our computer labs are full of iMacs, which are always running about at 1-5% capacity.. generally speaking, students *hate* them and the only time you see them getting used is when our other 100+ PC labs are full.
At any rate, we could get some use out of the Mac labs, since you are able to remote desktop into XP using OSX.. assuming you could educate students about this possibility.
In my city I would have my choice of two schools within 10 minutes walk from my parents home. One of them is a city community college allied with the state system ( get your associates at the city college and automatic transfer to the four year program at state) and one is an expensive, ritzy, private college of high repute (Union). And this in a city of only 50,000 residents.
I could get a new "businessman's" one bedroom apartment, equally within walking distance, for only $450/month. Ok, that's $5,400/year, plus food, but to have my own home rather than a dorm room. Get a roomate, if you are so inclined, and have the shared home, but enough left over to buy the laptop on your own, and odds are you'ld have to share the crappy little dorm room anyway, with a "bathroom" you have to share with the whole frikkin' dorm, not just one other person. Rent the apartment first yourself and you even have *personal choice* up front over whether you think your potential roomie is suitable. Pop for another $500/year between the two of you and you each get your own bedroom.
A "college student's special" studio apartment would only set you back $350/month (yes, with everything). That's only $4200 a year.
Most colleges have private student housing available within walking distance of campus, and those that don't I've found usually provide free shuttlebus service to/from town. Not as convienient as your own car but a damned sight cheaper.
Living on your own in town can also be the difference between being able to keep up with your school work AND maintain a part-time job, and not being able to work except for a "student work program" which pays less than minimun wage. This difference alone could make up for a couple of iBooks a year.
All that being said there are valid reasons beyond the financial for the college encouraging people to live on campus. Thoreau once marveled at the fact that colleges charge you money for the least valuable service they provide, i.e. classes, while the most valuable service, living within the enviroment of the campus and associating with all and sundry in that enviroment, essentially came free. He had a point.
KFG
I was writing a paper for this Honors class, and it was all *beep, beep, beep* .. but I didn't lose my paper, cause I was using my iBook.
It still is a really good paper.
Well, you was lucky then. In *my* day we had to use slide rules and *guess* where the decimal point went, uphill, both ways.
And we liked it!
Oh, did I mention eating cold lump of poison? Oh, wait, you still have to do that, don't you? At least the quality of college food is a social constant.
Another reason to forgo the iBook and live off campus.
KFG
All in all though, it's a good program that I commend the University of Florida for taking up. Now only if I got an iBook instead of the ThinkPad
Well according to their site for the 2002-2003 school year the costs are as follows.
University Campus
Annual Charges
Tuition and Fees $12,750
Orientation Fee $220 first time freshmen and
transfer students
Room Charges $3,600 standard room
Meal Plan $3,234
Seems to me you could just stay at home and commute to the College and buy a better laptop with the money you would save with one year's room cost. And to think i was actually considering this place.
Would this be newsworthy if it wasn't an iBook? It seems that /. has joined Wired in the practice of publishing articles that are not newsworthy as long as Macs are involved. Would this be news if they were giving away Dell's? If they were giving away free M$ software this would be a warning article but since it is Apple, the university can push Apple's platform by giving away free hardware and software without the tiniest bit of dissent on /.. If MS made a laptop and this university gave away MS laptops preloaded with windowsXP, people would be screaming that the world is going to end.
You say "well, the money had to come from somewhere, tuition must be going up, hmm.....".
You are of course assuming that the school previously provided NO computers to the students at all. I don't know a single school that doesn't provide access to computers in libraries, etc.
By doing this they can probably:
a) stop ugrading a bunch of machines in labs
b) free up the lab space for something else
c) save what they used to pay someone to sit in the lab and take care of the comps
d) more than likely they save on IT spending, as we all know unix is easier to maintain
e) buy EXACTLY as many laptops as they need, as opposed to having a lab which has to be able to handle busy/non busy cycles
Additionally, they don't have to worry about vandalism - if a computer in a shared lab breaks, you have NFI who broke it. If a laptop checked out to a student breaks, you know who to send the bill to.
It seems like a good idea to me.
Most of the students only actually pay around $5000 a quarter at expensive private schools anyway. The fact that State school's cost less is a myth thanks to the US governments financial aid requirements. The more your school costs, the more aid you get. I applied at UW and Seattle Pacific U in Seattle, after getting accepted at each I looked over the financial aid offers. I was in state so UW would only be 6000-7000 a year, however, I got pretty much 0 financial aid. Sure they offered that I could do workstudy but that was it. At SPU the cost is around 28k with room and board and all. However, I was offerd a good 15k in grants and need based aid I don't have to repay, and I was awarded another 8 in achievement based scholorships... Do the math and it comes down to only 5000 left to pay for actual school. My family is not exactly wealthy and can't even pay that so I take about 4000 a year in loans.
Bottom line: At the private uni I end up paying no more thanks to the increased aid because of the increased need presented by high tuition. I also get all the benifits of being at a smaller school, small classes, tighter knit community... etc.
Acadia University in Canada (http://www.acadiau.ca) has been doing something like this for a while. The difference is that everybody at Acadia gets an IBM thinkpad when they go there, they don't have to "work" for it. They upgrade the model they use every two years and you can buy it from them for cheap at the end of the school year. It's a nice system, but then again Acadia is one of the most expensive schools in Canada
it has every port i could ever want
You must be one of the lucky few here with a girlfriend. I believe the /. term for a person like you is "temporary visitor." :)
It all goes downhill from first post
He took that into account. Don't be a fool yourself?
What's more, you don't even get to keep it for the entire two years. You have to give it back at the end of each year. Bet you don't get "yours" back at the begining of the year either. That's a major "pain in the ass" factor. Plus you automatically get charged for any nonwarrenty damage done to you "your" computer, even if it's damage *you* would just live with.
It would be interesting to know what the standard failure rate in the honors program is, wouldn't it?
For that matter, I not sure of the quality of the school. Every college of quality that I've ever been to considered *everybody* to be in the "honors" program. The very existence of such a program smacks of "junior" college, pay to be in extended high school. In other words they don't really consider their "non-honors" students to be doing legitimate college work.
At a "real" college you do your work as best you can as everyone is expected to and if you go above and beyond you get your Cum Laude at the end of it.
Ok, I don't *totally* mean to belittle such colleges. There is a legitmate need for some people to get two year "degrees" in "hotel hospitality." ( Because they haven't learned on their own to be polite to customers or how to make a bank deposit?) But I'm not sure I'd want to enroll in a college as a serious student that makes such overt distinctions between its "real" students and its "fake" ones.
If you're the sort who feels the need for that sort of rank of social superiourity just go to a "real" college and join an uptight, snooty frat or something.
KFG
What most people forget is that tutition only covers about 1/3rd of the cost of your education, even less if you are going to a State School. Alumni money and grants and other such sources make up the other 2/3rds. I recently graduated from Stevens where they started giving away computers ... and they hiked tuition $100 to cover the cost of the computer, which means that over 4 years you are only contributing $800 for the cost of the computer. Keep in mind that it went up across the board, so upperclassmen like myself ended up contributing to freshman laptops... boy was there a lot of resentment ... and stolen laptops.
The best part of the deal was the insurance/service plan, they fixed everything including dropped computers, and replaced stolen computers. Of course these were the same people who tried to use a rubber mallet to open my desktop's case, because they could find the release latches.
Sig Nazi- "No Sig for you, come back 1 year."
I'm currently a student at Webb Institute in Glen Cove, NY on the north shore of Long Island. Our school is one of only 6 or so schools in the country that grant degrees in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineer. The school "gives" us all computers when we first arrive the first weekend. They are ours until we, fail out, leave, or graduate when they offer to sell them to us for the value of the a survey of eBay prices for similar machines. We don't have tuition so they don't raise our tuition to pay for them and our room and board are significantly low enough to not be the source of computer funding. Along with the laptops our campus has a wireless network so we are able to check our mail, work with software with network locks and surf the internet (play quake, read /.) from anywhere on campus. I can honestly say that having the computer has been invaluble. It is much easier to work on a group project and be able to sit around a library table or in another common area and spread out papers and work than to have a bunch of people huddled around a screen in a computer lab. Its a lot easier to email files back and forth than to have everyone use the same computer. We use our computers for almost all our classes, in chemistry we put lab data right into the computer we'll be writing the report from, math we use Maple and mathcad, NA and ME we use special programs such as HecSalv and GHS. We live under an honor code so theft of the laptops isn't a problem, as well as having 24/7 to anyplace on campus, I can and do leave my laptop in the Library at my desk in the classroom and anywhere else I want to put it down. Hell I could leave a breifcase of diamonds lying around and no one would touch them. Actually the only real prob with the computers is when you're working on them from 10 to 23 1/2 hours a day (sometimes you just have to stop to eat) they're just not as rugged as they could be (and the're running Win, I would prefer a Mac or Linux but hey stupid engineering software...)
chose to live on campus, and please note that my argument for living off campus was considerably longer and better reasoned, as well as my own opinion, rather than quoting someone else's. Something that Thoreau himself always admired in a person.
I only added the notation in the form of "journalistic fairness."
And for some ( as it was for Thoreau, and I don't think ANYONE can accuse old H.D. of being toadying to clique acceptence or class structure. He *is* the author of Walden, as well as Civil Disobedience and Life Without Principal after all) it *is* a valid point.
Not for you. Not for me. But for some.
KFG
My college began to "give" (part of fees) laptops to all incoming students in 1995, pretty much the first school to do so.
My new laptop was a PII-233 Acer, with a 3.2GB drive and I opted for 64MB of RAM instead of 32MB. It only had a 800x600 screen, but it served me well my four years, and I still use it semi-regularly (though it has 160MB of RAM now). The laptop was ours, though any unauthorized hardware tinkering would void the nice 4-year warranty. During my stay, I had two motherboards, one hard drive, one LCD screen, the upper plastic shell, two LCD front and back bezels, a power supply board, and a power brick replaced.
While the laptop was invaluable for getting work done, it was also a distraction. With a network port at every desk, ICQ became the equivalent of note-passing. Many kids I knew freshman year had to drop out, as they spent the majority of their time playing Starcraft and Quake II, chatting on ICQ and IRC, playing in MUDs, and downloading MP3s. Still, it was pretty useful for emailing professors, getting reports done, and making CEOs jealous in airports.
The major heartache with laptop ownership happened every fall, when the freshmen would get their shiny new laptops, one full year of computing technology later. During the last year, it was getting difficult to run some of the applications needed for class, on outdated hardware. Everyone I knew ended up buying a desktop machine. With the network connection, I could RDP, VNC, or X applications from my desktop to my laptop. This was pretty much necessary when trying to crunch large mathematical problems in MATLAB; *especially* useful when modeling 3D electromagnetic fields. The laptop was also unable to make anyone jealous.
If there was one thing I would change about the laptop program, it would be to update the hardware every two years. A two-year-old laptop would still hold some value for charity or resale, and the upperclassmen would not be held down by inferior hardware during their most intensive classes.
...
will get you a blowjob from any cast member of LOTR.
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress.
great ideas like this must be what makes Saint Leo University the world class institution that it is.
Seriously, if I lived in Florida, I would go to one of the state schools which is better and cheaper than this POS college and buy my own damn laptop.
I hate stupid people
The article does not mention how they plan to replace the purchased iBooks, nor how much they plan to charge for them.
I know that the speed of Moore's law has slowed in recent years, but for sake of argument lets use the "doubles every year" figure. Changes in the constant would only be a quantitative and not a qualitative difference.
If an iBook goes for $1000 US, after the student graduates its value would be $62 US, and by then Apple probably would not be making the same model. I suspect in 5-7 years the University's students would have a mix of "fast macs" and "slow macs"
Great when you go to UofF you not only get a worthless degree you also get a worthless computer.
Slashdot is no more. You have been assimilated into Macslash. Hooray, Apple!
I've used PCs for years and like many people, have experienced some problems in the past. XP seemed to make things much better than in days gone by, but I thought I'd give Apple a try. Certainly a nice looking laptop, I have to say that I was let down by the performance of this laptop in my everyday use. First off, coming from the PC world where you're used to fast machines, it's a bit of a shock. Everything is noticeably slower. Spell check, disk access, surfing on the web - it's slugish compare to my significantly older pc. Also, I was disappointed with the multi-tasking performance. I found that for instance, when I was using iMovie, that I really couldn't do anything else, or the capture was interrupted, and the audio distorted. Also suprising to me, were the number of crashes that I encountered! Apple might design nice looking hardware and slick tv ads, but after trying it out, now I know how good PC user have it. "looks nice, runs slow". I wouldn't recommend this as a Christmas present for anyone.
Berea college, which is tuition free, just started its program where you get a laptop when you enter college, and then get another when you are a Junior. And when you graduate you get to keep the laptop!
The only catch is that there is a $150 technology fee per semester. Fortunately they worked it out so a lot of the students get financial aid to cover them. (I was a student at Berea for 4 years working on the committee to get them. The program started one year after I left.. but my wife is a senior there, so we^h^hshe gets one...)
It is a pretty nice program and will be even better as laptop power progresses...
If only they had thought to go wireless, but they decided to wire the campus using ethernet (someone said wireless doesn't scale to 1500+ laptops!)
Comparing costs to schools mentioned, my first year fees (not including books) were $175 total! Berea is constantly rated one of the highest liberal arts colleges in the South.
Berea College, Ky
...are still too expensive.
A friend of the family goes to Rose-Hullman University in Terre Haute, Indiana. One of the things that they get upon admission is they are issued a PC laptop with a lot of the necessary software installed (office, outlook, etc.). Are there any other colleges that anyone else can think of that issues laptops other than mentioned in the article?
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
Thank you. I was afraid no one would have the guts considering the last sentence. I thank you. My friend thanks you in absentia. He thought the whole thing was pretty funny too, even while he was dying.
That's why he was my friend.
KFG
This is nothing more than a gimmick for schools desperate to get students. None of the top schools in the country like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, etc. offer free computers. Nor do they require students to have one.
And as I also said, it depends on the school, with the implication that that meant it's location.
In LA it's a different story and I've actually got a friend who enrolled in UC Berkley just for the cheap student housing. It was the only way he could afford to live in the SF area at all.
For people who live in such a situation I can comiserate, but only offer this advice:
*Going to college is your first big chance to get the hell out!*
I'm not being snide. It's the one time in your life, period, where you can go damed near anywhere in the world with social acceptability, merely on a personal whim. Maybe even get someone else ( your parents or even the taxpayers) to cover the expenses for you. Take advantage of it if you can.
KFG
Back when I went to college (~2-3 years ago) it cost nearly $6k/yr to live on campus...
I'm not so sure that these students understand the cost vs. benefit of this arraingment... Of all the reasons to live (or not live) on campus... would the offer of a ~$1500 computer really sway you that much? Remember, you can't cry poor college student, because for that computer you just shelled out $10k+ for room-board fees.
Doesn't everyone find it ironic that the most heavily worked and under-appreciated folks at a university, the Teaching Assistants and other staff people, are NOT eligable for the iBook deal?
No, I have never been a TA.
And I never want to be one.
Of course you know what this means...
NEWS RELEASE: December 9, 2002 - St. Leo College in Florida announces a new plan to integrate iFurniture into every dorm. This makes for more user friendly environments for the chronically stoned. Students will no longer have to suffer the embarrasment of having everyday "beige" dorm furniture that can be difficult and dangerous to operate while heavily inebriated.
Statement from the president of the university:
Saint Leo College strongly belives that our students can no longer tolerate the on-campus living conditions of our school. The rigorous academic schedule. The unrelenting sunshine. The complete lack of Winter. To make things worse, as a Catholic school, we feel that in some small way we may be encouraging rebellious behavior in our students trying to shed their reputation as Catholic School Students. We feel that we can't continue to punish students when they get to their dorm rooms.The students can no longer be expected to have to go through their daily trials and tribulations AND have to learn how to use their computer and other furniture! The Pope has approved (after intense negotiations because of fears of being perceived as endorsing the forbidden fruit) the switch to an exclusively Apple brand on-campus furniture environment. By forcin.. errr... encouraging our students to use the products of the highest bidding business partner we feel that academics can only improve!
While our students may seek forgiveness for their daily sins by confessing them, we feel that their other day to day tasks should be simplified and standardized as much as possible. So, today, to prevent any further injuries or the possibility of independent thought that may go against the decree of the Vatican, we have decided to make Saint Leo College an Apple-only on-campus learning experience!
Thank you to our new patron saint Steve for the funding to make this all-encompasing "switch" possible.
We have a simialr program where I attend school and I find that it is extermly useful. When starting I did not have to worry about my old desktop having everything that I needed on it for all of my classes. Every entering student(resident or comuter) is given(term used loosely) compaq laptops with a three year basic warranty and the option to purchace additional coverage. Luckily, transfering in, I should be out in three years so I don't need to worry about that last year like most do. All of the software needed is provided by the school which is great. When you graduate the laptop is yours and I know a few people that are going to throw their in the river after graduation cause theirs are old and not so good. There is a rule though, that if you decide to leave the school before you graduate you have to give back the computer or buy it out for the current value. If you give it back you still have to pay for the cost of referbishment so they can just go out and give it to someone else which is kinda sucky. Over all this is a good thing and more schools should start thinking about doing this. I love that I can bring my laptop to class and do my work right there and not have to wait till I get back to my room to do it. Comes in handy when I have lots of code to write and not enough time to finish it and go to class - I can do both at once.
LOL :):)
My dad is geeker than your dad
It's probably cheaper than everyone buying their iBooks separately. Bulk orders always work out cheaper per unit, moreso for educational institutions.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
as a prior student of Saint Leo College.. back when it WAS a private catholic college, I find it MOST sickening that they are offering these laptops to coax students into attending their school. When I attended as a music major, they closed our department as well as all the other art departments and MANY students were forced to leave or find another major. They were bought out by this company that turned the "college" into a "university" and then cast us aside. Pretty shoddy considering that as a resident, I was paying 18 thousand dollars per year to attend and I was not even living on campus. The non-resident students were paying around 27 to 28 thousand a year and this was back in 1995. Saint Leo made me ashamed to be an alumni and I would never ever reccomend anyone go there.
as a prior student of Saint Leo College.. back when it WAS a private catholic college, I find it MOST sickening that they are offering these laptops to coax students into attending their school. When I attended as a music major, they closed our department as well as all the other art departments and MANY students were forced to leave or find another major. They were bought out by this company that turned the "college" into a "university" and then cast us aside. Pretty shoddy considering that as a resident, I was paying 18 thousand dollars per year to attend and I was not even living on campus. The non-resident students were paying around 27 to 28 thousand a year and this was back in 1995. Saint Leo made me ashamed to be an alumni and I would never ever reccomend anyone go there. I thought the
Monsignor Mouch was an ass... your dad is worse!!! How about opening up the much loved art department that SOOO many tried to save? hmmm? Saint Leo SUCKS !
Cost is one thing. There's also support. If you're giving away laptops, the vast majority of students will try to tinker with them and will also need support for them. With only one platform, you can cost-effictively train your tech staff to one consistent set of hardware and software. Plus, Apple is known for building very nicely integrated software and hardware. That'll make support far easier.
Also, as everyone knows, iBooks come with OS X. I can see tremendous advantages for distributing preconfigured, UNIX laptops: you can lock students out of their system: Only allow them to write within their home directory. Give them zero administrative privileges to their system. Oh poor baby can't install some games or an MP3 peer-to-peer file swapper? Tough shit. This is supposed to be a learning tool. You're a smartass and chose to re-install the operating system from scratch? Very well, don't come asking for support. And have fun re-installing all the college-sanctioned applications for your classwork. University tech staff will gladly re-install those applications for you from their master copies for a small $100 fee and re-whiping your drive and re-installing the appropriate pre-set system configuration relevant to your major.
There are a slew of things that could be easily done with unix / OS X that could be completely transparent to the students to both render them more productive and protect them from themselves. server-hosted roaming home directories. Remote ssh administration for troubleshooting or sporadic help. Standardized built-in firewall settings on all laptops to supplement on-campus firewalls, using BSD's built-in ipfw utility. Create custom default Dock Application icons for various kinds of students, to appropriately immediately surface the applications and utilities that are the most relevant to their course work, and all that stuff is specified in XML Configuration files in OS X: Art students would get Photoshop and Illustrator in their Dock, while Computer Science students would get the Terminal Icon as well as maybe XDarwin, Vim for OS X, BBEdit, CodeWarrior, or any of the apps that come in the Apple Developer CD-ROM. And as far as any student working in just about any science/engineering field, but let's just say computer science for sure, OS X is definitely *the* tool of choice.
Between XML configuration files, shell scripts, network file sharing backed by the strength of UNIX, which was, at its core designed to be a strong, secure multi-user environment, to allow users of a system to perform certain specific tasks while not being able to break the system, OS X seems to me like the absolute perfect operating system for academia. Combine that with Apple's beautiful yet rock-solid industrial design in the form of the iBook, and you've got yourself the perfect platform for the hyperactive lifestyle of a college student.
Regardless of platform, i would keep those built-in hard drives as small as their major and planned coursework allows, and put a greater emphasis on network-based storage.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
The CUNY Honors Program not only gives us iBooks, it also pays for our tuition and board, so it's a win-win situation. The iBooks do come with a strange contract though - Microsoft Office must be uninstalled when we finally buy the laptops (for $1). I guess that's because our licenses aren't for personal use, but come on, who's going to actually delete all the software?
as a prior student of Saint Leo College.. back when it WAS a private catholic college, I find it MOST sickening that they are offering these laptops to coax students into attending their school. When I attended as a music major, they closed our department as well as all the other art departments and MANY students were forced to leave or find another major. They were bought out by this company that turned the "college" into a "university" and then cast us aside. Pretty shoddy considering that as a resident, I was paying 18 thousand dollars per year to attend and I was not even living on campus. The non-resident students were paying around 27 to 28 thousand a year and this was back in 1995. Saint Leo made me ashamed to be an alumni and I would never ever reccomend anyone go there. I thought the Monsignor Mouch was an ass... your dad is worse!!! How about opening up the much loved art department that SOOO many tried to save? hmmm? Saint Leo SUCKS !
Never underestimate the power of incentive marketing.
At my school, Grove City College, we also get laptops as incoming freshman. I received a Compaq Armada E500 when I returned for my sophomore year (I took a year off and had to give my first one back). They gave me the freshman one rather than the sophomore computer (a year older) and I just kept my mouth shut. I'm now a senior, and I get to keep it even though my GPA is 2.59! The school costs approximately $12,500/yr, too, for my Mechanical Engineering degree! Too bad no-one will actually see this cause I'm too late to the conversation. Oh well.
Although they don't requie students to have the computers and they "give" them out, don't you think that most, if not all students have them? If you think about it, when a school gives out the computers all of the computers have the required software needed for the classes and they are all the same. I do not feel that this is a gimmick for all of the schools that have this program. Maybe for some it is, but I really do not believe it is for my school. I find it very useful that I don't have to worry about having the programs needed for projects because I know that they are already on my laptop and if not then I can find it on the network or the computer center will install them for me. Just my .02, whatever.
CUNY (the City University of New York system) has had its Honors College program for freshman students for about 2 years now. Full scholarship, $7500 expense account, iBook (get to keep it after 3 years, for $1), etc. I'm in the first year of the program; got a 500 Mhz / 256 / CD-RW model. This year's kids have a 700 Mhz/ 256 / Combo drive model. Free OS upgrades, including Jaguar (sweet...), etc.
At my alma mater, they had this beat. They gave you chicks, nice cars, vacations and a pass through all your classes.
All you had to do was maintain a winning record for the football team.
Back in 1986 I went to Clarkson U, in part because of a similar deal. I got a Zenith AT or something like it with two 5-1/4" drives (one was high density!) and no hard drive. I failed out a year and a half later, but here I am at /. so it couldn't have all been a waste. Could it? (On second thought, don't answer that...)
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
My school, Ball State University, gives free computers to freshman that are admitted to the Honors college.. This year they got a choice of a normal Windows PC (made by OmniTech, P4 1.8GHz, 20GB HD, 256MB RAM, printer, blah blah) or an LCD iMac. For $700 more, they can upgrade to a Gateway or Apple laptop (iBook).
Starting next fall, all freshman in the Teacher's College will be required to have iBooks. They have some plan to have them develop a "digital portfolio" during their time here.. Webpage w/ resume, video of them student teaching, etc.
Friend of mine was at Wake Forest the first year they gave laptops to students.. I think he said tuition went up about $1200 that year, and got a new laptop every two years.
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple provides a technical note on how to remap the keyboard, but provides no solution to the hardware problems caused by the design of the ADB keyboard. This tech note helps foreign language users, but does nothing for the CapsLock/Ctrl problem.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 12 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
i thought people only used apple computers in movies, boy was i wrong.
Well, I guess this is why other countries hate us so badly.
It is the difference between having the sand or using it (silicon). Thanks so much for the constant reminder that you are jealous of America (at the same time as hating it).
Thanks for being a contradiction... perhaps some day you will see the utter banality of your words! I'm glad we can choose to discuss the differences between our preferences for computer platforms and operating systems without violence. I hope this remains our biggest problems as westerners.
Enjoy the limited view you have of a freedom you will never achieve because you allow your leaders to oppress you! Our culture was formed by people who revolted against their oppresive leaders. What is yours waiting for? America is not keeping you oppressed as much as your currupt, manipulative leadership is.
That's my $.02 in response to your repugnantly distasteful and utterly unrelated response.