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.

Comments

I have owned 9 Macs

[gsfprez]

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).

Re:I have owned 9 Macs

[IamTheRealMike]

so what?

Good question. So? The stuff you happen to like isn't necessarily the best for these people at college. More to the point, who decides best? If I was at the college, I'd want an x86 Linux laptop, not a Mac. But I wouldn't be given a choice, would I?

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).

I wish my school had these kind of resources - they'd have spent it on books, rebuilding the classrooms that were torched by the local arsonists, and on keeping the teachers they had before they went elsewhere.

If the college had wanted to negotiate discounts, even 100% discounts on laptops within certain prices/specs then that would have been fine assuming they weren't cutting back elsewhere. As it is, they raise the cost of tuitition (which is already high) even further, regardless of whether a student wishes to pay for the hardware or not.

Having a laptop of any sort, but especially a Mac laptop (nobody can deny the kind of margins they make on them), "included with the price" is far too much like having Windows "included in the price" of a PC for my comfort.

Re:Some keep them?

[pi radians]

At the college I attend and am about to complete (one week left baby) they force many of their students to have laptops.

It costs $800 CDN a term to lease a ThinkPad from them and at the end of your schooling you have the option to buy the computer you were using.

So after spending $4800 CDN ($3,075.94 USD) we have the privilage to purchase a laptop that is a few years old for "a low price".

iBooks in Maine middle schools

[corporatemutantninja]

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.

Re:Some keep them?

[carpe_noctem]

Yeah, my school forces everyone to get laptops, too. They're not bad, but I disliked being forced to get their specific model. However, I learned later on that this policy is because it makes the laptops easier to service...if the laptop techs want to make any headway, they'll do so by learning the most about the laptops that the students use, rather than trying to support any creature that walks in. And if they're giving them away, all the better. ;)

Webb Institute

[ToteAdler]

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...)

Love/hate relationship

[cybermace5]

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.

Re:Some keep them?

[dildatron]

Except the problem is that you aren't just given a laptop "for free".... somebody paid for it. You did, with your tuition, and the donors to the school paid for it, etc. This is what causes tuitions to go up for everyone - the problem is not everyone needs a laptop.

it's kind of like tax refunds. the government aint giving you shit - they are just giving a little bit of the money back that they took from you.