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Software Monoculture in Schools?
The World Is Not Microsoft asks: "I've been worried by changes my school has made over the past year or so to the general computer setup we have. The school is a City Technology College, and as a result of this there are an abundance of computers around the building which everyone is free to use. When I first started there (almost six years ago now) there were approximately even numbers of Windows and Mac machines. As happens over time these machines got out of date and had to be replaced, and the school has spent a lot of money buying replacements. What I'm bothered about is that when they did this they completely eliminated the Mac population, and by the time school starts again in September the only machines we will have will either be Windows 98 or Windows 2000. What's the situation like in other schools? Is everyone else completely locked into Microsoft like we are?"
"There have been security problems with these systems in the past (mostly IE toolbars which requested content from sites which were blocked by the content filters, which caused problems for everyone), and with all the recent IE security problems I'm surprised that the people in charge aren't considering alternative systems (I know Linux would be too much to ask, but rolling out some OS X machines would be good). In addition to this, those who actually study ICT are required to use MS Office for spreadsheet and database tasks; no OpenOffice allowed."
When you can pick up a cheap windows desktop for $500, its hard to justify a Mac. Jojo
At my office (elementary school), I'm stuck with a network made up of 98, 2K, and XP machines, and they're 95% Dell.
At UH-D, where I go to school, it's _all_ Dell and Windows XP or 2K unless you're in a high-level CS class and you've got Linux.
I blame Dell and their cheap, bulk PCs - sell them cheap, throw in Windows, ensure a monoculture and continued upgrades from their company.
On the plus side, they're now notoriously easy to reghost if something goes wrong.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
back in the days when Apple was the darling of the education field. Now that it's Microsoft, however, it's bad.
Strange.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Windows is the more common system, and there are more applications, particularly educational applications. More hardware is supported, and people have more experience with Windows.
I fail to see why it's so surprising the school went to Windows. I have yet to come across a high school or college that wasn't this way.
Seriously, there was only one bad decision I can see here, and that was to go with windows, and I'm sure we can attribute this to laziness.
Financially, it makes more sense to ditch apple's stuff. It's considerably more expensive than pc hardware, and in your enviroment, I can't see a real use for it.
Once the decision was made to go with windows, the rest follow suit as common sense. Of course they are going to recommend against Open office, that's like adding moving parts to an already complicated machine.
Same with IE, to a limited extent. Through the use of group policies, I've managed to, at several sites, neuter it, to protect the users from themselves, and with a SUS server in place, their risk is effectively reduced. Not that I wouldn't love to hook them up on firefox and the like, but some customers won't even consider the possibility.
So..yay for entropy.
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Where I went to school, almost every machine outside of the CompSci dept was a PC/Windows machine. In the compsci dept there were a number of linux, unix and pc workstations. Of course I went to a science and engineering school, which explains the lack of Macs. I think the Metalurgy department had some Macs as there were a few met programs that we Mac based. Also, the mining & geology departments had some old unix workstations that they were replacing with linux and windows 2000.
In my professional life the only places I have ever encountered Macs were graphics designers and journalists. SO for my career, the college environment emulated the real world. That isn't meant to be flame bait, but there really are not a lot of Macs in use compared to Windows machines.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
At least be honest -- Windows sucks and you'd rather use something else.
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That will be fine and dandy if the computer tech guys actually set up the computers so that anyone without a password can boot from a cd or a floppy, but sometimes the tech guys disable this and then your plan won't work. If I were you, I would just bring your laptop and use that. That way you won't have to worry about waiting for a computer to boot while everyone else is already started with their timed test.
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The funny thing is that it worked *so* well for Apple, they now have less than 3% of the desktop share...
Of course, the funniest thing is that M$, in true fashion, is copying their competitors once again.
But the punchline of this whole fiasco is that M$ is probably moving from the same unproved assumptions that Apple did. Hopefully when the strain of dealing with the OS becomes too much to bear, these folks will also vote with their wallets when the freebies come to an end.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
The school I consult for will be purchasing over 1000 PCs (with monitor) for 750$ each. Per seat costs for anti-virus and remote imaging bring the price up to 780$ per machine.
We manage spyware and patches by remotly reimaging the machines. It's scheduled and completely hands-off. I can reimage a lab of 30 machines in an hour. As long as everyone remembers to save their files to their network drive, they'll never know anything happened to the PC.
Schools generally get grants and capital project money which they can use to purchase NEW stuff. Rarely will they get money to maintain the old. This means the primary educational app my 1000 new 3 Ghz PCs will run was written for a Windows 3.11 peer to peer network, and it shows.
As a result, you can imagine how very pleased I am to see students running knoppix or lugging in their own laptops or anything else that threatens the pathetic security I'm forced to setup just to make some of these apps work.
Finally, I've worked with a fair number of students, including the smart ones who were permitted to take the cisco academy course. The vast majority have never even attempted to manage a network of a dozen PCs, let alone several hundred or thousand. I can only see huge problems with a classroom of kids playing BOFH on a production network they barely understand.
Almost without exception, IT 'professionals' I encounter who know only one operating system, like windows or macos, are noticeably poorer at basic technical comprehension and troubleshooting. Ask them to figure out a technical problem they haven't seen before, and they are more confused than people who, early in their technical education, learned multiple operating systems. Anyone else notice this?
Frankly, I've seen it so often that it becomes apparent that any educational institution that proports to teach information technology and tries to squelch all but one operating system (windows, mac, *nix, whatever), doesn't encourage its students to learn to adapt to new environments and think for themselves. And the 'real world' is all about adapting to new settings as well as new technologies.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Under most circumstances? Simple economics? Bullocks. Cheaper purchase price doesn't mean that it's cheaper in general, think about TCO and the frustration you'll have to deal with when faculty get up in your face because their machines are down because of the latest Windows virus... And of course, those numbers in your comment aren't a good example. It's comparing a cheap PC to a more expensive Mac. Do a little bit of research.
A base-model eMac starts at $799 retail, $749 educational and i'm fairly sure Apple gives a bigger discount for purchasing larger quantities. Yes, there are base configuration PCs that start out lower, but the hardware in the eMac is more bang for your buck. The machines are also better for classrooms since everything is built-in, along with a great 17" display. I can't speak much on the side of 'educational' software as I've never really used any. I do know however that there are some applications that do need a decent video card to run well - you won't get that with cheap bargain basement PCs - the eMac comes with a Radeon 9200 and 32MB dedicated video memory. The last time I looked at a newer Dell purchased by a school at a cheap price - integrated Intel video chipset that was sharing the system's RAM. Talk about slowing down the GUI.
Also, consider this - cheap PCs come with anti-virus demoware [the majority of the time], not full versions, so the school is going to have to invest in that if they don't want to worry about infecting their entire network. That costs money. I can almost safely say they could set up OS X machines and not have a virus problem, unlike Windows which can get infected just by being out on the internet. Viruses = downtime. When my college got Norton Anti-virus Corporate Edition, it wasn't cheap. With Macs, viruses aren't such a high priority on the worry list and it's generally safe to run them without virus protection. With a limited user account for students, the worst that could happen is that the student could trash that account's home folder. No big deal, really.
I can also say that upgrading MacOS versions is a hell of alot cheaper than Windows versions. An individual copy of OS X 10.3 retails for $129, and education drops that to $69. It can be used for clean installations or upgrades. The full version of Windows XP Professional [retail, none of that OEM crap] catches around $300, an upgrade costs about $200. A friend of mine purchased hers through an education site for $99. And then of course, no upgrading Windows without a previous version.
I won't even get started on how much easier the OS is to manage either. When was the last time you set up Windows without needing a bunch of drivers to go along with it? Yet another problem avoided by switching to Mac.
I do believe that schools should do what is best for them, so I'm not just pushing for the Mac, but as far as I'm concerned they look at the short-term costs instead of how much better things would be in the long run if they just spent the money upfront and got it over with.
So, what, you've created a Linux monoculture? Why is that any better?
From any point of view (virus attacks, security compromises, usefulness of older hardware etc), having software diversity is a good thing. And yes, this includes Windows, just like it includes Linux, MacOS, BSD, BeOS and suchlike.
--Jon
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
Did you consider exporting as PDF?
That's cool and all, but maybe you could just use an OS that doesn't require constant ghosting? Sounds like you've automated the task, so that means it must happen fairly often.
When you have computers in public areas that are not sufficiently locked down, they will need to be wiped periodically. If you do sufficiently lock a computer down to prevent this, you often break some functionality (yes, even in Linux). It is *much* easier (regardless of OS) to leave permissions overly permissive and ghost it when needed.
Oh, and I don't understand what "stable" has to do with permissions problems (he was describing spyware, which is unrealated to the stability of the OS, but related to the ability of users to install such software, whether willingly or not). If hours with ad-aware and other tools will restore the machine to proper operations, then the OS wasn't the problem. I can see the same thing (ghosting) being done with non-MS OSs, and I've done the same thing for non-OS MSs for the same reason he does for MS OSs.
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Your background knowledge is in Windows, not OS X, and that is painfully obvious. I can restore an OS X machine with NetRestore (free) in 15 minutes, not two hours. You don't know what you're doing with OS X because you lack the background knowledge. PC's win on hardware costs and compatibility but the rest of your argument is based on your ignorance. I'd say the bottom line on which platform to choose is support. If you have a support staff that only knows Windows, you might ought to choose Windows. If your support staff knows OS X, you should choose OS X.
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Let us not forget when Apple did the same thing 10-15 years ago. They flooded the elementary and high schools with machines, hoping students would be indoctrinated as they graduated and go with the flow. Why is everyone so hell-bent now that Microsoft is doing the same thing?
At some point in your life you have to piss off people who can damage your life. Whether it's your boss, the government, your parents, or your teacher.
To pick a stupid analogy, oooh, let's say what if ghandi worried that it would be a bad idea to piss off the english military.
What problems have you had getting the Mac working with Active Directory?
Did you even *try* to resolve the issue? Maybe not, because the second "point" illustrates a total lack of understanding.
You most certainly *CAN* boot a Mac from the network and re-image it. In fact, that's been a feature in OS X Server for a while now..both Netbooting and remote installations. Just read the documentation - it's actually pretty darn simple.
If it's taking "several hours of valuable IT time" then perhaps you should take those hours and pay attention to what the software can do. Sounds like an under-educated (or worse, Windows-centric) IT staff to me.
Stop the FUD, please.
At the technical college I teach at, I am the only Unix (Linux) instructor on staff. I get to teach very low level intro to UNIX and elementary UNIX systems admin classes, but nothing higher than that. There are about 8 Microsoft Operating Systems instructors who teach every aspect of systems admin, and several other instructors who are well versed in (and teach) most major Microsoft applications.
Microsoft is well aware that that people who learn on Microsoft products in school (especially college) will continue to use those products once they graduate to the real world, as paying customers. A *BIG* reason why many colleges use Microsoft products is because the colleges get these products at a highly discounted rate; and Microsoft is always glad to subsidize computer hardware purchases (of boxes that will run their product) so they can propogate their own dominance of the market.
At times I feel I am the only voice of reason in the crazed Microsoft controlled world at my school. I feel redeemed, though, when students (and those Microsoft instructors) see how cool Unix/Linux really is. Another thing I like is that just my presence as a Unix/Linux instructor gives our college bargaining power with Microsoft to get even more discounts on Microsoft products, as we threaten to move entirely to Linux. (Yeah, I can only dream...).
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As for MAC hardware and software-- unless Apple gets a program going like Microsoft has (and I think they did at one time) they won't ever compete with Microsoft.
In the past, MacOS8 was a great desktop/consumer interface, but it would not stand up to the rigors of an Enterprise level system. Microsoft is moving in that direction, as they are trying to displace the heavy UNIX (Solaris/AIX/HPux) top ends. Now that Apple has moved to a BSD (UNIX) based OS (i.e. OSX) they are now in a position to move to the Enterprise level also. But again, Apple must free up some hardware and software to schools to keep in the game.
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Why is this hard on Apple? Because the hardware is sole-source (their own hardware) while Microsoft is a software company mostly. As every hacker knows, making another copy of software is a LOT cheaper than acquiring another machine. Still, I would LOVE to see a lab of MAC gear in my college. (Are you listening, APPLE???)
Just my humble opinion.
A Windows machine may be usable to all, but may not useful to 100% of the student body. I just graduated from the local community college, which had all Windows machines. I would go home to do my work on my Linux box because the Windows machines would drive me insane.
I can understand why they would buy PCs and not Macs or Unix workstations or whatever, but the general idea is to teach students. In my opinion, having a "Software Monoculture" in this type of environment deprives students of valuable experience that they could be gaining with other platforms. This just perpetuates the attitude that Windows is the only OS that you'll ever need to know, and that anything else is irrelevant. I think this creates closed-minded "professionals" that just go with the flow. I'm sure Microsoft just loves that. I do not.
Again the comparison is not really fair, as the schools aren't buying $500 whiteboxes with XP home without Ghost and antivirus software. They are buying more reliable (and expensive) optiplexes with XP Pro (more $$) and buying Ghost corporate and anti-virus licenses for all the computers. The eMac is cheeper, even upfront.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Don't forget the other fun TCO calculation often overlooked in the frequent back-and-froth Win vs. Mac debate: Electrical consumption.
Macs need less juice courtesy of the more efficient PPC architecture, and subsequently also put off less heat (which thus requires more AC). In a single computer/home PC environment, we're talking maybe $4 or $5 a month, depending on electrical cost in the area. In a larger-scale, 100 computer installation, we start talking about a savings of $500 per month.
You did great, except for the part about pirated software.
You don't want to leave them with the impression that Knoppix is pirated software. You should have just said that it is free software.
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