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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 As happens over time these machines got out of date and had to be replaced, and the school has spent a lot of money buying replacements.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 $500, its hard to justify a Mac. Jojo
At my office (elementary school), I'm stuck with a network made up of 98, 2K, and XP machines, and they're 95% Dell.
At UH-D, where I go to school, it's _all_ Dell and Windows XP or 2K unless you're in a high-level CS class and you've got Linux.
I blame Dell and their cheap, bulk PCs - sell them cheap, throw in Windows, ensure a monoculture and continued upgrades from their company.
On the plus side, they're now notoriously easy to reghost if something goes wrong.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Where I went to school, almost every machine outside of the CompSci dept was a PC/Windows machine. In the compsci dept there were a number of linux, unix and pc workstations. Of course I went to a science and engineering school, which explains the lack of Macs. I think the Metalurgy department had some Macs as there were a few met programs that we Mac based. Also, the mining & geology departments had some old unix workstations that they were replacing with linux and windows 2000.
In my professional life the only places I have ever encountered Macs were graphics designers and journalists. SO for my career, the college environment emulated the real world. That isn't meant to be flame bait, but there really are not a lot of Macs in use compared to Windows machines.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
The school I consult for will be purchasing over 1000 PCs (with monitor) for 750$ 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.
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
Congratulations, citizen! You have correctly answered the question: the sole purpose of education is to train everyone to do what everyone else is doing, exactly the way they've always done it, forever! Your cooperation is appreciated.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
And windows computers are cheaper than Mac's.
There have been many surveys done by independent groups that have shown Macs to be cheaper in the long run. At my school, for example, we have the same situation--all PCs. While it sickens me every day to use them, I get a certain sadistic kick when certain "unfortunate" events happen. Example:
My school also recently installed grading software on ALL the teachers computers, effectively whiping out the old pen-and-notebook grading system. Well, turned out that this wasn't a very smart move because for over two whole weeks, all grading systems were unusable because of the Blaster worm, and seriously degraded classroom productivity. The school had to pay lots of money to call in the "Alpha Team" (no joke) to come in and repair their lousy system.
I'm sure that our school isn't the only that's experienced similar situations because of the counter-switch from the Mac, and there are always those windows-centric quirks that I see happening all the time too like "blue screens". The problem is tripled when 90% of the staff population barely understands the concept of a mouse (and this is in a school that's somewhere in the top 30 public schools in America).
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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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As your school to install Software Update Services(SUS). Free to run on windows servers running IIS (also free). I dislike Microsoft as much as the next *nix guy, but at work, I set up Software Update Services and it keeps all the boxen up to date with 0 user intervention. Your administrators aren't that bright if they don't keep their windows boxen up to date with software that is freely available.
Then again, that's the same school system that taught you to spell "whiping".
Chris
Now I know this is heresy, especially on Slashdot, but there was a time in the not so distant past when people somehow (I know it's hard to believe), yes somehow managed to learn the three R's without the aid of computers. Don't shoot me! It's true.
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So, exactly WHICH applications that run exclusively on WINDOWS are of such importance that the high schools cannot fulfill their mission statement without them?
As for the rest of your comment
Windows is the more common operating system -- irrelevant. We should be teaching the applications, not the operating system. If the students absolutely need Windows specific information, they can get their MCSE after graduation. Next please.
More hardware is supported -- irrelevant. Do these boxen need to be able to support every conceivable graphics/sound card combination, SCSI, RAID, and 3-dimensional printing? No. Determine which widely supported hardware will do the job for the least amount of money, and purchase as many of these identical machines as necessary.
Don't get me wrong, Windows absolutely should be in the school. But, in the name of diversity and fairness (and the fact that the graduates never know which type of box they may end up sitting at) the schools should also have *nix boxen as well.
After all, the day may come when Windows is NOT more common OS.