US University Dumps Windows to go All Mac

MacKeyser passed us a link to a MacWorld article about a University doing things a little differently. Instead of sticking with their inefficient mix of Apple and PC systems, the college is doing a 'total technology refresh', and adopting an all-Mac policy on the campus. Previously, a class at Wilkes University would be outfitted with something like 20 Macs and 20 PCs, to allow for individual preferences in software and OS use. With Boot Camp students at the Pennsylvania liberal arts college will be able to switch between Windows and OSX, choosing which applications and OS to use at any given time. "[Scott Byers, vice president for finance and the head of campus IT said] 'We think it will save $150,000 directly, in buying fewer units - even though the Macs cost more per unit than PCs.' The school, which enrolls about 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students, will reduce its inventory from nearly 1,700 computers to around 1,450 after the change over. Other costs savings, however, will be harder to measure. 'By standardizing, the IT department should be more productive,' Byers said."

Comments

Re:Good for them!

[omeomi]

The same can be said for windows relative to linux... People are still using it because they always have.

Not at all. I'm all for Linux, but in art or digital audio, the tools available in Linux just don't stack up (yet) with ones available for Windows and OSX. Yes, there's the Gimp for graphics, and Audacity for audio (among a few others), but there's nothing that comes close to competing with ProTools, or any of the other major audio software applications, and I don't think there's much on Linux that competes with Illustrator or Quark, either.

Re:Because that's what they've always used

[Anonymous Coward]

creative examples on windows:

1. typefaces:
a designer uses a 'faux bold' and 'faux italic' in there design, when printed, those are reverted to the normal face of the font
reason: extended windows features that are not typographically correct, and do not translate correctly in postscript

2. colors:
a designer makes a design with very vivid colors on it screen, when printed those colors look dull
reason: standard windows gamma is too high (higher then mac), resulting in more vivid colors, allthought those colors are outside the cmyk range, and therefore are not printed as they are shown on screen
(test yourself: try to differenciate 80% and 100% black on a pc screen, you cannot)

these 2 examples illustrate that designers, who do not have a clue about technical aspects, are experiencing issues with there design-workflow on windows.
offcourse, a designer could avoid using those 'faux' typefaces, and adjust his screen gamma, windows is able to do it all, and has even more options then a mac, but that is not what is required by a designer

about 'people don't like changes': (to stay in the creative environment) how comes that quarkxpress, the leading page-design tool for ages in the graphic industry (even from before windows95 existed), has been dumped in the course of 1 year in favour of indesign? could this be explained in any creative or non-creative way?

Re:Good for them!

[ktappe]

In response to the three posters who say their Mac labs go unused, that is probably because those who prefer Macs have one. People who use a computer lab anymore are those who probably aren't that computer literate and therefore have only ever been exposed to PC's a few times and will therefore gravitate towards the only thing they've ever seen. PC costs have dropped such that anyone with an interest in computers can buy what they want (PC or Mac).