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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."
I was just looking at the majors they offer and I'm trying to figure out how Wilkes is an art school. Liberal arts university, sure, but that's it. In fact, the only art program they offer is a minor. Also note that they have about 2,200 students.
... diversity good.
Even it it's a 'non-evil' monoculture.
Dumps Windows because the new Macs can all run Windows?
That title is very misleading, it is only the hardware that is switching to mac, no the OS. It says they plan to use boot camp to dual boot OSX and windows. Hardly what you'd call a mac campus. They're just making it so that hardware wise they only have to buy macs rather than macs and pcs.
The university is not dumping windows at all.
They're dumping generic PCs in favour of mac PCs. They'll still purchase windows licenses & allow dual booting.
It's a hardware story, not a software story.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I may be a Mac fanboy, but I don't see how fewer computers can be a benefit for students.
RTFA.
The classes used to have (all number pulled from my ass) 15 windows PCs & 15 Mac PCs. In a class of 20, 10 would go unused.
Now, they'll have 20 PCs capable of running OS X or Windows. All students still have access to a PC.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
fta:
"Although the $1.4 million three-year switch - which started last year with the purchase of approximately 500 Macs"
$965 per apple? including the installation, planning etc? Over three years, in which time period the current macs would be outdated and require hardware upgrades in order to use the mac OS that will be in circulation by then?
Methinks their budget may fall a tad short..
I think you're confusing Liberal Arts with Art.
Take a look at the undergraduate majors:
http://www.wilkes.edu/pages/143.asp
Accounting, Air & Space Studies being the first two on the list...
I've said it before, I've said it again; I bought my first Mac(book) recently, and the thing that pushed me over the edge to do so was the fact I knew I could fall back to Windows when I needed to, or completely stay in Windows if the OS X experience wasn't a good one. But like most people who try it, that "security blanket" of Boot Camp is more of an insurance policy, or peace of mind (or gaming option), rather than something they end up using in real life. I have my MS Office and OpenOffice, Opera/Firefox/Safari, and even IE under Crossover Office or Parallels. (I tend to use Parallels for IE testing purposes of my websites).
:)
The only reason I reboot to windows now, is for the odd game; and even that's rare with me. Windows seems so much peppier, too, when I do go to it; since I only go there occasionally, the system doesn't get bogged down with addons, startup items, spyware, etc.. (The old reinstall-windows-every-six-months can be extended greatly, if you only use Windows occasionally.)
I think for a multimedia course that needs to teach students both Mac and PC skills, it makes all the more sense; both OS's on one machine: of course it's an overall savings, and somewhat of a no-brainer.
Yes, Mac hardware is single-vendor (unless you do the hackbook thing, not viable for a commercial enterprise); but in my experience, it's well designed, solid, stable, fast hardware. My only lament is that I'm a big fan of sub-nootbooks, like Librettos, and Apple has no such option currently. But I can live without that, for all the other benefits that OS X brings.
Yes, I'm a recent fan, and I am a boy, so fling away with your "fanboy" insults. Meanwhile, I'm productive and enjoying the experience immensely
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
But it's not about that; and, as is often the case the slashdot headline is an anti-windows line.
They are standardising on hardware, not an operating system. Which makes sense in terms of cost and hardware management.
often longer. every fw imac, cube, power mac and ibook we ever owned is running tiger and doing better than previous OS versons - every non-fw g3+ is running 10.3.9 and doing very well.
installation? ard.
planning? has to be done anyway.
etc? macs have less etc.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
That's really what it comes down to. I've heard lots of creative justifications, but they are BS when you get down to it. It is just legacy. Back in the day, Mac was it for graphics work. Windows couldn't do it and didn't have the apps in any case. So it was Mac or nothing. Likewise with things like digital audio. When it first started, it was ProTools or nothing, computers weren't powerful enough to do it on their own.
Well, many people don't like change, thus they stick with Macs because that's what they've always used. The other justifications usually come from the fact that they either just tend to listen to the marketing hype, or because they feel a need to try and justify the more expensive purchase.
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.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
The 'Altivec meme' has been cancelled. It is no longer to be used as an explanation of why Apple products are 'superior.' Similarly, all 'Pentium' jokes have now been rescinded, and any records regarding said jokes in the past are being wiped.
Didn't you get the fax?
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
The Mac zealotry argument does not really fly in this case. If you read the original article, it says that the IT head of the college was "before the switch was a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user." He clearly states the reasons for switching in terms of cost savings ($150,000). One set of machines will be able to do what previously required two sets of machines. Set up one lab. Boot up in Windows or the Mac OS depending on what the professor wants. They save money by buying fewer machines overall, as the article states.
Besides, speaking overall, anti-Mac zealotry on the part of IT departments has been a huge barrier against more widespread adoption of Macs. IT people know Windows. They'd rather have to maintain only a single platform. In most business environments, and in many academic ones, there is no choice at all. It's just Windows. So what's the big deal if one institution decides to use machines that, gasp, can boot both Windows and the Mac OS? Must be zealotry. . .
I suppose they could save even more money by just refusing to buy Macs at all and forcing all courses to use Windows only. In that case, it would just be a smart financial decision, right? Happens all the time.
Boot camp will be out of beta as soon as Leopard arrives, which will be a few months at most. Not worth fretting about that at this point. Apple has to provide that disclaimer for the time being.
Well, art does have a well known liberal bias.
So does Slashdot.
Has anyone noticed that they aren't dumping Windows at all? They just want to use Bootcamp to cut down on total hardware costs and standardize on a single hardware platform. All they are actually dumping is beige-box PC hardware. They still plan to run Windows and Windows apps just like they did before.
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).
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
I'm in their master program for school admin. I can report that their technology in education courses stress interoperativity and are not OS specific. Students are encouraged to submit projects in open formats which promote open standards. I don't have a handle on their engineering or math departments but there are numerous penguins posted conspicuously on some professors' doors. re-v
Because it was, for a long time. In fact, it still seems to be somewhat faster than Intels SIMD instructions. The Altivec gets its amazing speed by being a very, very simple piece of hardware. Using it properly is not easy at all, and in some cases it simply can't provide the precision you want.
But Apple and Adobe seem to have discovered that it's even faster to have a dedicated GPU do this work. And so the important use cases for SIMD have evolved in Mac OS X, edging more towards a scientific and gaming bias. But anyone can tell you that the Altivec, with its lack of double precision floating point support, is not well suited to scientific applications. The difficulty of using it properly is also a major limiting factor in games. Intel chips have other advantages which end up giving a net win to things like CoreImage, but that assumes that you can farm out work to the GPU.
People like to say Apple pulled a 180 on this, and I suppose there is some merit to that. But it's also true that Apple Engineers decided they found a better way outright, and the marketing engine didn't fight them on that, unlike in some companies we've seen (Intel with the P4 architecture, for example).
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