As an official old fart for real, the silliest I ever encountered was technically a hardware bug. Not sure you youngins can relate being raised on surface mount technology, but on the Apple III the sockets on the motherboard were defective so the chips would slowly work loose and the machine would stop working. Apple's official solution ran along the lines of "Unplug the machine. Lift about six to eight inches off the table holding it level and let go." The fall and sudden stop at the end hopefully would cause the chips to reseat themselves. I used to have the actual service notice they sent out with those instructions but lost it in a move.
Then there was the Ethernet card that would occasionally stop working. This is back in the Thin/Thin coax days, 10-base5 and 10-base2 for those of you with 802.3 fixations. The vendor's (long since out of business and forgotten for obvious reasons) solution was to have you remove the terminator from the cable for at least 5 minutes. That of course would bring the entire network segment down during that time, just the sort of thing you want to do in the data center with all the servers. Rebooting at least would only effect the one host, but that was "not recommended" by the vendor.
To many people who have opinions on what technology should be in schools are "experts" because hey, they went to school, they know what works. Right. The most important part of your comment is "Generally, learning to use the desktop is the best tutorial a kid can have." THIS is why technology in education is so f-ed up. You do realize that the major things schools need to teach are reading, writing, mathematics, social studies, science, problem solving, scientific method, and even things like health, art and music? Technology is an enabling tool that needs to be the means to end of teaching these other subjects, not the thing being taught, or at least the actual teaching of the technology part is way down the list for most students, certainly for the first half of their education. I was a tech director and I still don't understand the educational value of 3rd graders being able to type 30 words a minute and use PowerPoint (or iMovie or whatever). Yet that's what is happening in all too many places.
A 12:400 support ratio? Can I come work whever you're at? I can either take it easy and loaf, or perhaps I can sell my company's services to save your company about a half million dollars a year in support costs and I can get a big fat commission check. Unless you are a research lab or similar, if it takes 12 people to maintain 400 systems, be they Windows, Linux or whatever, I suggest you send a few people to the appropriate vendor's classes and investigate a thing called "best practices" for your environment and industry. I spent time about a year ago at a F50 company and even their ratio was something like 1:200+. K12 education can pump up those numbers to the 1:700 range because we end up with labs of identical machines. If you can get by with thin clients (tough to do when so much education related resources/software is multimedia) then you can push it to 1:2000 or more. Google manages to have one technician handle several servers because they are for the most part identical. The power of the cloud. Sun had it right oh so many years ago, the network IS the computer, the problem was they made money on the computer and when the network took over they lost their cash cow. That's how I think of Windows now. Just nodes on the network, and eventually I hope everything becomes web delivered based on standards (I can dream can't I?) and then it won't matter what OS the node runs.
As far as lib purgatory, if you've never had to deal with programs that require different versions of the lib, header, and binary files on Linux, then you haven't spent enough time trying to load software that wasn't in the standard repository for your release. Try it sometime. It's fun!
Actually working closely with a district with half Macs and half PC's I think the no brainer decision is anything BUT Apple. Windows for the richness of the available apps, or Linux for the low acquisition costs. iWork is a joke for older students, but Open Office/NeoOffice is a good fit. If iLife is the primary reason you are using the computers in school for, then there is a BIG problem. As far as administration, with the latest Leopard Server tools, Mac finally has decent administration, not that it helps me the eMacs still in service. iPod Touch/iPhone is probably the most interesting aspect - I think mobile platforms are getting to be powerful and cheap enough to make 1:1 computing a reality. I still prefer my Android, and hope the apps will catch up to Apple devices.
The Fine Article has an occasional point, but there are as many flaws. As a school tech director for ten years and now a consultant for a company with a specialty practice in outsourcing K12 IT, the issue isn't how much MS costs. It's the continuing cost of support, and beleive it or not a properly configured Windows system is VERY efficient. My district had nearly 9,000 students with almost 4,000 computers and well above 300 in use applications from K to 12. Our tech to computer ratio was over 1:700 and we resolved most trouble calls in less than 24 hours. If a school has the resources and desires a technology rich environment with a huge range of software using thick clients then a Windows desktop OS makes a lot of sense. The range of educational software is just not there for Linux, and it's only in the last couple years that the management utilities have started to mature for it. Ironically the wild environment of Windows produced excellent management tools early on.
As for actual costs, in the U.S. a School License Agreement will provide just about everything MS has to offer to a school for about $50/year per machine. Not cheap, but considering all it includes, not exactly highway robbery, and after 3 years you own whatever the latest version MS has and you can stop paying for a couple years. In the places I've had experience the MS cost is just 5%-6% of the tech budget. In comparison, even for 700:1 and higher support ratios the techs cost 30% or more of the budget.
Having said that, I'm currently working mostly with urban schools without the resources of the suburban district where I was tech director. For these districts with extremely limited resources Linux makes a lot more sense, especially in a thin client mode. When the choice is between something and nothing at all, Linux provides the something. Management utilities are still in need of a lot of help. A FOSS app virtualization capability would really help where multi-media requirements, which are big in schools, require "thick" clients. Windows has "dll hell" but Linux suffers from "lib purgatory" among other maladies.
And having observed how technology is typically used in schools, I have to say that those who say the way to save money on school technology is to simply remove it have a point in all too many cases.
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As an official old fart for real, the silliest I ever encountered was technically a hardware bug. Not sure you youngins can relate being raised on surface mount technology, but on the Apple III the sockets on the motherboard were defective so the chips would slowly work loose and the machine would stop working. Apple's official solution ran along the lines of "Unplug the machine. Lift about six to eight inches off the table holding it level and let go." The fall and sudden stop at the end hopefully would cause the chips to reseat themselves. I used to have the actual service notice they sent out with those instructions but lost it in a move. Then there was the Ethernet card that would occasionally stop working. This is back in the Thin/Thin coax days, 10-base5 and 10-base2 for those of you with 802.3 fixations. The vendor's (long since out of business and forgotten for obvious reasons) solution was to have you remove the terminator from the cable for at least 5 minutes. That of course would bring the entire network segment down during that time, just the sort of thing you want to do in the data center with all the servers. Rebooting at least would only effect the one host, but that was "not recommended" by the vendor.
To many people who have opinions on what technology should be in schools are "experts" because hey, they went to school, they know what works. Right. The most important part of your comment is "Generally, learning to use the desktop is the best tutorial a kid can have." THIS is why technology in education is so f-ed up. You do realize that the major things schools need to teach are reading, writing, mathematics, social studies, science, problem solving, scientific method, and even things like health, art and music? Technology is an enabling tool that needs to be the means to end of teaching these other subjects, not the thing being taught, or at least the actual teaching of the technology part is way down the list for most students, certainly for the first half of their education. I was a tech director and I still don't understand the educational value of 3rd graders being able to type 30 words a minute and use PowerPoint (or iMovie or whatever). Yet that's what is happening in all too many places. A 12:400 support ratio? Can I come work whever you're at? I can either take it easy and loaf, or perhaps I can sell my company's services to save your company about a half million dollars a year in support costs and I can get a big fat commission check. Unless you are a research lab or similar, if it takes 12 people to maintain 400 systems, be they Windows, Linux or whatever, I suggest you send a few people to the appropriate vendor's classes and investigate a thing called "best practices" for your environment and industry. I spent time about a year ago at a F50 company and even their ratio was something like 1:200+. K12 education can pump up those numbers to the 1:700 range because we end up with labs of identical machines. If you can get by with thin clients (tough to do when so much education related resources/software is multimedia) then you can push it to 1:2000 or more. Google manages to have one technician handle several servers because they are for the most part identical. The power of the cloud. Sun had it right oh so many years ago, the network IS the computer, the problem was they made money on the computer and when the network took over they lost their cash cow. That's how I think of Windows now. Just nodes on the network, and eventually I hope everything becomes web delivered based on standards (I can dream can't I?) and then it won't matter what OS the node runs. As far as lib purgatory, if you've never had to deal with programs that require different versions of the lib, header, and binary files on Linux, then you haven't spent enough time trying to load software that wasn't in the standard repository for your release. Try it sometime. It's fun!
Actually working closely with a district with half Macs and half PC's I think the no brainer decision is anything BUT Apple. Windows for the richness of the available apps, or Linux for the low acquisition costs. iWork is a joke for older students, but Open Office/NeoOffice is a good fit. If iLife is the primary reason you are using the computers in school for, then there is a BIG problem. As far as administration, with the latest Leopard Server tools, Mac finally has decent administration, not that it helps me the eMacs still in service. iPod Touch/iPhone is probably the most interesting aspect - I think mobile platforms are getting to be powerful and cheap enough to make 1:1 computing a reality. I still prefer my Android, and hope the apps will catch up to Apple devices.
The Fine Article has an occasional point, but there are as many flaws. As a school tech director for ten years and now a consultant for a company with a specialty practice in outsourcing K12 IT, the issue isn't how much MS costs. It's the continuing cost of support, and beleive it or not a properly configured Windows system is VERY efficient. My district had nearly 9,000 students with almost 4,000 computers and well above 300 in use applications from K to 12. Our tech to computer ratio was over 1:700 and we resolved most trouble calls in less than 24 hours. If a school has the resources and desires a technology rich environment with a huge range of software using thick clients then a Windows desktop OS makes a lot of sense. The range of educational software is just not there for Linux, and it's only in the last couple years that the management utilities have started to mature for it. Ironically the wild environment of Windows produced excellent management tools early on. As for actual costs, in the U.S. a School License Agreement will provide just about everything MS has to offer to a school for about $50/year per machine. Not cheap, but considering all it includes, not exactly highway robbery, and after 3 years you own whatever the latest version MS has and you can stop paying for a couple years. In the places I've had experience the MS cost is just 5%-6% of the tech budget. In comparison, even for 700:1 and higher support ratios the techs cost 30% or more of the budget. Having said that, I'm currently working mostly with urban schools without the resources of the suburban district where I was tech director. For these districts with extremely limited resources Linux makes a lot more sense, especially in a thin client mode. When the choice is between something and nothing at all, Linux provides the something. Management utilities are still in need of a lot of help. A FOSS app virtualization capability would really help where multi-media requirements, which are big in schools, require "thick" clients. Windows has "dll hell" but Linux suffers from "lib purgatory" among other maladies. And having observed how technology is typically used in schools, I have to say that those who say the way to save money on school technology is to simply remove it have a point in all too many cases.