This guy seems to have forgotten something; kids like things that look cool and work as advertised. My 7 year loves when I get new Apple stuff. When we bought him his own PC, he wasn't the least bit interested.

$1200 for a super-light, high-res laptop is awesome... this guy must be on drugs.

Don't let this guy try to educate my kids.

He claims to be an educator, ut can't form a simple argument. Thesis, evidence, conclusion. Nowhere in his piece did he compare features or pricing or TCO. He made broadly based claims with no evidence to support it. And this guy is teaching our children. Hmmm.

Apple is in business to make money, not subisidize a poorly run public school system. If Apple can't sell an iBook for $999 and meet its goal of a 28% margin, then it shouldn't sell them at that price.

If Mr. Wood expects the rest of us to pay higher margins for our computers to make up for selling $999 iBooks to school, he can forget it. I pay 50% of my income to our bloated government already. No thanks.

Mr. Wood,
Upon reading your article, I was wondering why you present absolutely no numbers to back up your claims. I went to both Dell and Apple's educational stores online and did a side-by-side comparison. While I will agree with you that it would have been nice to see the iBook with a sub 1k price for education, I do think your article is a tad over the top. I priced both laptops out and the iBook was cheaper by around $150-200. In addition to being cheaper, the iBook is 2lbs lighter and .5inches thinner than Dell's laptop. If it was at the $999 (300+ less) price range I do agree that it would show Apple really wants the educational market back. I just find your article to be very negative and somewhat close-minded. I am just trying to understand your complaint about the higher price, which I do not think is the truth...

Respectfully,
Joseph M Croasdaile

One solid link to shut all the PeeCee people up for good! F them all! I'l be damned if My kid will learn on a POS Dell. Go Steve, Go Apple!

http://homepage.mac.com/mac_vs_pc/a.html

He's just an old man with old ideas.

My school buys Pentium 1 233s with 15inch monitors from compaq for a lower price then an iMac.
They used to have all macs, but decided to go for price.

THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT PERFORMANCE OR NOISE OR COOLNESS.
ALL THEY CARE ABOUT IS PRICE.

When the Nic fails on one of those machines, they buy a new one for $20.

If the nic fails on an iMac, you have to replace the motherboard.
My government teacher has an iBook and an iMac.
I put OSX on his iMac, he loves it (except that it locks up when it sleeps).

But our schools IT guy (hates me:)) still gets the district to buy PCs cuz they COST less.
That is all they think about.

One of the guys that was on our school board was a PC technician.
You expect him to say, "get macs?"
Not going to happen.

They need to see $600 iMac (looks cooler) vs $600 compaq (looks like crap) to change their mind.

Price is the only factor.

If you grow up using PCs in school, you are less likely to get one later.

Think of it this way: MHz does't matter, ram doesn't matter, coolness doesn't matter, noise doesn't matter, long term maintence doesn't matter, usability doesn't matter, quality doesn't matter.
THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS THAT THEY CAN GET THE COMPS FOR $500 - $600.

So when saying this guy is an idiot, apply the above paradigm to what he says. You will see he is right.

Scott Jaffa
sjaffa@mac.com
Senior at Mtn View High in Mesa AZ

a previous poster wrote:
"a very old classroom in some rural school hiding away in the middle of nowhere. ... machines running system 7.5.3? my god - those aren't even PowerPC, hardly 604 or 603!"

the fact is, our schools are poor.

it's easy to sneer at machines running 7.5.3.... when the companies we work for could afford to upgrade before now. Most schools struggle with limited budgets. And he's right: the climate does make it much harder to justify spending more when there's a push from above to change. The teachers could get what *they want* much more likely if the price difference weren't so hard to swallow. $200 difference per computer makes a big difference. It's obvious the decision makers don't get the TCO point - and it'd be foolish to count on them getting it any time soon, either. I don't think he'd be criticizing the iBook (it's pretty obvious his district couldn't afford laptops even if they were $1000) if Jobs had also offered schools a cheap iMac or headless machine with a CD-RW on may 1.

if he sounds bitter, it's because he's discouraged. the facts in his situation are mirrored across the country. not all schools have decent budgets/enlighted personell. crappy budgets and computer-ignorant personnel are more the norm. it's pretty clear they don't "get" the TCO point. so what should Apple do about it? if they can afford to offer a cheaper machine, they should. even a headless imac as long as it has a cdrw standard.

that said, his comments on the iBook were way off. it rocks.

This moron needs to go buy some $500 piece of crap eMachiens computers.

Move along.

Je ne savais pas que les écoles américaines acceptaient les professeurs complètement vendus à DELL et M$... Misère... Par contre je commence de plus en plus à douter des petit éditeurs de Macnn... Poster des torchons comme ça, ca fait assez racolage... Prostitution des webmasters au profil d'audience... C'est pas terrible tout ça...