Pinellas Co. schools going PC
from MacMinute.com:
if you do a google search for superintendent hinesly, you'll find he's not a very well-liked fellow among teachers as it is. he's also apparently set to retire next november.
needless to say, i wrote a rational, well-thought out email to his address. not that he'll read it, or if he does, suddenyl change his mind, but i feel better for having sent it (i grew up across the bay from his school district). for those who would like to follow suit, you can click on his name below for his email address. just remember, no flames.
Dr. J. Howard Hinesley, Superintendent for Pinellas County Schools
Quote:
Florida teachers losing their Apples
September 13 - 18:54 EDT__ School administrators, teachers and students in Florida's Pinellas County will soon have to learn Windows as the district slowly replaces its Macs with PCs. "The directive came from Pinellas County superintendent Howard Hinesley, who wants to the district to use one type of computer instead of two," according to the St. Petersburg Times. "That decision has angered some administrators and teachers who can't fathom parting with their Apple computers, even if it won't happen for several years. Two of every three computers owned by the school district are Apples. Hinesley said the Macs will be replaced by PCs as they become obsolete.
Florida teachers losing their Apples
September 13 - 18:54 EDT__ School administrators, teachers and students in Florida's Pinellas County will soon have to learn Windows as the district slowly replaces its Macs with PCs. "The directive came from Pinellas County superintendent Howard Hinesley, who wants to the district to use one type of computer instead of two," according to the St. Petersburg Times. "That decision has angered some administrators and teachers who can't fathom parting with their Apple computers, even if it won't happen for several years. Two of every three computers owned by the school district are Apples. Hinesley said the Macs will be replaced by PCs as they become obsolete.
if you do a google search for superintendent hinesly, you'll find he's not a very well-liked fellow among teachers as it is. he's also apparently set to retire next november.
needless to say, i wrote a rational, well-thought out email to his address. not that he'll read it, or if he does, suddenyl change his mind, but i feel better for having sent it (i grew up across the bay from his school district). for those who would like to follow suit, you can click on his name below for his email address. just remember, no flames.
Dr. J. Howard Hinesley, Superintendent for Pinellas County Schools
Comments
Originally posted by LoCash
[B]**** him, I vote we kill him!
Even in jest, comments like this usually don't go over well.
Originally posted by FotNS
Even in jest, comments like this usually don't go over well.
You must be new here. Welcome to AppleInsider!
And this super's whole thing was wanting everyone to use one kind of computer instead of two.
Wouldn't it have been easier to choose Macs and only have to convert 1/3 of the people over?
That's just the numbers/surface aspect alone.
Now factor in all the things like Macs usually being of higher quality, come out of the box, ready to go, with Ethernet, FireWire, etc., seem to hold their value AND usefulness much longer, are - on balance - easier to maintain, upgrade, troubleshoot, etc. And, on a timely note, they don't seem to be nearly as worked over by a virus, worms, etc.
I swear, so many people seem to look ONLY at that intial, right-off-the-bat purchase price. Once they pay for it, that's all they seem to factor in.
I'd be my left...lung...that a roomful of, say, 25 stock combo drive eMacs would - in EVERY SINGLE WAY - trounce 25 Dells or whatever in terms of reliability, ease-of-use and maintenance, security, networking, updating, productivity, etc.
I'd love to somehow keep up with this and revisit this district in about 6-8 years and see how things are going.
"Well, we finally switched 2/3 of our users over to Windows. But, oddly enough, we seem to be spending an unusually high amount on upkeep and maintenance. Not to mention that little 14-year-old shithead from Iowa who sent out the "XXX69titty" worldwide virus last week and took down our whole county's network. But we love Dell and are looking forward to many yea..."
p.s. strangely, in a local academic department, there is yet another push to go PC, due to their apparent cost on the retail shelves, as well as a general lack of mac-based experience in the IT/systems department. yet every time i visit those offices, those using macs are never having any troubles, while EVERY other person in their offices seem to be having files lost, inabilities to log into the network, computers that are frozen, blue screens, constant calls to IT, insane amounts of outlook spam, etc. if the windows machines are working, they are being used by people to surf websites or instant-message their friends.
how do these people get any work done?
i swear, if i won the lottery, i would donate a heck of a lot of macs to schools and businesses to prevent this kind of stuff from happening.
Originally posted by FotNS
Even in jest, comments like this usually don't go over well.
How do you know it was in jest
Schools will give kids new Windows on the world
Originally posted by rok
GREAT article in today's St. Pete Times over this whole story...
Schools will give kids new Windows on the world
MacInTouch is continuing a great reader dialog on "Mac Justification" which includes the obvious challenge to IT people:
Justify Macs? Why? It's 2003: Justify Windows.
Neither of those are entirely honest, but they're usually enough, given that macs do not have the gigantic enterprise level savings that the pro Apple set would like to make people. The savings they can represent will take time to realize. Any administrator in a bureaucracy would rather look good NOW by saving money NOW, future be damned.
reason 2 bleeds into reason one. IT knows windows, you have to pay IT anyway, so you might as well get the cheaper machine up front.
Reason 3: The stupid as fvck anti-education reason. We would like our children to learn the "standard" system. Egads! What, learn Office skills, that even if they wouldn't be outdated by the summer semester, do little more than qualify your children to be turned down for temp work. Why educate kids about problem solving and encourage creativity when you can produce "tangible" (by which they mean measurable) job (rote) skills? (HEAVY sarcasm, in case you might miss it)
The only way to tackle these problems is with solutions and price. Apple has the solutions, but NOT the prices, and unfortunately, unless you can get under some very poor school boards price thresholds, they JUST WILL NOT look at the solution.