No Subject

[Betsy Hoffman <bhoffman@MONMOUTH.COM>]

I work in a new HS media center with a self-contained computer lab in it; I
have been asked for input regarding what kind of computers to buy for that
lab.

The Independent Study area of the MC has Macs...  The teachers have Macs in
their classrooms... and the Administration is totally Mac platform.  So we
have site licenses for Office, Clarisworks, FilemakerPro etc., and our
CD-ROMs are all MAC formatted.

There is a CAD lab (20+ Dells w/AutoCAD 14 installed) which is brand new &
access is very controlled--there have been few problems so far (probably
because of the great supervision the teacher provides & the fact that the
only program used in there is the CAD program).

The kids sometimes complain re our being mostly MAC formatted--but, of
course, if I get a chance to work w/them, any work from home which is
brought in on disk can be opened by our MACS--and work they've done here
can be translated back to their PC format so they can take it home...
Teachers, too...

There is some talk that we "maybe" should put Dells in that lab, so that
the kids can "experience both platforms" and there is vague talk of
programs that can't run on MACs...

From my vantage point, MACS are great--they have proven to be easy to use,
easy to repair (I can usually fix them up here--down time is minimal),
etc.  We already have the software most people need... For those programs
which only can run on Windows machines, I'm sure we could run them on Macs
with Virtual PC 2.x with little loss of speed & quality.

What are your experiences?  Anyone have a stats. re $ amounts & amts. of
tech. time needed to maintain one platform vs. the other?  I look forward
to your input.

Please respond to:
        betsy_hoffman@hths.mcvsd.k12.nj.us

TIA.  As is SOP with this listserv, I'll post info. on responses received.

Betsy Hoffman
Marine Academy of Science & Technology
Sandy Hook, NJ 07732
betsy_hoffman@hths.mscvsd.k12.nj.us

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