War on Education

[spinner]

As many of you well know from my previous posts I work at Gateway :hangs head in shame:

This evening I received a call from a woman who was in charge of purchasing and setting new equipment for a DV lab at her school. She was flustrated because all of the brand new laptops did not come with any video capture and editing software and that she was going to have to purchase some in order for them to work. During the conversation she mentions that she really doesn't want to return the laptops and purchase iMacs instead, but if she did not get this resolved the Administration was going to make her. Of course curiosity got the best of me so I ask why she didn't want Macs. "Well, I know that iMacs would work good for this. Over at the high school that what we have and that iMovie program is dummy proof, but I want to keep this location all PCs. You should be able to do video capture and editing on a PC."

Okay, so you are willing to spend more money and have more headaches just to keep your location PCs?!?!?!? Well I guess this is just another good example of our tax dollars at work. :mad:

[krossfyter]

haha! thats a trip. did you tell her she should just return the laptops and get a mac after all?

[spinner]

That's what I wanted to say, but I had to bite my tongue and tell that I was sorry but we couldn't give her free software like iMovie that she would have to buy it. ;)

Yet another, "Shoulda bought a Mac" moment.

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by spinner
That's what I wanted to say, but I had to bite my tongue and tell that I was sorry but we couldn't give her free software like iMovie that she would have to buy it. ;)

Yet another, "Shoulda bought a Mac" moment.

It's difficult not to say what you want to say while doing support. I should know. Of course, I didn't hold back most of the time, which is why I say "I should know." :D

You did the right thing. :)

[rugby]

I've got another one, in my district we had a payroll deduction based computer purchase. Basically, buy a computer, and get an interest free loan for 2 years taken out of your paycheck. 25 Macs were bought, and 5 PC's. Now, in the email and official documents sent out it was stated that none of the software available for take-home install would run on PC"s. Office v.X/2001, Appleworks 6, none of it. That meant that the teachers were responsible for buying their own copy of office/Appleworks etc.

Well, to make a long story short, I've had a few teachers either want me to come to their houses (for free of course, too bad I charge $50/hour for home work) and translate their Appleworks documents to Microsoft Works (too cheap to buy office).

These teachers say they got this awesome deal on the $599 Dells they bought. Too bad they need to spend another $400 to get the appropriate software to be compliant with our classroom computers. THey could have bought an eMac for that much and gotten the software for free.

IDiots.