LA Unified Will Not Dump Apple

voicegy said:

Is there anyone here connected with LA Unified who can either confirm, deny, or shed light on this very distressing news? LA Unified is a multi-million dollar customer of Apple - being the second largest district in the United States, this would be a major blow. My district is the 7th largest in the nation, 2nd in California only to LA. We, ourselves, have recently upgraded our WAN and are incorporating AD this summer...with the promise of Macintosh support.

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OS X supports active directory and X Server can be a primary domain controller. Its a BS answer. Someone was paid.

lausd sucks major ass...all the computers at the schools i attended all had crap CRT iMacs and ****ty Dells...grrrrrrrrr
i should be thankful that the wifi network is up, albeit a little spotty, let alone the internet connection :\

Maybe a little lobbying should start happening. Someone on the Board is clearly being bought off. I'd start petitions, phone calls, open letters in the local Times, etc. I grew up in the LA area albeit to early to reap the benefits of classroom computers, but I take pride in the system, and hate seeing it trashed in that way. I now live in Up-State New York and the schools in this area are split to what platform. The B.O.C.E.S. in the area are strong on Macs, as are some of the more upper class secondary schools but there are still a lot of the larger districts who are hell bent on PCs, and poo poo any changes.
I would love to have a room full of administrators tied down (so as to have complete attention) and just show them how Macs kick ass

If this rumor is true, it is another confirmation of what always goes on in government: complete and total waste of the taxpayers' dollars.

My sister is in first grade in Nebraska; there are a lot of computers at her school, primarily 10-year-old or so all-in-one Power Macs. They tend to work better than the Windows Dell/Gateway/offbrand PCs (with the occasional IBM that works well but costs a lot) at my school, one of the largest universities in the area.

Particularly in a school environment, Macs last for ages. Moreover, even if your best use of your money in fact is a 3-year upgrade cycle as is most practical with PCs, eMacs are pretty affordable and hold high resale value (can we say all the deal-finders in LA coming to surplus auctions...to get their next low-end computer?).

Moreover, numbers I have run seem to suggest that Macs (except the G5 workstation and laptops, which will be explained in this post) are equivalent or superior to low-end PCs in terms of total cost of ownership, particularly when you consider the longevity of the Mac. Schools can get CD-ROM eMacs for $650. In fact, they're on promotion for $625 or so right now in packs of eight. Dell GX270 (Nebraska educational pricing) with similar specs? $869.28.

When you get into laptops the price gap grows -- if you don't want complete crap. Dell and Gateway have $800 laptops, but how do they compare to an iBook or PowerBook? Will they last as long if used heavily?

übergeek said:

lausd sucks major ass

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I concur. North Hollywood High School in particular.

I'll leave it up for a bit, but update the title.

LAUSD is Apple Country

I do technology-related work within LAUSD and can assure you that Apple is still sitting very pretty. Within the last 24 hours, I communicated with two of Apple's LAUSD reps and assisted with an order this morning for $36,000 of new eMacs. The computers are going to a previously Windoze-dominated campus. The school was poised to purchase Gateways or IBMs (the other contracted folks with LAUSD), but one of the Apple reps came out a few weeks ago and did a presentation for the staff. I tried to set up a head-to-head showdown with all three vendors, but the IBM representatives balked and the Gateway people only called after the Apple rep did his thing. The Apple presentation swayed several previous PC lovers to switch over and the principal decided this week to purchase the eMacs.

this is great news. I was bummed out when I first read this thread several days ago.