Apple higher education orders

[docandy]

Hi
Last year, Apple dropped the higher education website in the UK and now we have to place all orders though a reseller called Stone computers. The problem is they only stock selected products- for example you can't purchase the new 4K or 5K LG monitors. Has anyone any thoughts or solutions for overcoming this limitation? I have spoken with Stone and they just say "apple haven't released pricing to them", which is a little odd seeing as the products are available on the Apple retail website. its frustrating and the old Apple HE site was simple, worked a treat and covered far more products.

 

[Brookzy]

Are you buying on behalf of an institution? (In other words, do you have to buy through Stone?)

But in any case, the displays are not eligible for any further discounts because they are already discounted by 25% for everybody until March. If you look on the personal Apple education site there is no additional discount on the LG displays beyond this. When they were full-price, they were eligible for the standard discount, but not now. I assume that is why Stone don't have specific pricing.

 

[docandy]

Thanks Bronzy. To answer the question "Are you buying on behalf of an institution? (In other words, do you have to buy through Stone?)"....

The answer being "yes", its for University use so we are limited to the approved supplier (Stone). The barrier is just they don't supply these products. We can use Insight (UK) so if there is a good alternative that they carried we could use that. An integrated camera is pretty important for use, as we Skype a lot. The resolution is also important for working with high quality science images. Its to hook up with the new mac book pro 15.

 

[Brookzy]

Ah, the perils of centralised purchasing. I would bet that the temporary discounts have become stuck in the mud of Stone/Apple's bureaucracy - in other words if Stone supply them they are charged the full normal price and hence you'll be paying the full £1199 (or whatever it is) minus the standard Stone HE discount rather than £884, and so they don't supply it.

In terms of finding an alternative, depending on the Mac you have you could look at a multi-stream 5K display such as the ones made by Dell and HP, combined with two USB-C to DisplayPort adapters. However I don't believe these have built-in webcams.

So, to retain the high pixel density, the other option is to find a smallest 4K screen you can.