average failure time for students?

[LiberatorSiegeTankLurker]

my sister goes to a private school. school is forcing my parents to buy their mac pro, cant even find a deal ourselves. now the real wtf is, they said we have to buy again in 2 years time, claiming (their words)

"however, the school's experience and that of other educational organisations suggests that an increasing number fail after 2 years, and this can be catastrophic for students"

*catastrophic*

i checked surrounding schools in my area, including a much more prestigious and more expensive private school, both private and public schools have the BYOD policy, and dont even need to be macbooks, just this school force us to buy their stock twice. macbooks are built to last, both hardware and software, i know that from all the discussion ive seen. and this private school my parents pay an arm and leg for is dumping $2k+ laptops after 2 years, because they are cheaping out on support $$$ for the small minority that fail after 2 years due to abusive use, when public schools are paying for support of BYOD laptops both windows and mac. btw i know my sis well and if a computer breaks on her, its 100% due to manufacture defect.

i know my school is full of ****, but i would like some hard stats to back me up when arguing with them. they are selling macs to students for 5% off, when apple instantly grants a 10% edu discount and they are buying bulk so obvious extra discount from apple. its clear they are trying to flip. yesterday my mom was at meeting and another student's older brother asked if his younger sister can use his laptop (that he bought from school) because he needs to buy a new one now after 2 years, not even that was accepted, what...

any statistics on actual students failure rate? my parents are idiots for putting my sis into this dodgy school, school fees don't include any extracurricular activity and now force us to buy their overpriced stock TWICE. not to mention the older brother's rejected request. well thats what u get for not finding out about a school before enrollment.

 

[chabig]

"...suggests that an increasing number fail after 2 years..."

I wouldn't read too much into it. Their "statistic" seems meaningless to me. First, because it's anecdotal. Second, it's to me expected. Certainly more fail after 1 year than one month. More fail after two years than one year. More fail after three years than 2 years. And so on.

 

[mrjohnnyglass]

Go to a different school? Or just accept that if you want that specific paper from that specific school, you're going to have to jump through occasionally asinine hoops.

 

[junkw]

So after 2 years every student end up with 2 macbooks and need to sell one on eBay?

 

[konqerror]

What grade level is this?

Kids don't treat their computers as well as adults do. If you give a bunch of elementary school or middle school kids laptops, expect plenty of them to break within the first year due to simple abuse and accidents.

Given that businesses go on a 3 year cycle, 2 years for kids is not prima facie unreasonable.

 

[leman]

There are no hard stats. Last survey I know of was done 10 years ago and it suggested that a premium laptop (regardless of the brand) had an expected failure chance of 20% in first 3 years of ownership. This is in line with my own experience as IT manager of a moderately-sized university research unit.

But what you need is not stats but a lawyer. The school is full of BS.

 

[junkw]

"catastrophic for student": why don't they force backup on the cloud or elsewhere instead of forcing laptops upgrade?

 

[LiberatorSiegeTankLurker]

What grade level is this?

Kids don't treat their computers as well as adults do. If you give a bunch of elementary school or middle school kids laptops, expect plenty of them to break within the first year due to simple abuse.

my sis is entering year 9 next year, the older brother is entering year 11 so almost 18 year old. standard age for year 9 in my country is 15.

There are no hard stats. Last survey I know of was done 10 years ago and it suggested that a premium laptop (regardless of the brand) had an expected failure chance of 20% in first 3 years of ownership. This is in line with my own experience as IT manager of a moderately-sized university research unit.

But what you need is not stats but a lawyer. The school is full of BS.

thanks for the info. i will refuse the 2nd laptop, if they force us to pay extra school fees i will get a lawyer. my parents unfortunately are the type who "play along to kidnappers", got a stockholm syndrome, we had an argument over this (and over MANY other things in life where they were clearly getting ripped off). i'm more than happy to buy a mac pro the same day IF it fails, but this school is forcing us to dump them even if they are in good as new condition. i will do my best to convince my parents to change schools.

 

[retta283]

That is absurd. Not only should they be providing laptops for the students, but they should not force a new purchase. I would need to look at the state law on this but that seems awfully fishy. If you're paying the admission into a private school they should not be allowed to levy such random fees and requirements on you. If I were your parent, I would've either changed school or taken it up to the Courts.

 

[LiberatorSiegeTankLurker]

"catastrophic for student": why don't they force backup on the cloud or elsewhere instead of forcing laptops upgrade?

they said (their own words)

an external hard drive is optional but highly recommended to avoid loss of data. These can be purchased from many technology stores

obviously we were going to buy a good external HDD, the limited storage itself is enough to warrant a 2TB HDD. and in 2 years time the cpu will not be much faster, processor development is already hitting a brick wall moore's law is at an end, the new 10th gen mobile intel is barely any faster than 8th gen (used in 2019 macbooks). furthermore, if cpu/ram is a worry, why not up the specs? from what my sis said they dont even use any intensive workloads, just basic things a macbook air can easily handle.

@"retta283" yes definitely will be taking them to court if they still enforce this after i discuss with them. thanks for all the replies!!!

 

[psingh01]

This is garbage. Just a way to scam people out of more money. In a professional environment I‘ve used employer issued laptops for 4 years before they were upgraded. They could have lasted longer but that was their schedule for upgrades. They all had enterprise service contracts for that duration. Any issues that came up would be repaired fairly quickly including on site repairs. No way in hell would they buy brand new machines every four years, much less two. That only benefits the people that are in the business of selling.

 

[retta283]

This is garbage. Just a way to scam people out of more money. In a professional environment I‘ve used employer issued laptops for 4 years before they were upgraded. They could have lasted longer but that was their schedule for upgrades. They all had enterprise service contracts for that duration. Any issues that came up would be repaired fairly quickly including on site repairs. No way in hell would they buy brand new machines every four years, much less two. That only benefits the people that are in the business of selling.

One of my employer machines was actually so good that when my time with them was up, I purchased the machine from them and did a wipe of it. Still runs to this day. I would've never agreed to do a forced upgrade. I knew how to work on it myself and had no issue fixing the very small issues that cropped up with it. This is obviously some kind of scam that they are pulling on students, I hope somebody is able to take this up to court.