skoker said:
This really bites, because most schools prefer an all-in-one approach, so they will be forced to buy iMac's which cost more and thus they have to buy fewer of them 🙁
(Although our school computer labs could use an upgrade 😀)
I disagree with the "most schools" part. Many schools, yes, but I think the reality is that most schools prefer the most budget-friendly solution. Having worked in education and spent many, many years as a student, my experience is that schools prefer NOT to use all-in-one solutions, because it increases upgrade costs. Monitors are kept until they get blurry or break, but desktops are upgraded whenever the budget allows. I've seen an eMac here and there, but iMacs (and modern ones at that) dominate. My old high school, in fact, has LCD monitors in almost all the labs, and it's an urban, public school.
People don't walk off with computers if you lock the doors when the rooms are empty. As for students slipping minis into their backpacks, it's a matter of course that the computers are all engraved and registered in most schools, and furthermore they're insured by the school district. If you put all the minis in clear view, a missing one wouldn't be hard to notice, and if you don't spend the 10 seconds to check the room at the end of class to make sure they're all still there, you're asking for trouble. I once had to check for disappearing mouse balls once every day or two, before the days of optical mice, and then when we got optical mice, had to check daily that the actual mouse was still there. If that's not enough, minis also come with Kensington lock slots, and it's not a major investment to spend an extra $20 to lock down each computer.
Truly rough, poor, inner city school districts might be an exception here, but Apple does not discount its computers so much that they would be affordable there, and since they give grants to schools covering the purchase and installation costs, security is just one part of that. I see absolutely nothing wrong with schools switching to minis over eMacs (even if the eMac stops being sold completely, which is not currently the case).
