Hell hath frozen over.

[sparkleytone]

The day I am impressed by the progress made by the technology departments at my school has arrived.

My girlfriend is a CA/RA/etc. and today was the first crazy day of freshmen moving in.

At my school this means that people have to register their ethernet cards with the university to gain access. Being that no one HAS access, they have to use the two public computers to go online and do so. This has always meant fighting with the old iMacs, running OS 9 and netware (gah), in the computer lounge. Needless to say they froze all the damn time. These things aren't even the slot loading iMacs either, so you can guess how old the hardware is.

So today I was there and had to help them find the page to register. I sit down and lo and behold, they are running OS X. A quick check shows that they only have 160MB RAM and are running 10.1.5. But, the machines were very responsive and reliable all day so far. I was able to help them out in a matter of minutes and set the homepage in IE for them so it would be easy for people coming to register.

Overall I was impressed by the fact that our university has made the switch to OS X, and that they had the courage and took the initiative to actually switch over all the existing hardware being used on a daily basis. If they have done this with ALL the mac, especially the public ones outside of the cafeteria, then I have a feeling the bad rep, no worse than the pcs mind you, these iMacs have gained will quickly fade away.

Today I saw a microcosm of the beginnings of a possible revolution in personal computing as we know it. This is one of the reasons I switched to Macintosh. It feels good to be an early adopter of a technology that is going places.


edit: oh yeah and one girl had a new 17" iMac she got YESTERDAY!! /me cries.


P.S. "early-adopter" in this case meaning my switching.

 

[Rower_CPU]

I hope to switch our lab over to OS X in the near future (40+ machines).

Just got to wait and see if we get upgraded to new eMacs, or if we'll need to buy new licenses.

 

[sparkleytone]

new licenses for what?? elaborate.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by sparkleytone
new licenses for what?? elaborate.

OS licenses.

We have B&W G3s running 9.2.2. We would need to buy licenses for 10.2 for the current machines. If we get new eMacs they will come with it.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

would you be able to take advantage of the "family pricing" despite being a lab?

though i suppose bulk school license might be cheaper?

hmm

 

[sparkleytone]

thats interesting, as i do not see any volume licensing at all for OS X as a "client" OS in the education institutional store.

they need to fix that pronto. ill have to ask people how our school did the OS X licensing for old machines. paying $70 per license would be ridiculous.

Altho, last semester they had a promo to get the full OS X cd and dev tools for $20 through the school. I guess that was kind of a foreshadowing of the transition, and also indicates some custom licensing.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by sparkleytone
thats interesting, as i do not see any volume licensing at all for OS X as a "client" OS in the education institutional store.

they need to fix that pronto. ill have to ask people how our school did the OS X licensing for old machines. paying $70 per license would be ridiculous.

Altho, last semester they had a promo to get the full OS X cd and dev tools for $20 through the school. I guess that was kind of a foreshadowing of the transition, and also indicates some custom licensing.

My school has a Technology Assurance Program (TAP) w/ Apple that allows us to pay a set price, $30/CPU initially, then $12/year/CPU for access to any OS upgrades that come out. CD Media are $15 each, and you're not allowed to make copies.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU


My school has a Technology Assurance Program (TAP) w/ Apple that allows us to pay a set price, $30/CPU initially, then $12/year/CPU for access to any OS upgrades that come out. CD Media are $15 each, and you're not allowed to make copies.

do you use their cds for your own personal computers or do you play it clean?

just curious.

ps. i may or may not report you....

 

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule
do you use their cds for your own personal computers or do you play it clean?

just curious.

ps. i may or may not report you....

You're funny. Talk to mc68k about that stuff.

I just pre-ordered Jaguar for my home machine.

 

[sparkleytone]

Actually it is my understanding that he would be within his and the university's rights if he did use them on his own personal machine. As long as he does even the most minute amount of work related things on that computer, it would be completely legal. Ever have correspondence with your boss/workers from home?? Ever remote admin'd into a computer from there?? etc etc etc

 

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by sparkleytone
Actually it is my understanding that he would be within his and the university's rights if he did use them on his own personal machine. As long as he does even the most minute amount of work related things on that computer, it would be completely legal. Ever have correspondence with your boss/workers from home?? Ever remote admin'd into a computer from there?? etc etc etc

I could do that, since I do a fair share of remote admin and work from home...

...but I also use it for consulting and freelance work, making money, etc., so I don't do it. Besides, it's tax deductible as a business expense.

 

[chibianh]

The Mac cluster at our school is running 10.1.5 with Jaguar on the way. However, they're all G4/450 towers. I think, though, that we are getting new towers next year, which should be cool.

Today was freshmen moving in day for our school , too. To get their computers onto the network from their dorms, the students fill out a sheet of paper and send it to the computing center where we activate their ports. For roaming systems, they have to register their MAC addresses. Before they register their MAC addresses, they can only browse pages on the domain. The page to register your MAC address is on the domain so they can do all this by themselves and don't have to bother us at the computing center about it. However, I'm pretty sure you all know that people come storming in anyway and ask for help to set this and that up. The next couple of weeks are gonna be hell.. and it began today.

 

[G4scott]

I know that it will be a cold day in hell when my high school switches to Macs... Right now, I'm trying to show our technology coordinators the advantages of Apple's PowerSchool ...

Right now, my schedule is screwed up, school starts on monday, and the stupid data processing clerks claim that they can't do anything about my schedule until monday or tuesday, even though my counselor has already turned in a schedule change request... Maybe it's because they use pee-cee's...

 

[sparkleytone]

Originally posted by chibianh
The Mac cluster at our school is running 10.1.5 with Jaguar on the way. However, they're all G4/450 towers. I think, though, that we are getting new towers next year, which should be cool.

Today was freshmen moving in day for our school , too. To get their computers onto the network from their dorms, the students fill out a sheet of paper and send it to the computing center where we activate their ports. For roaming systems, they have to register their MAC addresses. Before they register their MAC addresses, they can only browse pages on the domain. The page to register your MAC address is on the domain so they can do all this by themselves and don't have to bother us at the computing center about it. However, I'm pretty sure you all know that people come storming in anyway and ask for help to set this and that up. The next couple of weeks are gonna be hell.. and it began today.

ya well the people that they staff here to do those things are, how do you say????...INCOMPETENT! They hire them that way on purpose. They'd rather have trained monkeys than people who understand what they are doing.

i hope your school is better.

 

[Beej]

A Comp Sci friend of mine saw my iBook today... he didn't know OS X even existed. I showed it to him and he was gobsmacked. I showed him the terminal and said "look, unix!" and he almost died. If he wasn't a pennyless Uni student, he'd have ran staight off to buy a Mac.

I want to send a big wake up call to Apple. Let people know about this brilliant OS. People don't know about it. Most people doing Computer Science don't even know about it!

We shouldn't be waiting for the next 'killer app' to get people to make the switch, we already have it. It's Mac OS X. Tell people about it, and I will personally guarantee you, Apple, that even more people will make the switch.


(See, I just know Apple will do it now that I've given a personal guarantee )

 

[sparkleytone]

from my experience here, everyone that i meet who is a compsci major has HEARD of OS X but has not been able to play with it. They have heard of it in both negative and positive terms, and are usually slashdotters. Just this summer i met one in my german2 class. Now he wants an iBook.

if a student compsci major wants to use OS X, tell them its worth it to join the ADC Student program for $100 and get themselves a one time hardware discount.

refer to this thread for a little pricing info.

or find the page which i did not bookmark from apple.