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how much do schools pay to upgrade a lab?

K

kddpop

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 5, 2006
117
0
oklahoma city, ok
this is a curiosity type question.

if a school (private or public) has a mac lab of, say, 15 macs, all running tiger, and they wish to upgrade them all to leopard when the day comes, what will their cost be?

im curious as to apple's pricing strategy and it's effects on the education marketshare.

thanks in advance,
kyle
 
There is usually a discount of about 10% on the machines purchased. Not a whole lot off. Then again that is why machines like the eMac and all-in-one G3 existed. They were cheap and useful for schools.
 
Straight from the online store, $59 per seat, 15 seats, $885.

If you talk to them, it can be cheaper. We try buying it as a district to get more buying power. The more licenses you get as a district, the cheaper it is.

-nhat
 
thanks for the reply. couldnt find that info on the store as i am not a purchaser for a school, just a curious apple geek.

thanks again,
grace and peace,
kyle
 
what about a smaller lab?

again, im just curious here...

is apple going after the smaller private schools too with similar os discounts for a smaller mac lab...like 5 or 10 macs?

of course it makes sense that the more seats you license, the deeper the discount. but there are quite a few smaller schools out there limping along with outdated macs and os'es. if one were to add up all those small private schools with small mac labs, thats a lot of macs.

and these are macs that are being used by kids getting top notch educations...i.e. potential future leaders/ceo's etc. it would be a shame to have the only mac exposure that these kids get to be an old machine with old software.

if apple pays attention to the smaller mac labs too, it could end up effecting other markets since those kids will likely be the ones who grow up and make purchasing decisions for their companies. if they had positive experience with macs in school, perhaps they'd be more likely to push for macs in their workplace.

just a thinking out loud. obviously i am bored at work and thinking of anything to keep my procrastination at it's most efficient.

cheers,
kyle
 
kddpop said:
and these are macs that are being used by kids getting top notch educations...i.e. potential future leaders/ceo's etc. it would be a shame to have the only mac exposure that these kids get to be an old machine with old software.
Click to expand...

Considering that the whole idea behind private schools is that parents pay tuition in the hopes that their kids would see better facilities and better quality of education, I would hope that the private school is using that tuition to effectively upgrade when needed. If not, the school needs to reconsider its budget and tuition situation.
 
It needs to make sense for the school too. My sister attends a top 10 boarding school in America and all students are given free hp tablet PCs, there are about 5 imac g5s available in the comouter lab. However, if the school could get the same deal for MB/MBPs I'm sure they would rather go for it because it it would save the it dudes some time and the school some $$.

scaredpoet said:
Considering that the whole idea behind private schools is that parents pay tuition in the hopes that their kids would see better facilities and better quality of education, I would hope that the private school is using that tuition to effectively upgrade when needed. If not, the school needs to reconsider its budget and tuition situation.
Click to expand...
 
SC68Cal said:
This describes Apple's Policy

http://www.rixstep.com/1/20070604,01.shtml

They have no site-wide licensing policy, which makes upgrading clients EXTREMELY expensive. This needs to be addressed.
Click to expand...


This seems to contradict the experience with Apple that the educational institution I work for has had. We're currently in our "Hardware Purchase Cycle" where everyone who has been looking to upgrade computers or acquire new hardware is encouraged to do so now to maximize savings as part of a massive group buy. HP and Dell are participating, and Apple gleefully jumped in as well, giving us discounts for hardware and OS upgrades beyond the standard educational markdown.

The purchase cycle extends not only to "on site" hardware, but to faculty, staff and students making personal purchases as well. Though, Apple and the other vendors very thoroughly verify your affiliation before giving the discount, even going so far as to tie into our institution's LDAP servers to check against the enrollment and employment rosters. The LDAP lookup happens before you're even given the link to the online store. If you don't match up in the databases, you're not even shown the prices.

I won't say how much I got my MBP for when I bought it as I'm not sure if there are disclosure restrictions, but I will say it was cheaper than the closest equivalent laptop I could build on Dell's or HP's site, even with their discounts. OS X upgrades were very heavily reduced too.

I should note though, that Microsoft did counter with a negotiated site license of their own: the university paid one lump fee, and now every department can use Windows XP, Windows Vista for Business, Office 2004 for Mac, and Office 2007 for "free." As in, no additional payout required. Supposedly this will extend to the next version of Office for Mac as well. The catch: you can ONLY use it on site. Though "work-at-home" pricing is available. Not many people have taken up the offer for Windows Vista though. :)

I guess what discount you get from Apple depends on how much buying clout you have. The institution I work for also aggressively negotiates discounts with hotel chains, rental car companies, airlines, restaurant chains, insurance companies, banks, and all three major wireless phone carriers, so I imagine they have a lot of clout.
 
So what is an organization supposed to do with all the hardware that they purchased over the years? Just throw it out? Throw out late model Powermac G5s?

You don't buy a new box for a OS update. That makes no sense.
 
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