Here in NY we all use NYC board of edu computers and from what I've seen they are all Dell....
Probably depends on how many schools you're able to see. A friend of mine does IT for NYC and this past spring he was telling me about how because of budget issues he had to get up and running one more computer lab for this current school year. Despite having piles of (dead) Dells, he ended up using a bunch of ancient G3 clamshell iBooks; he tweaked the curiculuum to also include a "repair" as well as a "use" portion and as of when I talked with him, it had already gotten through the first half of the year just fine.
It's all based on return (or at least in terms of education). Buying truckloads of iMacs for schools is a plain waste of tax payers' money. Why would you spend $1200 on an iMac that runs even LESS software than a Windows PC?
Because maybe they last longer, and this makes them cheaper in the long run? Do keep in mind that the G3 clamshells I mentioned above were last produced in 2000 ... that's ten (10) years of being beaten on by kids.
And FWIW, the breadth of available software that a machine might be able to run is an incorrect paradigm: the correct question to ask is if it runs the software that you need for the job at hand (here, it is limited to just whatever you need for these classes).
Add in the fact that 90% of these kids will probably be working at companies that have their entire corporate applications based in Windows...
Perhaps you'll see the flaw here if you realize that by the time that they've graduated from school, whatever Windows OS they're using today will have become obsolete and replaced. Thus, if you revise your objective to be that the student learn how to adapt and apply ... then the OS doesn't matter and can thus include Mac OS without any heartburn.
As much as Macs might seem like a good idea for educational purposes, the better choice in terms of pure educational value and actual preparation for the real world is a Windows PC.
Perhaps so, but we can't jump to that conclusion until we have applied the very principles as we teach our children, where we follow the scientific method to test our hypothesis, and prove our case with peer-reviewed data, not mere opinions that lack the supporting quantitative substantiation.
Of course, this is all assuming that we're not talking about universities and colleges.
But why would that make any difference? Afterall, since college students are chronologically much closer to being out working in the real world, how does this sentiment not run contrary to what you suggested earlier as your rationalization for using Windows for grade school kids?
10% worldwide? Really?
Seriously, I didn't think it was approaching that kind of market share outside of the US. I'd be interested to see the data behind that.
I don't think 10% worldwide is correct. The numbers I've seen suggest that the weighted worldwide marketshare is around 5%, and the US Domestic marketshare is around 10%.
Of course, the interesting twist in this is that these numbers happen to combine both personal and business use. Thus, since the conventional wisdom is that figuratively "No" Macs exist in business, then the "Home" sub-segment must be substantially higher than the overall average (otherwise the numbers simply do not work).
For example, if we simplistically assume a 50%-50% distribution
* for Home (Personal) versus Business, then if USA/Business segment has figuratively "No Macs" (approx 0% Mac share), then in order for the total to properly add up and average out to 10% overall, the math says that the USA/Home segment has to be roughly 20% Mac. Right now, today.
-hh
* - I have no basis for this notional "50%-50%" distribution. Hopefully, someone can provide a citation to a study that has detailed what this statistical distribution currently is within the USA Marketplace. I trust that it adequately illustrates the point, which is that if business penetration by Mac OS is lower than average, then the non-business adoptions must be higher than the same average.