Huzzahh
jettredmont said:
I deal with schools every day. People are generally more upset when someone bullies through an order for PC's with a mid-to-high-end video card and more RAM and HD than necessary, because it is frankly 75% wasted on the software the computers will be used for.
What would a school use a high-end video card for? Please do tell. Would it make Internet studies more effective? Would it make self-learning programs run better? Would it make teachers' gradebooks easier to use? Would it make Word more efficiently handle footnotes?
You sound exactly like the people who end up overspending school IT budgets because they feel for some reason that if they don't max out the memory and hard drive Safari and Reader Rabbit just won't run!
The eMac is targetted for people with a known need, and their egos firmly enough in check that they don't need to buy up to the Maseratti to make up for other deficiencies. The 'e' people generally don't have budgets to fritter away on "but maybe someday" hypotheticals which only tangentially might possibly affect how they teach their students.
In fact most people own computers that are far beyond their actual needs, the number of people who have higher-end PCs and use them for email and a Word aren't using the 512K of RAM, the 2.4Ghz P4 or the video card at all. Furthermore, an eMac is perfect for the educational market, because even in high school and college classes where they are teaching Photoshop and other high-end media apps, they still rarely test the performance of the machineand before you point out that you have, yes someone always manages to, but most students in most situations don't need the highest end system; it would be wasted on them.
It would be better for a school to have 4 eMacs than 1 or 2 G5s because it allows twice as many students to get the hands-on teaching they really need. Furthermore, computers are overused in schools as it is, giving them the highest-end machine possible is more ego than anything else. Most graphic designers, photoshop maivens, even architects and engineers that I know cut their teeth on low-end machines, and in the last two cases, these are guys who are using 1.4Ghz P4s or 800mhz G4s. Will they buy a G5 or a 3.4HT P4? Yeah, when their current machines die.
Again, except for the psuedo-professional fragger and Pixar (ex.) most people don't need more than 32mb of VRAM right nowdon't want to be like Bill and state 640k of memory is enoughin two or three years, 32mb of VRAM would be worthless.
Oh, and this is the 'low-end machine' this is the bottom of the barrel for Apple, the cheap fast Ford Focus of the line so to speak, there's a GT at the top.
