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Stupid/Unnecessary things your Work or School have bought

M

msheldrick

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 23, 2008
142
0
I'll start:

My school bought 30 Blade servers and has absolutely no use for them whatsoever, they've been unplugged for around a year so far.
 
My school bought 60 Touch sensitive Promethan ActivBoards and because everyone was messing about with them they now just use them as something to project on to. They cost Friggin £2000 each!
 
--SMART Boards in every classroom. Granted, there are a large percentage of teachers who do use them, but there are plenty who don't.

--60 in. plasma TV wall mounted by the student entrance for announcements.

--46" Samsung LCD in the main office for picture slideshows

Those were the most recent purchases by my high school. I worked with the IT guy over the summer when he made these and I just said, hah, okay, whatever. No wonder tuition is $10k...
 
TheOnlyJon said:
--SMART Boards in every classroom. Granted, there are a large percentage of teachers who do use them, but there are plenty who don't.

--60 in. plasma TV wall mounted by the student entrance for announcements.

--46" Samsung LCD in the main office for picture slideshows

Those were the most recent purchases by my high school. I worked with the IT guy over the summer when he made these and I just said, hah, okay, whatever. No wonder tuition is $10k...
Click to expand...

Basically all those. lol.

We have SMARTBoards in every classroom. There's no need for them, we have White Boards....

We have 4 60" Plasma TVs in our Cafeteria, nobody ever watches them.
We have ~10 32" LCD/Plasmas in our Security Office...each watching over different cameras.
 
My school bought these Smartboard things that apparently require the use of a projector. They took our projectos for whatever reason. They're a waste of space on the whiteboard IMO.
 
They haven't bought it yet, but they are soon...a $900,000 artificial turf conversion for our football field. The soccer team bitched and moaned about how they had to go two miles off campus to practice for games and can't host sectionals because we don't have a dedicated soccer field and the football field isn't large enough to be regulation soccer. They could have just spend $40,000 to put lights at the place where they practice, but the soccer teams want it to be on campus.

Literally, the newspaper article announcing that they were opening bids for this project and the article that the school corporation was $1m in the hole were on the same day, right next to each other. They've cut hours for everybody on hourly pay, they've cut instructional assistants, and right now we're worried that they'll start cutting arts/music teaching positions...but we need a mothertrucking artificial turf field.
 
computer lab of 35 workstations which do not have the needed video cards.

10 floating licenses for the needed software for above lab, when the class size is 30-35

mac anti-virus software for 117 imacs

12 SUN workstations - to check email and write papers on, for professors.

Research Boat and 30 kayaks/canoes
 
An in-store(grocery store) post office with one less than a mile away. *facepalm
 
My school hasn't bought anything stupid that I can think of, but they've made us buy text books that are 10-20 years old to study computer science/telephony subjects???? WTF??? Is that dumb or what?
 
A few months back everyone in our company got an individual little special potted plant type thing that they can put on their desk or hang in their cubicle. You only have to water in once a month or something and of course the little pot has company logo stuff on it. I think it was supposed to be a morale or motivation kind of thing. Completely silly and a waste if you ask me.
 
I remember my school bought TVs for every room in one spring and installed a projector in one room; next fall, they had to install projectors in every room. Then they raised our taxes by like 14% or something.
 
msheldrick said:
I'll start:

My school bought 30 Blade servers and has absolutely no use for them whatsoever, they've been unplugged for around a year so far.
Click to expand...

Did they buy them, or were they donations? Did somebody buy them without understanding the chassis and power requirements that were involved?

I've seen a lot of donated hardware that has to sit around because budgeting or facilities can't deal with the new massive load on the electrical system.
 
alphaod said:
I remember my school bought TVs for every room in one spring and installed a projector in one room; next fall, they had to install projectors in every room. Then they raised our taxes by like 14% or something.
Click to expand...

That's bull-crap!! And a huge waste of money, come on!:mad::eek::confused:[
 
A school that I taught at had an Epson Stylus Pro 9900 Large Format Printer Color Inkjet tucked away in a conference room.
Never. Used. Once.
I so wanted rent a truck and wheel that out of there to my house... *drools*

I talked to the principal there and she said they had to spend the money or they would've lost the grant money for that year. A lot of schools get grants for the money and just have to spend it otherwise it "goes to waste". A big double edge sword.
 
My school has SMART boards in all the math classrooms, but they're actually put to good use by the teachers, so I wouldn't consider them a waste of money.

But the district built a $14 million high school two years ago... a lot of the stuff they put in was absolutely unecessery, (two level auditorium, multiple meeting rooms that now serve as storage, etc.) and the thing is falling apart already. :rolleyes:
 
tristangage said:
That's insane. What was the reasoning for buying it in the first place!?
Click to expand...


I work for a hotel. They thought it would make the lobby look more classy. They forgot to consider that the lobby is right outside of the bar. I now know how many times I can listen to somebody play fur elise poorly before I lose my mind.
 
Decrepit said:
Did they buy them, or were they donations? Did somebody buy them without understanding the chassis and power requirements that were involved?

I've seen a lot of donated hardware that has to sit around because budgeting or facilities can't deal with the new massive load on the electrical system.
Click to expand...

they bought them and just have no use for them, so they're unplugged. Our IT department has the least technical people running it.
 
TheOnlyJon said:
--SMART Boards in every classroom. Granted, there are a large percentage of teachers who do use them, but there are plenty who don't.

--60 in. plasma TV wall mounted by the student entrance for announcements.

--46" Samsung LCD in the main office for picture slideshows

Those were the most recent purchases by my high school. I worked with the IT guy over the summer when he made these and I just said, hah, okay, whatever. No wonder tuition is $10k...
Click to expand...

Oh the wall mounted TVs . . .

My high school had them in the cafeteria. I thought they'd show the day's "specials" or menus or whatever. They showed the same 2 pictures every day (which incidentally only emphasised how the pictures did not match the products)

My university's probably misspent money somewhere but I wouldn't know about it, apart from the various useless flatscreens hung up on walls around the place. Posters would have had the same effect.

There were 2 that I used to check the time on. There was a clock in between them though :rolleyes:

Somebody did somehow steal about 15 computers (monitors and all) one night though. From a room less than a minute's walk away from 24 hour reception and the main security office.
 
Another vote for SmartBoards. Big waste of time and money in my opinion. When you consider how many people actually utilize them for more than just a surface to view the projector on (not many), how much they cost, and how much maintenance they require (recalibrating - recalibrating - recalibrating)...just not worth it.
 
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