Where to get educational software FAST?

[betsbillabong]

I'm visiting my mom, a photographer, who decided to jump into the world of digital photography last year and bought a G5 powermac. She has not gotten very far because she is still totally confused by OS X (she's not a computer person). She's okay with Photoshop but needs some work on OSX basics. So for Christmas I've given her "computer lessons" including getting her all set up so everything is easy for her. I want to upgrade her to Panther, and buy Toast and the Photoshop CS upgrade (she's got 7 now). And I'm only in town a week or so.

I had figured I'd just go to the local Apple Store and buy all this stuff with her on educational discount (we both qualify). We were planning on starting on Wednesday. But now it turns out that the Apple retail stores only offer discounts on hardware; to buy software at the educational price you have to buy online from the Apple Store. (what's up with that??? Lame!!!) And for Panther, for example, Apple says there is a 1-3 day wait to ship. Huh?

Gradware.com, which says they will match prices, will not really match prices, and they don't have educational pricing on Panther.

Does anyone have any ideas for me? I'll pay for overnight shipping as long as it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. If there's somewhere retail that I could just drive to, that would be even better.

Arrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhh. It's stupid, because Apple is forcing me to buy from somewhere else. I can't believe they do that to people buying new computers from them that want the same educational pricing on their new software. Don't get me started, I just spent 3 grand with them.

Anyway: HELP! Mom is really getting frustrated with this and I won't have another window of time to help her in for a while.

 

[jsw]

It seems like the edu discount is causing the delay - Panther ships same-day if you order it at full retail price.

I would guess that your Mom could handle any of the installs herself, but, if you decide to buy Panther at "full" price (say, $109 from Amazon, or elsewhere), overnight it to her house, and install that, you probably will have done the install she'd most likely mess up (remember to not install all the extra languages and printer drivers....). Then you could wait for the others to arrive and talk her through them over the phone.

However, you might want to just call Apple and ask. It's possible they could help.

In any event, it sucks that you can't get the discount at the physical stores.

 

[betsbillabong]

Thanks, JSW. Good news.

I went to dealmac.com, and I was able to find Panther, iLife and Toast for less than Apple's educational prices at OWC, and the Photoshop CS upgrade also for less at Small Dog. Great price on the latter, by the way - only $150 or so.

So - once again, the stalwart Apple resellers who were doing this long before Apple ever thought to be in the retail business have saved the day.

I'm not at all sure my mom could handle any of the installs herself, but especially not the operating system.

Is that a complete reinstall, or can I just run it as an upgrade?

Thanks OWC and Small Dog!

 

[jsw]

Excellent! Glad it worked out for you!

The Jaguar->Panther change can be done as an upgrade - it's how I got all three of my Macs to Panther, with no problems.

 

[betsbillabong]

Fantastic, thanks. Hopefully all of the installs, etc, will take an hour at most.

 

[jsw]

Fantastic, thanks. Hopefully all of the installs, etc, will take an hour at most.

That might be pushing it a bit - I seem to recall that the Panther upgrade took a while. As mentioned previously, I highly recommend looking into the installation options and not installing additional languages or printer drivers - they take up tons of space and - more important to you - lots of time during installation.

Best of luck!

 

[jadam]

Buy it at your school store.

 

[betsbillabong]

great idea, jadam... unfortunately, i am already visiting my parents and don't really want to drive 6 hrs to go to the store. oh well, i think i got a pretty good deal from owc and smalldog.

and yeah, jdw, i will definitely watch the printer driver/language installs. thanks for reminding me.

i just called to ask if she had any kind of back up in place ("um, no, not really") and so i think i'm going to buy her an internal hd so she can backup. (and so that *i* can backup her info before installing panther).

i have had powerbooks/ibooks almost exclusively for ten years. installing a hard drive in a G5 1.6SP is pretty easy, isn't it? ay yi yi.

bb

 

[jsw]

i have had powerbooks/ibooks almost exclusively for ten years. installing a hard drive in a G5 1.6SP is pretty easy, isn't it? ay yi yi.

bb

So easy you'll actually waste time thinking it has to be harder than it is.

I installed a Seagate 160GB SATA drive last spring. Total time: 5 minutes. Spent half that time looking for the SATA cable - which is nicely tucked away for you by the second drive bay - I kept looking for a dangling PC-like cable.

No tools required. Open case, unscrew nice little rubber slider-feet from case and screw them into drive, untuck cable from its stowaway slot and plug into drive, close up case, turn on the G5, use Disk Utility (if I recall correctly) to format the drive (took all of 10 seconds for me on the Seagate), and you're golden.

This was on a dual-2.0, but I'm sure it'll be exactly the same for you!

 

[jxyama]

just FYI, apple retail stores discontinued software edu discounts after some idiots abused the system and started selling the discounted software to others who don't qualify. in theory, one can do the same with the hardware but because of the costs involved, apple lets it go.

idiotic action of the few ruins the good thing for many... like spam. so annoying... 🙁

 

[betsbillabong]

glad to hear the hd install is so easy. thanks!

jxyama, i see your point but it seems just as easy to do the same thing buying from the apple online store. in fact, even easier, as when you buy educational from the apple online store they never ask for your student ID (at least when i bought mine) and since it's anonymous, they don't recognize you. i think people could abuse this anywhere and don't understand why there's a retail/online disparity.

bb

 

[jxyama]

glad to hear the hd install is so easy. thanks!

jxyama, i see your point but it seems just as easy to do the same thing buying from the apple online store. in fact, even easier, as when you buy educational from the apple online store they never ask for your student ID (at least when i bought mine) and since it's anonymous, they don't recognize you. i think people could abuse this anywhere and don't understand why there's a retail/online disparity.

bb

well, from what i heard, these people were selling the software right outside the apple retail stores... 🙄

also, i think it's just a matter of convenience. i guess you can order a bunch from the online store and sell them, but it's not as convenient, time wise..?

apple isn't all that worked up about it, but they do want to protect themselves to a degree... it is a shame. i remember going to an apple store for the panther launch but didn't buy the panther itself because i couldn't use my edu discount. (got an emac instead at 10% off, which was better than edu discount, though.)