Re: Help! PC monopoly taking place
Re: Help! PC monopoly taking place
- Subject: Re: Help! PC monopoly taking place
- From: "lorin.evans" <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 12:28:18 -0500
Del,
i saw your note concerning schools in your area switching to WinTEL
boxes. If you are unhappy about the switch, find Apple's higher ed rep
for your area and ask what (s)he is doing and how you can help. After
that, you need to get a better handle on who is paying for what in this
story.
>
The Comp. Services Depts. are trying to purge ALL
>
the Macs & replace with Dells.
Somewhere in the school system is a decision making process. At the
moment, you are _way_ behind the curve. Your note makes it sound like
they have signed contracts with Dell, etc. If Apple knew, it could not,
or would not, match those prices. And if they didn't, well. . .
You get a sense of the seriousness of the problem when Apple is willing
to admit that it is finding shoppers coming into Apple stores with
computer advertisements from WinTEL platforms and doing spec/price
comparisons. The drop in prices announced this week is said to be
motivated by a need to address this. 'Switch' candidates are proving to
be price sensitive. Unfortunately, Apple does not show well on a dollar
comparison basis; that is not its strong suite.
Turning decisions around in your area schools at this late date is tough.
It sounds like you have IT people who are not comfortable working in a
mixed-platform environment, are frustrated with service/support from
Apple, and have gained influence in the decision process with no
counterbalance from the academic end users. Those are all known issues in
Cupertino.
You might have a story if you can make the 'wasted money' argument: can
you show how much money these managers are 'wasting' by this wholesale
replacement -- especially at a time of severe budget shortfalls?
Newspapers like stories like that. If this interests you, do your
homework carefully.
>
the wording in this current Grant states that there can be no Macs for
>
students, staff or faculty allowed on campus! Isn't this illegal?
If this is money that was appropriated by your state's legislature, get a
copy of the bill and check the wording carefully. Often times vendors
representatives 'help' legislators draft the text in a funding bill and,
in the process, slip in language that sounds harmless, but, in effect,
excludes a competitor's product. Oops. Illegality is a function of how it
all happened, if it did.
>
I believe that this is definitely a MUG issue.
It is a corporate Apple issue, one in which they show very little public
concern. Apple dumped it local presence in the school market years ago
-- a seriously dumb move -- and they continue to pay for it.
The reality is that a school lost to Apple products is one that is very
hard to reconvert. After all, if the school IT folks become dissatisfied
with Dell, there is always HP, or Gateway or . . . . Frustrated with the
ways of Apple and there is no Power Computing or UMAX to call.
Lorin
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