Sorry everyone, this reply is LONG!

“Then you’ve got the smart ones, who think things through and look for the smartest and cheapest way of accomplishing their goals.”

How about cost effective rather than cheap. If you prefer to be cheap, by all means feel free to do so.

Okay Mr. Smart and Cheap, tell us all you know about Enterprise deployment as it relates to computer systems. I have a few seconds to kill.

“The computer cost structure displayed on your pro-SPLOST website with the $1000 computers reflects the helpless attitude.”

No, your understanding of an enterprise system configuration is what reflects the helpless attitude.

Tell me, are you the proud owner of a Gateway or a Compaq?

“The first question to ask about school computers is this: what are they needed or used for?”

What do you use your car for, just one thing and one thing only? Does that mean if you use it to drive to work you can’t use it to go to the store? Instead of using your car to get to work couldn’t you ride a bike? It would cost a lot less to purchase, maintain and replace.

“The second question: for what grades are they needed, and how much are they needed?”

Did you purchase the cheapest car on the market when you purchased your car? Did you consider things such as fuel efficiency or warranty issues?

“The third question: what basic computer features will fulfill these needs? They could be different for different grades.”

Not if there going to be using the same OS and software and connecting to the same network.

Not if you have to support them for any kind of reasonable cost. As a matter of fact some lower grades of computers won’t work correctly on a network. Do you know the difference between Windows XP Home Edition and the XP Pro Edition?

“The fourth question: how much will they be used? How much can they be shared?”

As there are 22,000+ students in the Fayette County school system I think I can safely guess, yes the computers will be shared.

“The fifth question: how many computers do we need (of each type)?”

There you go about the “Type” thing again. Do you even know what you’re asking?

“The sixth question: how long do we plan to keep them and what’s the smartest way to pay for them?”

Industry standards, that includes both private and public sectors, estimates the usable lifespan of a desktop computer as between 4 and 5 years max. Cash.

“Keep in mind that there are millions of well-educated Americans who went to schools that did not have computers. That even includes engineers. Of course, as computers came along these people learned to use them and simply adapted to them.”
Yes, the great pyramids were built without computers but your car, house, and the last jet you flew in was designed on a computer.

The three pair’s pair of running shoes you have in your closet were designed on a computer. I’d be willing to bet that there’s not a school in this county that a computer wasn’t used to design.

Let’s not forget that the Apollo Moon missions were flown with less processing power then is in most of today’s wristwatches.

By the way, the American Medical Association, AMA, has chastised their members as being one of the least computer literate of professionals in the U.S.

“But are computers used to learn math? No. In fact, they might be harmful, because they might make people too dependent on machines (like calculators) and the students might be unable to perform the simplest of arithmetic operations without them.”

I remember my teachers saying the same thing about slide rules.

Ever heard of companies called V-Tech or Leapfrog? Do you have any idea of the math that’s involved in computer games? Do you know how much game coders make? Lookup the most recent “space tourist” and tell me what he did to make is fortune. Did he do all that using long division?

“Are computers used to learn English? To a degree. To the extent they keep students from reading, or from learning how to spell, with undue reliance on spell-checkers, they are harmful. They can impede good penmanship. Computers may help when composing lengthy essays.”

Wrong again. Computers are perhaps the most efficient, cost efficent way to learn a language. Any language.

Speaking of penmanship, ever try to read a prescription?

It’s rather ironic, your entire post, as I needed a computer to read it. Without a computer you would have had to resort to smoke signals to allow more than one person at a time to enjoy you writings.

As a matter of fact Cal even asked a relevant question about this very subject in one of his polls. He asked if we thought the ‘printed’ newspaper was going to be replaced by WEB publishing. The answer is yes.

“Can computers help learn history, geography, foreign languages, physics, chemistry or biology? Not really. Good textbooks and instructors will be much better.”

Want to bet? Do you have any idea how long it takes to get a textbook into the hands of a student? Try something on the order of five years.

And the kicker is it will be out of date, last decade’s news, when it is in the hands of a student, especially when you’re dealing with such subjects as physics, chemistry or biology. Please show me an up do date text book on stem cell work or astronomy.

“In the early school grades, I see little need for computers. As the students get older, they can be taught keyboarding (typing) and learn how to write essays.”

“They could also be taught how to do research on the internet.”

When do you plan to start doing research on the internet? You certainly didn’t do any for this post. If you had, you wouldn’t have written it.

“The computers needed by most of our students need not have a lot of bells and whistles.”

Nothing in the proposed configuration can be called “a lot of bells and whistles”. When you start adding things line the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 - PCI Express graphics cards for 3,000 to $4,000 or a multi processor mother board or a liquid cooled processor, now that’s bells and whistles.

“It would be desirable for our students to learn how to take care of computers.”

They can start by taking yours apart.

“One could teach them how to connect the various parts of a computer, and how to load software. Rather than ask Dell to do it at $89 a pop (or whatever), they could do it themselves. Most of them have computers at home, and I bet they proudly could teach some of their classmates and even teachers how to do a lot of things with computers.”

What you didn’t grasp is that the FCBoE Systems Staff does that. The $89.00 fee is if you let Dell do it.

I see reading comprehension was not taught in your school. Perhaps you would benefit from an ‘on-line’ reading class.

We could also open vocational schools where our children could learn auto mechanics, plumbing, welding or small appliance repair. I’m not knocking any of those professions as the truly gifted are highly paid and sought after.

“Warranties are not really needed with computers. There’s not too much that can physically break down. I bet some of our high schoolers could help out with the occasional software glitches. Of course, the school system should have (and I am sure does have) a few computer gurus on staff.”

“I suspect the school system is using the term warranty when in fact it means service contract, so it can get every little problem fixed by outside experts. There is a bit of a union mentality at work here, where even changing a lightbulb requires an electrician.”

God, you’re better then low hanging fruit.

Dell actually calls it a “warranty” so your suspicion is wrong.

Aside from the keyboard and the mouse, for which there is no warranty or ‘service contract’ available, the next most frequent thing on a computer that fails is the hard-drive. Replacing one requires disassembling the CPU. I would imagine if I opened the CPU case for you, you couldn’t point to the hard drive never mind replace it.

“Hey, you can’t sell $1000 school computers to intelligent consumers. Not with the information you’re providing.”

Do you even know what the parts were in the published configuration? Do you have any idea what’s in that box your keyboard is plugged into?

“The Air Force once bought hammers for $900. When you use your own money to buy a computer, you don’t pay $1000. When you use the taxpayers’, anything goes.”

Do you know what the MIL-SPEC for that hammer was? I didn’t think so.

Sorry to burst your bubble but the laptop I’m typing this on cost over $4,000. You can add another $10,000+ for the software that’s on it. I’ve had it for almost four years now and I’ve already ordered a replacement for it. It’s last decades news.

I don’t mind the fact that you’re trying to save taxpayer money, I voted against the SPLOST, but I do take offence to the fact that you have virtually no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to computers.

Perhaps if you had written about bus replacements or utility costs you would be more in your element.

I have in fact taken courses in electronics, just for the interest of it, and I know about transistors (what they are and what they do), diodes, capacitors, resistors, etc. I have myself removed hard drives from my old computers before disposing of them, and I have (of course) installed DIMM and other cards onto my motherboard. I understand clock speed for central processors, and its importance. I understand the role of power supplies, and I am pretty sure I could replace one (or a hard drive).

You assume I know a lot less than I do. It’s a common mistake, and you’re forgiven.

Your knowledge of transistors (what they are and what they do), diodes, capacitors, resistors, etc is nice but you lack any experience in how to design, administer or support a network. And please, don’t try wearing your Novel or Microsoft “SE” pin. We eat them and their young for breakfast. If you’ve never actually supported a network it makes little difference to us what book you read or class you took.

The State and Federal Govt’s. attempt to give away thousands of computers every year and their efforts are thwarted time and time again because the older, less modern systems are NOT compatible with the existing infrastructure and cost too much to support. They can’t run the operating systems or software that the network is designed for.

Not only does the FCBoE need newer, better computers but from what I’ve been told on these blogs is that the entire network infrastructure needs to be overhauled as well because it’s out of date.

Try to give you old computer to a school, any school and they will kindly thank you and decline your offer. Public libraries will do the same.

Go to Peachtree City and ask the network admin. if he’ll accept your donation and he’ll tell you the same thing. Thanks but no thanks. It would cost too much to support it.

About the only place that will accept old out of date computers are churches and the occasional day care center.

Trust me, I know this one. I ended up giving several hundred computers to the Navy so they could use them as sonar targets. No one else would touch them and they were easier to deploy than tossing old cars off the ship.

When my company replaces computers we buy them in lots of entire productions runs so that the support and demand on the infrastructure remains constant.

Standardizing the makes and models of computers used in any closed network greatly reduces the costs of maintenance and support over the course of a few years. It also reduces the inventory levels needed to maintain an acceptable service level. Do you want to pay for a full time support person at each school, because that’s what you’ll need to support a ‘mix’ of different or older systems on a network.

Buying cheap for the sake of saving money on the front will only bite you in the long run when dealing with computers. As anyone in the industry will tell you, “buy the best you can afford because it will be obsolete when you take it out of the box”. It’s just the nature of this beast.

Sure the FCBoE could buy a few thousand HP computers for a few hundred dollars less per unit but as they’re built with older phased out technology, the cheap ones anyway, the mean time between failures doesn’t make them cost effective.

You might even suggest Compaq’s to the FCBoE but did you know that everything is a Compaq is proprietary? If the NIC or graphics card is a third party the BIOS won’t even address it. So now you’re locked into buying only Compaq parts. That’s a real cost saver there.

I see this everyday in my company. NASA used to buy Grid computers from us and they thought our service tech’s were actually NASA employees because they always saw them in the offices. We were there so often that people wanted to know where our offices were so they could stop by for lunch.

A few years ago the FBI did the same thing. They put out RFP’s for network support only to have every responder recommend a total replacement of all the mix-matched systems. Without doing that nobody would touch it. On-site service techs run about $150/hr. usually with a two hour minimum. If you want 24/7 coverage be ready to pay for it.

I have no stake in Dell but it’s the only manufacture I deal with because it keeps my support costs down. In my company I don’t charge my customers for service calls for hardware failures for any of the equipment I supply. It’s one of the advantages I have over my competition. If I spec’ed the hardware, I support it for free. User and software errors plus third party integrations are where I make my money. I thank God there are plenty of users out there that have no idea how or why a computer does the things it does.

I love it when a customer, usually a Dr’s office, wants to integrate an insurance company computer into one of our existing networks. They’ll actually give the office a “free” computer only to have one of my service techs come and connect it to the network. I’ll bill the insurance company for that, not my customer, and I make sure that cost isn’t passed on later to my customer.

Bottom line is that support costs for computer systems/networks are enormous. Purchasing the best you can afford and standardizing reduces those support costs and increases the reliability/productivity of the system.

As you didn’t attempt to challenge any of my other responses to your post I can only assume that: A) you didn’t understand them and/or B) you had no argument to make against them.

Have a nice day.

The Original Computer

A Pencil

Memory was something you lost with age
An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity

A keyboard was a piano
A web was a spider's home
A virus was the flu
A CD was a bank account

A hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived

How times have changed.

I sure wouldn't get rid of mine now that I'm hooked on this new fang led gadget..beats a pencil any-day...but I still wouldn't spend more than $600.00 for a laptop, but that is just me. I don't think kids need an expensive computer for what they need to do in elementary, middle, and high school. When they go to college maybe those same kids, might need to upgrade, but then Mom and Dad can pay outright for the upgrade...something to look forward to...or not.

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