Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Moths to the Flame

I got a big chuckle out of this story earlier in the day. Hundreds (or was it thousands?) of people stampeding to get a $50 used Apple laptop.

Since then I noticed that the school system in question is switching to Dell laptops because Dell big $20 lower per laptop for the replacement machines.

TWENTY DOLLARS!

For that, in about 3 months time, the replacement machines will be infested with every virus known to man. They will be loaded with games and other non-essential-to-education software. And while I am not a big big fan of Apple hardware in terms of reliability (I think all PCs, Apple or otherwise, are pretty much the same in that regard) their OS, if far far better than Windows in just about every category I can think of (too bad Apple doesn't want to be known as a software company).

I'm looking forward to seeing two stories in the coming months. One will be the SURPRISE! story regarding how much less useful the new Dell laptops are for their intended use, and the other will be how these new $50 laptop users are delighted with all the troubles they are missing on their new machines. I take it for granted that a lot of these $50 are probably close to DOA, but a good many of them are going to be working just fine for several years. I wouldn't mind having one myself.

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