Comments on: I love it when a plan comes together…

By: The intern

The intern — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:13:48 +0000

This is simply just sad, very sad to me and my family; while also being horrifyingly ironic, and humorous. Being that my wife, is an aspiring school teacher and I’m a former help desk and techno-file, at the time of the planning of the procurement. And when during the time that this actually happened i was actually employed by a Dewitt financial firm to build them a website.. ooo the irony.

By: The Dude

The Dude — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:27:58 +0000

“there was no mention at all about cycle periods, maintenance agreements, hardware (other than model and CPU speed… neither of which necessarily very informative.) or what plans they have for educational software on those machines.”

Yawn. What kind of geek would read that tripe? Huzzah, they spent a half mil, now give me the latest update on Paris Hilton!!!

Public/Gov’t/Education contracts are always juicy since there’s no incentive for anyone to fight at the bargaining table. Dell pry lost money on your deal, but they might make it back on student exposure and goodwill. If they smelled that LCHS had deeper pockets they would have held out for more $$$

Casey, a Tech club? How would you like to roll out a bunch of new Dell machines… for fun?

By: Nate

Nate — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 03:16:21 +0000

Casey,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on my site. How’d you find my post?

It is nice to know that interest in alternatives was shown at least to some degree. My frustration in part is with the LSJ article and the total lack of important information. While I think it is great that DeWitt is providing new technology to its students and staff, there was no mention at all about cycle periods, maintenance agreements, hardware (other than model and CPU speed… neither of which necessarily very informative.) or what plans they have for educational software on those machines.

Which build of Fedora were you using in your club lab?

I know there is a lot of pressure when making half-million dollar purchasing decisions, so I’m certain the details were worked out. I just hope the right people were involved and their plan will result in a stable and effective outcome for the school system.

By: Casey C.

Casey C. — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 01:37:12 +0000

I am apart of the DeWitt High school Tech club and we were consulted about this new investment and offered many other options than this but they love their Dells what can I say :/ This move got rid of the Technology clubsbabay the Linux lab, which at the time was running an older version of Fedora Core. The lab was about 30 computers and now is lying in my friends basement. But the good thing is We are not running Microsoft Office and have fully switched, thanks to pain staking labor by your truly and a few others to Open Office

-Peace

By: Nate

Nate — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 14:18:39 +0000

There’s a 3-year warranty associated with pretty much all small business purchases through Dell. I picked up Optiplex 320n’s with 17″ LCD monitors and licensing for either XP or Vista. My total was around $560 for each machine. I also got about a dozen without monitors, so the cost on those was $410. For $833 I hope DeWitt got computers that will last them 33% longer than ours, but I doubt it.

By: The Dude

The Dude — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 05:56:38 +0000

Might I also add that Dell probably has a juicy service and warranty program attached to those machines. Most vendors will take a hit on the unit price if they get a chance to make it up on service and parts.