Henrico’s New Dell Laptops
After a much publicized move from Apple iBooks to Dell Laptops, it looks the Henrico county school system isn’t having much fun with the Dells.
This is what I’ve heard from a buddy of mine that works hand in hand with the computers.
About 100 dells are reimaged each week in henrico and after 5 months, the Dells have the same amount of laptops being sent in for repairs as we did once the iBooks turned 4 years old.
Wow, well no one saw that coming. Duh. We all know that Dell laptops are made very very “cost effectivly” and couldn’t last one year under teh stress of high school students. Especially when they know they aren’t theirs. Thats one of the reasons Negroponte wants the $100 laptop to be owned by its users, so they last longer.
And like Gruber said “PCs typically cost less than Macs because they’re pieces of crap, not because Intel CPUs are less expensive than IBM’s or Freescale’s.”
I don’t believe its the brand of computer the Henrico guys buy that is going to solve the problem of longevity. The issue lies completely on the fact that the laptops do not cost the students anything as you stated above. So do you make them mandatory and then charge the parents?
I think charging for them after making them mandatory would cause quite the uprising… then again, I think the fairgrounds incident showed us that the citizens of Henrico are at least willing to shell out $50 for an old and heavily used iBook. At what price do you set a brand new Dell to get the parents to trample small children rather than bitch at the school board for making them mandatory? Food for thought.
Comment by angrycamel — February 2, 2006 @ 9:32 am
I work on hardware day in and day out, much of which is Dell stuff. It’s total crap. There are next to no actual screws in the units, the plastic bezels and clips are all extremely flimsy… it’s a wonder they stay together at all.
Comment by Collin — February 16, 2006 @ 2:24 am
I think you’re equivocating between Dell and Windows. Sure, Dell is foolish to sell them with Windows preinstalled, but you can’t blame the hardware for the fact that it always has to get reimaged.
Comment by Phil — February 20, 2006 @ 5:03 pm
I’m not blaming Dell, I’m blaming Henrico Country for choosing Dell, which will obviously ship Windows as an OS to the school system.
Comment by Jon — February 20, 2006 @ 5:49 pm