to change or not to change
May 13, 2009 7:00 PM Subscribe
What are more commonly found in US middle and high schools- PC or Mac?
I anticipate that I will need a new computer in the next year or so. Mine is pushing six years old and not really worth replacing more parts, as they die one by one.
Since I'm going back to finish a long-abandoned teaching degree I figured I should get what I'm most likely to encounter post-graduation in a school (I have two years left so I damn well better not need another new computer between now and then!).
I'm not dead set on changing over to Mac, but I'm not opposed to the idea either. (admittedly, mostly because I have fallen so head over heels in love with my iphone)
Back in my school days it seemed to be almost exclusively mac, with a couple PCs showing up towards the end of high school. Not sure if the PC changeover is complete, as it's been a while. I tried to find some statistics online, I just found propaganda from both sides about how widely used their systems are in schools.
I anticipate that I will need a new computer in the next year or so. Mine is pushing six years old and not really worth replacing more parts, as they die one by one.
Since I'm going back to finish a long-abandoned teaching degree I figured I should get what I'm most likely to encounter post-graduation in a school (I have two years left so I damn well better not need another new computer between now and then!).
I'm not dead set on changing over to Mac, but I'm not opposed to the idea either. (admittedly, mostly because I have fallen so head over heels in love with my iphone)
Back in my school days it seemed to be almost exclusively mac, with a couple PCs showing up towards the end of high school. Not sure if the PC changeover is complete, as it's been a while. I tried to find some statistics online, I just found propaganda from both sides about how widely used their systems are in schools.
PCs, except a few Macs for high end video editing at my daugther's school
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:03 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:03 PM on May 13, 2009
Apple had this market cornered until the big PC manufacturers (Dell, HP, Acer especially) started big educator programs that offered laptops for teachers if so many PCs were bought at a discount, etc. Many programs now and the PC has pretty much taken the education market.
posted by Gerard Sorme at 7:09 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by Gerard Sorme at 7:09 PM on May 13, 2009
You could still get a mac, at least then you can boot camp Windows and have the best of both worlds.
I went to a mixed HS (1995-1999) with 30% Macs and 70% PCs. I would expect that except for the graphic arts department its probably all PCs now.
posted by SirOmega at 7:09 PM on May 13, 2009
I went to a mixed HS (1995-1999) with 30% Macs and 70% PCs. I would expect that except for the graphic arts department its probably all PCs now.
posted by SirOmega at 7:09 PM on May 13, 2009
I'd imagine it's decided on a district to district basis, but my local middle/high school district is primarily PCs, except for the yearbook/newspaper/digital art lab.
posted by wsquared at 7:10 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by wsquared at 7:10 PM on May 13, 2009
PCs are more common, though Macs definitely have their niches. If you envision working in a particular district, maybe it'd be good to investigate what they're using.
posted by box at 7:14 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by box at 7:14 PM on May 13, 2009
Our film class uses Macs, and a few teachers have Macbooks in their rooms, but the teacher computers and main computer labs are all PCs.
posted by baho at 7:16 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by baho at 7:16 PM on May 13, 2009
I'd go for a Mac with Windows. I volunteered at a school district in a very low income school district, they all had Macs from some sort of big grant.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 7:26 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 7:26 PM on May 13, 2009
I work in low income middle and high schools and it is all PCs. I am a mac person and have no compatibility issues.
posted by Nickel at 7:28 PM on May 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by Nickel at 7:28 PM on May 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
All the kids from grade 7 to 12 in my school district get MacBooks. Many (all?) of the teachers and administrators have laptops, too, and as far as I've noticed they're all Macs as well.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:32 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:32 PM on May 13, 2009
PC, by like a thousand. I was trained on PCs and never even SAW a Mac until I got an intern job when I was 17.
posted by The Whelk at 7:46 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by The Whelk at 7:46 PM on May 13, 2009
Depends on the district, but in general, PCs.
Education historically is one of Apple's strong markets; the Apple ][ was the dominant middle and high school computer for a nearly a decade, so I wouldn't be surprised if Apple still does better than average in education.
posted by zippy at 7:47 PM on May 13, 2009
Education historically is one of Apple's strong markets; the Apple ][ was the dominant middle and high school computer for a nearly a decade, so I wouldn't be surprised if Apple still does better than average in education.
posted by zippy at 7:47 PM on May 13, 2009
A Mac is the right choice here, since even if you need to run Windows, they do that very well. You can't say the same in reverse.
posted by rokusan at 7:48 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by rokusan at 7:48 PM on May 13, 2009
Well, I'd say a cheap-ass Windows box is the right choice here, because they're dirt cheap.
If you want a desktop, get any of several $300--500 machines. If it doesn't break, cool. If it breaks, get another, and you've still come in under the cost of an iMac.
Likewise, for a laptop, get any random $500 machine. If it doesn't break, you just saved $500+. If it does, throw it away and get another, and you've still spent less than on a Mac. Or, shit, get an EEEEeeeEEeeePc, and you can afford to have two of them go blooey before you've spent what you would on a Mac.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:55 PM on May 13, 2009
If you want a desktop, get any of several $300--500 machines. If it doesn't break, cool. If it breaks, get another, and you've still come in under the cost of an iMac.
Likewise, for a laptop, get any random $500 machine. If it doesn't break, you just saved $500+. If it does, throw it away and get another, and you've still spent less than on a Mac. Or, shit, get an EEEEeeeEEeeePc, and you can afford to have two of them go blooey before you've spent what you would on a Mac.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:55 PM on May 13, 2009
It depends on the district, but I think in current times, PCs are by far more common in schools. Probably because they're almost always significantly cheaper. We ran Macs when I was in elementary school, like late Apple II era, but after that, it was almost completely PC.
posted by ishotjr at 8:08 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by ishotjr at 8:08 PM on May 13, 2009
ROU_Xenophobe: WHAT?! You could have 20 Honda Fits die on you and you still wouldn't have spent what you would on a Lamborghini! You could walk barefoot FOREVER without spending as much as you would on shoes, but I bet you aren't willing to make that sacrifice.
To the OP, ask a school in the district in which you plan on working (if you have any idea, I know it's fairly competitive, right?) It varies all over, as you can see from the answers, which go from "all Macs from some big grant" to "PCs by a thousand." I think if you're trying to learn all of the software you'll see in a school, that Rokusan is correct. A Mac would enable you to use both OSes, and allow you to have the best of both worlds.
Anecdotally, my high school has a Mac lab full of Mac Minis and a few new iMacs, a PC lab with a bunch of fairly low-end HPs, and two mobile labs, one with decent HP laptops and the other with MacBooks. The teachers have a choice of platform. The older ones tend to use PCs, the young, hip teachers use MacBooks.
posted by papayaninja at 8:11 PM on May 13, 2009
To the OP, ask a school in the district in which you plan on working (if you have any idea, I know it's fairly competitive, right?) It varies all over, as you can see from the answers, which go from "all Macs from some big grant" to "PCs by a thousand." I think if you're trying to learn all of the software you'll see in a school, that Rokusan is correct. A Mac would enable you to use both OSes, and allow you to have the best of both worlds.
Anecdotally, my high school has a Mac lab full of Mac Minis and a few new iMacs, a PC lab with a bunch of fairly low-end HPs, and two mobile labs, one with decent HP laptops and the other with MacBooks. The teachers have a choice of platform. The older ones tend to use PCs, the young, hip teachers use MacBooks.
posted by papayaninja at 8:11 PM on May 13, 2009
If you got one kind, then your district had another, and you became good at using both, you'd be practically *bilingual*. And you might understand what was going on at a slightly deeper level.
At your new school district, there will be no shortage of people to offer you advice and help on using your new (used/cheap/whatever) computer then.
Just one factor; you probably have other more pressing factors.
posted by amtho at 8:19 PM on May 13, 2009
At your new school district, there will be no shortage of people to offer you advice and help on using your new (used/cheap/whatever) computer then.
Just one factor; you probably have other more pressing factors.
posted by amtho at 8:19 PM on May 13, 2009
Best answer: Yes, it's become overwhelming PC/Windows over the last ten years. However, many people (myself included, believe that it's starting to shift the other way. Apple will likely never get the 80% marketshare they had in the 1980's and will likely not challenge Microsoft's dominance in the market, but its numbers are steadily increasing. This is due entirely to the excellence of Mac OS X, the adoption of the Intel chip (which allows for easy OS virtualization), and the crappyness of Windows (particularly Vista).
Cheap hardware means nothing if it costs orders of magnitude more money to properly support it in an educational environment. Others can probably back me up on this, but I'd argue that many (if not the majority) of school systems in this country do not have adequate levels of IT support. In many districts, IT supports consists of one overworked IT Director, or a tech-savvy teacher forced into an IT management role. In these environments, Windows machines are malware magnets, happily existing as zombified botnets. Even in properly-configured Windows environments, often the network isn't secure enough to prevent vectors of infection. The exhorbinant costs of maintaining antivirus and Windows licensing doesn't help matters. Everyone likes to talk about how cheap the hardware is on PCs, but few point out the extra costs of properly locking down Windows PCs and managing them so they remain useable.
Young people are switching to the Mac in droves. A recent study at UC Davis shows Mac ownership jumping from 7.2% to 23.4% between 2006 and 2009. I've seen this trend in many universities over the last few years. A new generation of users is choosing Macintosh over Windows. Apple has approximately 10% of the market now. I'm predicting that their marketshare will hit 15% by mid-2011 and 20% by mid-2012. I doubt it'll go much higher than that unless Microsoft releases another stinker OS.
It's difficult to sort through the propaganda. Some may consider some of what I've written here propaganda, but it's really just my opinion backed up by some facts. To answer your question simply: currently PCs/Windows are dominant in Secondary Education, but Apple has been firing on all cylinders for several years now and should be watched closely. If Apple actually does what I think they're going to do, and releases some kind of 9" touch-screen tablet that's targeted at the education market, as a competitor to the Kindle, and which can act as a virtual textbook, newspaper, and magazine readers, then all bets are off. Microsoft will be scrambling to play catch up with their creaky code base and monolithic and glacial software development cycles.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 8:35 PM on May 13, 2009
Cheap hardware means nothing if it costs orders of magnitude more money to properly support it in an educational environment. Others can probably back me up on this, but I'd argue that many (if not the majority) of school systems in this country do not have adequate levels of IT support. In many districts, IT supports consists of one overworked IT Director, or a tech-savvy teacher forced into an IT management role. In these environments, Windows machines are malware magnets, happily existing as zombified botnets. Even in properly-configured Windows environments, often the network isn't secure enough to prevent vectors of infection. The exhorbinant costs of maintaining antivirus and Windows licensing doesn't help matters. Everyone likes to talk about how cheap the hardware is on PCs, but few point out the extra costs of properly locking down Windows PCs and managing them so they remain useable.
Young people are switching to the Mac in droves. A recent study at UC Davis shows Mac ownership jumping from 7.2% to 23.4% between 2006 and 2009. I've seen this trend in many universities over the last few years. A new generation of users is choosing Macintosh over Windows. Apple has approximately 10% of the market now. I'm predicting that their marketshare will hit 15% by mid-2011 and 20% by mid-2012. I doubt it'll go much higher than that unless Microsoft releases another stinker OS.
It's difficult to sort through the propaganda. Some may consider some of what I've written here propaganda, but it's really just my opinion backed up by some facts. To answer your question simply: currently PCs/Windows are dominant in Secondary Education, but Apple has been firing on all cylinders for several years now and should be watched closely. If Apple actually does what I think they're going to do, and releases some kind of 9" touch-screen tablet that's targeted at the education market, as a competitor to the Kindle, and which can act as a virtual textbook, newspaper, and magazine readers, then all bets are off. Microsoft will be scrambling to play catch up with their creaky code base and monolithic and glacial software development cycles.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 8:35 PM on May 13, 2009
Best answer: I lean very strongly towards PCs myself, but I have to admit that for your situation I best like the idea of getting a Mac and boot camping Windows at need. My reason for this is that as someone who's been a PC-only person for so long, I find myself flailing around quite a bit whenever I have to use a Mac (I'm a grad student who frequently depends on the department computers in our grad student lounge to work on things while I'm on campus; in that lounge two of our computers are PCs and one is a Mac so I do end up fumbling around on the Mac a fair bit). The Macs aggravate me because I'm not as familiar with them, so even if they are user friendly they're still a challenge to me simply because I'm used to PCs. By the same token, I would imagine that by now you're pretty competent in working your way around Windows, and as folks above me have noted you'll probably encounter PCs more frequently in your schools - but if you had a Mac, and learned how to use it with competence, you'll be all the better prepared for those occasions when you do need to deal with them.
In my mind it's sort of like learning to drive stick-shift: even if you drive an automatic transmission 95% of the time, being able to drive stick is always handy for those situations where for whatever reason you need to do so.
posted by DingoMutt at 9:05 PM on May 13, 2009
In my mind it's sort of like learning to drive stick-shift: even if you drive an automatic transmission 95% of the time, being able to drive stick is always handy for those situations where for whatever reason you need to do so.
posted by DingoMutt at 9:05 PM on May 13, 2009
In my experience, most schools do use PCs. This should in no way preclude you from getting a Mac.
posted by sophist at 9:29 PM on May 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by sophist at 9:29 PM on May 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
Get any of several $300--500 machines. If it doesn't break, cool. If it breaks, get another, and you've still come in under the cost of an iMac.
I don't think those of us suggesting a Mac is the safer choice are doing so because it's cheapest.
You can run both OSX and Windows on a Mac, so you are certain to have what you need no matter what school division you end up in. You cannot do the same in reverse, no matter how many cheap PCs you buy.
posted by rokusan at 9:34 PM on May 13, 2009
I don't think those of us suggesting a Mac is the safer choice are doing so because it's cheapest.
You can run both OSX and Windows on a Mac, so you are certain to have what you need no matter what school division you end up in. You cannot do the same in reverse, no matter how many cheap PCs you buy.
posted by rokusan at 9:34 PM on May 13, 2009
Most schools use PCs. When deciding what to buy, remember it's not impossible to run Windows on a Mac. But your wallet might be substantially poorer for it.
posted by pwnguin at 9:34 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by pwnguin at 9:34 PM on May 13, 2009
Yes, most schools use PCs. At least in my area, that's changing. The High School I graduated made the switch years ago, starting with iBooks, and now macbooks.
posted by gtr at 9:46 PM on May 13, 2009
posted by gtr at 9:46 PM on May 13, 2009
Response by poster: Thanks for the input everyone. It looks like for now I'm going to be waiting on my financial aid package (lucky me, I have to wait for the manually reviewed "change in circumstance" form to be complete). If I get enough between grants and subsidized loans I think an extra bit for a mac would be a decent plan. (I knew about the dual boot, actually... until this change in circumstance I worked in IT distribution. amazing how fast you forget stuff!)
Otherwise it'll be cheap PC town for me- which isn't necessarily bad. With a bit of skill I've had a $400 machine for years. I just can't fathom replacing the fan, optical drive, and upgrading the ram on something so old- all of which are needed or will be in a short time..
posted by Kellydamnit at 10:15 PM on May 13, 2009
Otherwise it'll be cheap PC town for me- which isn't necessarily bad. With a bit of skill I've had a $400 machine for years. I just can't fathom replacing the fan, optical drive, and upgrading the ram on something so old- all of which are needed or will be in a short time..
posted by Kellydamnit at 10:15 PM on May 13, 2009
A friend who is a high school English teacher mentioned the other day that with teachers in his school it seems about 50/50 Mac/PC. I'm not sure about what the students use.
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:12 AM on May 14, 2009
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:12 AM on May 14, 2009
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