How much does YOUR school, campus, or workplace spend on computers?

[yagga]

My school spends loads! It is a large district, but can't even afford paper anymore. It just got a big state contribution of like 215million to change stuff around and renovate a few (about 4) years ago.

*My school has 1 pc lab new as of fall '02 -- 34 pcs
*teacher offices- everyteacher has those expensive macs that have the little monitor sticking out of them
*teacher computers in class rooms- 1-2 emacs, possibly an imac, possibly a few Power Macs
*4 imac labs of 40 computers
*about 12 labs of 40 emacs (I seem to find a new one every so often)
*3 sets of about 30 emacs in media center
*office computers
*...and of course possibly a bunch of Power Macs thrown in a big pile somewhere in the maintenence area, yes I have seen it, and this was 2.5 years ago. They WERE just thrown in a huge messy garbage pile, okay maybe just very messely set down, but upside down, sideways, crooked, leaning on each other, stacked messely, etc.

I would say this is eccessive for 2,000 students. I have always hated how the school flushes money away, and how educaters say computers make education better, it does not! By the way, many of the teachers computers are very messed up, with VERY slow boot ups, messed up monitors, etc and are only less than 2 years old. I would think that this would not happen because the teachers are stuck with these for a long time and would not want to mess "their" computer up. Oh, and by the way any thing that may or may not be porn is blocked from every computer including teachers' and office, the little message always pops up and says either pornography, nudity, loophole (only on the ones that don't work, hehe) or *city* block list (whatever that is I will never know). It is a real pain, and I don't mean just for the students. Bypassing is not always possible and not possible for every particular web site/java. Oh, by the way, it took 7 months for the emacs to get out of boxes from the media center and set up, what a waste!

Okay, I am now free, I have let my hatred feelings out. You should try it, it helps. :D

[Nive11en]

My last school also blocked porn/whatever else. But funny thing there was a simple way around it. All you had to do is convert the www.*******.com to its IP and it worked! LOL!
Tho I think they fixed it later.

And my school wasn't that based on Macs. Dell was the master, loads and loads of black dell computers. There were only 5 macs in the school for movie software.

This was the situation about 10 months ago, dunno whats now. Now I'm a student and in my free time I like to waste time :)

[versello]

My last school also blocked porn/whatever else. But funny thing there was a simple way around it. All you had to do is convert the www.*******.com to its IP and it worked! LOL!
Tho I think they fixed it later.

And my school wasn't that based on Macs. Dell was the master, loads and loads of black dell computers. There were only 5 macs in the school for movie software.

This was the situation about 10 months ago, dunno whats now. Now I'm a student and in my free time I like to waste time :)

Then again, that school only had like, ~550 ppl ;)

[Nive11en]

Hrm I thought it was a 1000? :)

[LiLbRo]

my school has a computer for every classroom, sometimes 2 (about 2000 classrooms) 7 computer labs wiht 30 or so computers in each, library with about 10 computers, hehe and 1 mac with a g4 and the 30" lcd hehe....

hrm, that gives me an idea... over the summer, act like one of the computer admins, and install a folding client and say its a backup firewall for mydoom or somthing, cause the school is to dumb to know the differance...

my school is pretty bad with computers though... it was funny, the computer teachers couldnt figgure out how i got into the C:\Windows folder... it was hilarious... and like game sites, there is two ways i know of, translate the page in babble fish (like spanish to english or somthing) and enter, and u can log in to froums and everything... also, put the url in google and cach it, and u can view it.. w00t

[kryyst]

yeah www.elgoog.com is a good way of getting around some things also.

[GnomeWizardd]

my school didnt have computers! typing class was on typewritters! and i graduated in 02' BUT i graduated above college level dang private school!

[kryyst]

On the whole money thing...Back in my day at school....no I'd rather not say sufice to say typing was on type writers and our computer labs were filled with systems called Icon's and Icon 2's. We learned programming in Watcom Basic and just as I was graduating high school there was 1 kid that was dabling in this new programming language called C. OH and also most games that you bought were new and not a sequal to something accept Bards Tale and Might and Magic and 90% of all software installed off of floppies.

Personally though at work and in general I think that for the most part spending money on new computers is a waste. A working computer never needs to be updgraded unless the needs of it's users surpass the ability of the system. So at work specifically we have users that are running on 386's that boot a system off a floppy because that's all the need. We also have users that have p4's done to the tits because that's what they need.

Now if a 386 dies I don't go out and by them a P4. I'll either replace them with another beater that I have kicking around as a spare. Or I'll by the P4 for a high end user and recycle everything down. I always look at a good year by the how much money I didn't have to spend.