White MacBook Replaced With New 13-inch $999 MacBook Air for Educational Institutions

[btarunr]

A little earlier this month, Apple discontinued supplies of its 13-inch white MacBook (base) to educational institutions, which it stopped selling to consumers much earlier, last year. Apple has replaced this education variant of white MacBook with a new education variant of MacBook Air. The new variant will be offered to educational institutions at US $999 a piece, when purchased in packs of 5 (costing US $4,995), making it a viable replacement to the white MacBook.

The new MacBook Air variant is also a 13-incher, driven by Intel Core i5 ULV processor clocked at 1.60 GHz, with 2 GB of DDR3 memory, 64 GB solid-state storage (carried on from the 11-inch consumer base model of MacBook Air), but features the larger 13-inch display. Unfortunately, this model is only available to educational institutions that purchase in bulk (those packs of 5), and so the cheapest MacBook individual students can buy is the 11-inch MacBook Air.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Delta6326]

Hopefully these are more durable than the 200+ MacBooks we had at are High School.

 

[mtosev]

apple costs too much for my blood

 

[jpierce55]

apple costs too much for my blood

Truly, and I think educational institutes can get more for the money buying Acer or Lenovo.

 

[reverze]

500 dollar windows laptops will be alot better

 

[ensabrenoir]

Gonna find a used. One any model just to find out what makes. These things so special

 

[reverze]

Gonna find a used. One any model just to find out what makes. These things so special

or install MAC OS on your windows PC, all you need is a loader, ton of tutorials out there.

 

[mtosev]

that's illegal if you read the OS X EULA

 

[reverze]

that's illegal if you read the OS X EULA

and we care /sarcasm

 

[Frizz]

Air variants seem alot harder to break. Anywho I agree that there are plenty more options in regards to educational laptops. Although if someone could clear this up, it seems apple so far has more resellers in many areas that benefit schools in terms of servicing and repairs.

 

[NC37]

and we care /sarcasm

Well, hackintosh machines do have other issues depending on the setup you use.

As far as quality goes. Varies. Some generations are better than the other. It is the same with PCs. Apple constantly moving towards smaller and more compact designs has made them more eye appealing, but I do feel they've lost a bit of strength.

lol I remember when Apple used to advertise about their case strength. Talks about titanium and bulletproof materials. They've really cheapened out, and done it while keeping the prices high.

I'd consider some PCs the same. After I took apart an HP a few months back, I decided I would never want one. Terribly shoddy build. Others I've felt, feel like mostly all cheap plastic. I know how those end up, cracked and in dumpsters.

 

[AsRock]

And we wounder why our schools have no money.

EDIT: And i don't care if they made even a little cheaper than that they still $500 over what they should cost regardless to what OS they have on them. We just picked up a ASUS one with accidental coverage by default for $400

 

[stinger608]

And we wounder why our schools have no money.

Exactly!! And everyone wonders why tuition is so damn high!!! The schools have to purchase a pack of 5 to get this price. Insane!

 

[Widjaja]

I reckon it is a silly idea to have educational institutions make their students use Macs as for the most part what they are doing can be done on a PC with acceptable performance at a smaller price tag.

For example, I have an acquaintance who is doing 3 years of photography and feels it is unreasonable for him to buy a Mac for his home based of the sheer fact he has to work with them at school, but almost feels forced to due to the way he is taught to use the Adobe software on a Mac feels different to making the same functions work on a PC.

 

[btarunr]

And we wounder why our schools have no money.

I think Macs are mostly bought by private schools. Even they don't want to spend too much, and so they find the $999 13-inch option most suitable.

State/district schools are doing the more sensible thing, and buying Chromebooks from Google.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

I think Macs are mostly bought by private schools. Even they don't want to spend too much, and so they find the $999 13-inch option most suitable.

State/district schools are doing the more sensible thing, and buying Chromebooks from Google.

Negative. Macs are pretty popular for public institutions. I went to one.

No, it wasn't a rich uppity town either, just a small public school system. We only had a single admin for 400-500 machines. It could not be done as effectively by a single person with windows. Just not possible.

Windows licensing also raised price flags, and Apple networks ended up being significantly cheaper in the long run;
-Batteries were always easy to aquire, consistent over the course of the 4 years I was there (then they began the intel transition, but the power adaptors are still generally consistent.)

-Net imaging was very very easy, (This was in the 98/2000/XP days, where windows could barely even stand being networked.)

-Remote administration with active directory is insanely easy compared to windows for managing users in a school district.

-individual device security was possible; the entire network doesn't require extra bullshit licenses to things like deepfreeze to insure users don't mess up their systems, causing inconveniences for not only the instructors, but huge headaches as system administrators trying to recover data the instructor foolishly stored locally.

-Antivirus was run on the domain server, and not necessary anywhere else. Yet another HUGE cost savings.

-Application consistency: Restoring a device from image doesn't require a fancy slip streamed windows image, and if a device didn't have a program locally, it could easily be pulled from the AD server to be accessible to the user. NOT easily done with windows.

-OS Consistency; again with application integration, OS integration doesn't require a separate image for every slightly different machine. One OS X fits all.


Overall, as a school on a tight budget, and especially with short personnel to actually handle the supporting tasks, Apple provides an amazing network for educational systems. Chromebooks offer similar WAN considerations. The key here, really, is NOT using windows.

 

[xBruce88x]

your admin probably could have done the same with a linux based OS for free, and could have installed it on just about any modern computer. although for a school system the advantage of having a company help with support is important.

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

your admin probably could have done the same with a linux based OS for free, and could have installed it on just about any modern computer. although for a school system the advantage of having a company help with support is important.

No. That is an awful idea. All of the points that I noted that mac beats windows over, windows also beats linux over, when it comes to bulk administration, and idiot end users.

Just no.

edit: also sorry for the delay, i'm in afghanistan >.>

 

[mtosev]

how's the Americas army game in real life?is it any good?