School iPads to cost nearly $100 more each, revised budget shows

[happyslug]

8. Why not "old fashion" laptops????

Remember these Ipads are to be used in SCHOOLS to replace BOOKS and TABLETS. You can load the data needed on the laptops using USB or SD cards (Most laptops sold today can use either), you can get a bigger screen and a built in keyboard. If you do NOT want the Students surfing the net, just do NOT opt for a laptop with a modem.

The Down side is you lose the Touch Scream capacities of the Ipad (Through some higher price laptops have such screens), Laptops tend to be heavier then Ipads (Mostly do to the LARGER screens and having a KEYBOARD, which if added to an Ipad would increase its weight) and Laptops are now almost "old hat", i.e. out of style, but so will these Ipads be in 3-4 years.

Sorry, I obtained my first laptop in 1988 and have been using them ever since. Over that 15 year period, laptops have become faster, lighter, and as good if not better then conventional PCs. Ipads have the same INTERNAL capabilities, but are weak in input devices (lack of a Keyboard to typed in data). Ipads have their place, but in the class room what you can do with an Ipad, you can do with a Laptop, but the reverse is NOT true, for the Laptops keyboard provides one of the best way to input data into the computer (Thus the comment that the School was waiting for the key pad addition to the Ipad to get the Ipad up to the level of a laptop).

In high school I do not see any class that can not be done as well, if not better with a laptop then with an Ipad, thus why go with the Ipad?

I suspect this is another case of Management deciding Computer needs when the people who actually are using the computer needs something else but do not get it for Management refuses to ask them what they really need (Better companies leave their EMPLOYEES obtain what they need, and only retain control over all but making sure what is obtain is compatible with each other, I am old enough to remember the PC jr Debacle).

The PC jr debacle is almost forgotten today, but it is one of the best example of having the people who do NOT use something, have the sole power to buy what others will be using WITHOUT asking the users for input as to what to buy. Sellers of computers have to be careful when it comes to large organizations, so that the people who will be using what is being sold has input into what is being purchased. Many large organization has central buying sections, or worse it is management that decides what is to be purchased, management who almost never uses what is being purchased. In the case of the PC jr, management, then mostly men who did not type, decided to buy the PC jr for use by their secretaries, mostly women, who did NOT have a voice in what is being purchased, they were told to use it.

Now, Students are teenagers or pre-teens, the most fashion conscience section of the Nation. Thus the input should have been from the teachers who are teaching the students not so much the students themselves (to minimize the influence of Style, through even adults are influence by the latest fashion). You do NOT want fashion to set up what is being purchased (Through some input from students should be part of the decision to buy, but the teachers hopefully have the experience to buy what works NOT what is being advertised on Television). On the other hand users of the device should have input AND ALSO BE HEARD (i.e. see what the Students say, take it into consideration and give it some weight, but more weight should be put on what the Teacher's think is needed NOT the students and NOT the sellers of the computers).


Side note: The PC jr Debacle is a name for IBM's first attempt to enter the personal computer market in the 1980s. The PC jr was for the "Home Market" with the original IBM PC was for traditional IBM customers, i.e. big businesses. At the same time IBM did market the PC jr to small businesses, thus it was many office worker's first introduction into the world of computers. Among the PC Jr's problem was its Keyboard, IBM decided to opt for a new keyboard instead of the traditional QWERT keyboard. The people they normally dealt with agreed with the change, but no one even through of asking the Secretaries who had to use the new Keyboards. The PC jr went into production, purchased by big business for use by their secretaries, who promptly refused to use the PC jrs, for they had been trained on the QWERT keyboard (and still used QWERT keyboards for other purposes, in the 1980s Typewriters were still the king of the Office). The problem was changing from the QWERT keyboard to the new PC jr Keyboard and then back again. This lead to a mini revolt by secretaries who refused to use the then new PC Jr computers for do to the different keyboard, they kept on making typing mistakes (Secretaries had been taught for over 100 years NOT to look at their keyboard but at what they are typing from (in fact the first Remington Typewriters of the 1870s, the typist could NOT even see what was being typed until she was finished with the page and pulled it from the rear of the typewriter). Secretaries thus learned to work a keyboard by touch not sight and the PC jr new keyboard undermined that whole concept, thus the secretaries rejected the PC jr. After a long while IBM acknowledged the problem and reverted to a traditional keyboard for the PC jr, but by then other makers of Personal computers had come to dominate the market.

The above was so bad, at least one writer (in a computer magazine, last page which was reserved for article of jest) made it part of an "International Conspiracy" to keep women out of computers. The conspiracy was since the vast majority of secretaries were women, who use to use typewriters the real reason for the new PC Jr keyboard was to make women frustrated about computers do to the huge number of errors they were making do to the change in keyboards that such women would come to hate Computers and thus men could continue to dominate the computer industry.