If you recall, last year, there was a massive stampede in Henrico County over $50 iBooks which were being sold because the Henrico County School Board had decided to purchase Dell laptops instead for their students. This year, by a 3 to 1 vote, they decided to grant a contract with Apple for 12,675 iBook laptops at a cost of $1,246 each. Dell's bid would have supplied about 14,000 machines to middle schools at a cost of $1,111 per unit, which is $20 less than what they offered last year.
It's not surprising at all for me to see this happen. As a person who has worked in IT for more than a decade (the first couple years in a university setting), the main issue becomes the additional resources necessary to support PCs. When you're dealing with thousands of laptops, you want the one that will have the least amount of hidden costs.
It almost seems to me, that from a organizational standpoint, unless there's an application that is tied down to a particular platform, Apple might be a better choice.
More detail and back of the envelope math in the extended entry
Let's look at it this way, from an organizational standpoint:
14,000 Dells at $1111 each = $15,554,000
12,675 iBooks at $1246 each = $15,793,950
We're talking a difference of $136 on each machine which will add up to nearly $240,000, as well as 1,325 less machines. But let's take a closer look at what the true cost of owning the Dell is.
Let's assume for the sake of ease that the contract also covers on-site service for physically broken computers for 3 years (otherwise I don't really see why an iBook is going to cost so much, given the Apple education discount).
If you're going to be giving Dells to students, you're going to want protection. I'd probably end up purchasing something like Symantec's Client Security (which when discounted by volume purchases ends up being around $34 a year). If you're going to run this, you're going to need an administrator to look after it, because someone has to keep track that machines are getting the latest updates, and that the computers have permissions such that students and teachers can install the programs they need. I'll assume for the sake of saving money, that this person is also the same person who has to restore machines when they get damaged by viruses and adware. Dell isn't going to handle the unexplained BSoD's or the random error messages that pop up as a result of malware. 3 years of symantec +3 years of salary for a qualified administrator is more than the cost difference of buying Macs instead.
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