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There's also a lease option for $20-25 a month with an option to buy at the end of three years. And there's no mention as to how locked down the machines will be. They say that if you already have a Mac laptop, that it has to meet certain specifications, not that they're saying what those are.
It's arguable whether laptops are a help or hindrance in a classroom. It's definitely a good thing for homework and doing papers, but dividing your attention between typing notes and paying attention to the instructor would seem to impair absorption of deeper topics according to some studies. Plus it's usually hugely faster to make sketches of drawings on paper than to try to do it in a software program.
The educational software market is very platform-specific. There are open source projects currently and in development that try to be multi-platform, but the quality of OSS varies wildly. I've heard one school implementation that really impressed me: they installed monster VM servers and the students remote (RDP) in to their own virtual PC. It has a lot of advantages, it's a technology that I use for work to use my XP Pro box or VM (I have both) at work via RDP from my Mac. It's not perfect, VM's occasionally blue screen and reboot, but they do it a lot faster than physical boxes.
http://www.salemnews.com/local/x1910032546/In-Beverly-laptops-all-around-but-parents-have-to-pay
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/06/11/1952230/MA-High-School-Forces-All-Students-To-Buy-MacBooks
It's arguable whether laptops are a help or hindrance in a classroom. It's definitely a good thing for homework and doing papers, but dividing your attention between typing notes and paying attention to the instructor would seem to impair absorption of deeper topics according to some studies. Plus it's usually hugely faster to make sketches of drawings on paper than to try to do it in a software program.
The educational software market is very platform-specific. There are open source projects currently and in development that try to be multi-platform, but the quality of OSS varies wildly. I've heard one school implementation that really impressed me: they installed monster VM servers and the students remote (RDP) in to their own virtual PC. It has a lot of advantages, it's a technology that I use for work to use my XP Pro box or VM (I have both) at work via RDP from my Mac. It's not perfect, VM's occasionally blue screen and reboot, but they do it a lot faster than physical boxes.
http://www.salemnews.com/local/x1910032546/In-Beverly-laptops-all-around-but-parents-have-to-pay
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/06/11/1952230/MA-High-School-Forces-All-Students-To-Buy-MacBooks
