Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Education, Apple
Apple inches ahead of Dell in UK education market
I've been seeing a lot of people using Macs at the university I work at lately and that made me wonder whether this is a more widespread phenomenon. It seems that it is. According to an article at Macworld, Apple is now ranked second in the UK education market, well behind leader Research Machines but ahead of Dell and HP.And it gets better for Apple. The company's last quarter put it in the No. 1 position in the UK, with nearly 12 percent of the market. MacBooks in particular are hot, though that's not really news if you've walked into a coffee shop in London in the last six months.
How are things at your school/college?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Richard said 6:21PM on 10-31-2006
We at *** still get landed with some Viglen rubbish. Really shiney computers that have been horribley trashed and we've had about 3 sets stolen!
To top it off, the IT doesn't usually work anyway and the IT department don't seem to do very much.
I would love to switch to Apple, but no one would do anything, even though the situation is a mess right now.
Oh, and they won't let me connect my own iBook G4 for reasons best known to themselves.
So, if anyone knows how to connect to a Viglen network from Mac OS X Tiger, say so and I'll post my email adress!
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Ben said 6:29PM on 10-31-2006
I found these statistics from one of my schools IT administrator.
I got to Wesleyan University in CT
# 40% of the laptops are Macs. We do not have data on how many of these are Duos.
# For the first time, the number of registered Macs have overtaken the Windows machines. Class of 2010 registered 313 Macs vs 285 Windows machines. This trend is very important. One of the things that we keep talking about is the use of Citrix as a way to offer a more controlled application environment for use by students. But it is also well known that Citrix environment is not well suited to run on Macs.
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Dan said 6:41PM on 10-31-2006
Definitely noticed a lot more students with Apple laptops. Out of the 6 in my apartment, there's 3 of us with Apple laptops. In most of my lectures there are a lot more MacBooks/MacBook Pros/iBooks than anything else. Should really take my PowerBook in to make up that PowerBook gap, but I can never be bothered myself.
They are computing/technology courses too, not art/design, fashion etc.
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Sherman Homan said 8:07PM on 10-31-2006
My kids are demanding Macs. There is no purer source of trends than my kids...!
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Eric said 7:34PM on 10-31-2006
Apple is given over 13% off the retail prices on most computers you purchased Higher Educatiion UK Store. Dell had nothing. That's why people buys Apple.
Dell has been too ignorant to the edu market.
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Mgkwho said 7:42PM on 10-31-2006
I'm a frosh in college...I'd say about half of my friends from home bought laptops (we can video chat while we're away from eachother!) from Apple, and the rest from other manufacturers.
My twin sister is in the same boat. About half bought from Apple, half elsewhere. She has a white macbook, i have a 17" MBP (not the new core 2 one). In my apartment, all four of us have macs. one has a black macbook, the other white. the third has a 15" MBP and i have a 17".
-=|Mgkwho
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A. Lueken said 5:35AM on 11-01-2006
Well i've been in Australia for half a year. We have been arround 600 students at the school and everbody had a iBook ... :D
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Stuart said 8:19PM on 10-31-2006
Half the notebooks used in my comp. sci. classes are Macs, the others are random Dells and Compaqs...
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stef said 8:24PM on 10-31-2006
At my music college, everyone uses Apples. Especially on the production course. It used to be mainly iBooks, but im seeing quite a few MBPs in the college bar these days (sometimes 3 on a table!)...
never see a PC laptop being brought in though.
The college has a single room devoted to Macs too. Ranging from MDDs to G5 iMacs (20" 2.1Ghz) to CD iMacs (17" 1.83Ghz)... i tell you, it gets pretty hot in that room...
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Zeke said 9:20PM on 10-31-2006
Dell E1405 here. The laptops in my dorm show a surprising amount of MacBooks, though...
That said, I work in the IT department, and we are 100% PC. Pretty much all of the older systems are Dell boxes, and they are being replaced with HP over the next couple of years as the result of an exclusive agreement.
I don't think apple has the large-scale IT thing down yet. That's OK- they aren't marketing to that sector at all ("No IT Department Required") but I would love to see that get better in the future. I'm tired of my company's soul belonging to Microsoft and its licensing fees.
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diddy said 4:55AM on 11-01-2006
I work at a large university in the north of england - we have a lot of macs in our school (which is design). We have a wide mix of eMac's, iMac (TFT), G5's, powerbooks and now some MBP's. We also have to suffer citirix, they have only just upgraded the exchange servers and the only way for mac users to access email is through citrix - which is quite poor, especially when waking from sleep !
We are not even allowed to plug into the network, we are supposed to connect wirelessly and do everything through citirx - no dashboard, safari, Apple Mail. It is a rubbish state of affairs ! Anyone else have these kind of issues???
Seems like we are treat like 2nd clsss citizens because we use macs by the IT hierarchy - one size fits all policy.
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Sachin said 11:48AM on 11-01-2006
At my school, M******* T******, Macs are completely uncatered for. The network is run through some horrible front end made by CSE, thus it is incompatible with Macs. Many of the teachers complain about this as well (most prominently the Art Dept.) but the IT Technical Support team are totally oblivious to such concerns, far too happy in their world of modded XP and customised cases with lava lights.
It's a bit shocking.
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Jack Straw said 5:49AM on 11-01-2006
im in my first year of a-levels and at the moment over half of the laptops that students have brought in from home to use at school are macs. i have a macbook and use it in all my lessons for note taking and from digital arts. as well the art department is just about to get a large computer room full of new iMacs.
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Jr said 6:16AM on 11-01-2006
Mac report Norway: I'm sitting at Norway's smallest University with approx. 3000 students. The University's IT section only supports Windows based machines (as well as the rest of Norway) but I'm noticing more and more Macs. MacBooks are showing up in lectures and in the library. Fun!
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Alasdair Allan said 7:54AM on 11-01-2006
See,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aallan/41796427/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aallan/41796452/
enough said?
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Wai-Tung Leung said 1:27PM on 11-01-2006
Macs would appear to be somewhat unheard of in Salford University (in Greater Manchester). I think the School of Arts has a couple, but otherwise my School of Computer Science and Engineering has sod all. However on the plus side quite a few of the computers duel boot into SuSe Linux. :-)
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Michael May said 4:10PM on 11-01-2006
At my school in London, we have a huge network of PCs with XP. It used to be all macs, but the school switched around system 8 time, sadly. Because my dad worked at the school back then, he used a mac at home, so I was maccified from birth thanks to the IT of my school.
However, frequently people bring in laptops, 75% of which I'd say were MacBooks or MacBook Pros - it's a private school, so lots of rich people, which I'd suggest was the main reason for this. Also, there are 6 or so Macs in art, incl. a G5, because one of the heads of Art is worryingly mac-loving. I mean, I like them and all but he used to cover the walls with newspaper cuttings about Apple. In one of the IT rooms, there are apple stickers (the rainbow ones) on the walls, and an LCIII in the corner.
Sadly, I think there is only a miniscule chance of the school going back to mac, as it would require all new servers and IT support staff and just hassle I guess. Oh well...
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spil said 9:31PM on 11-01-2006
Just about every one and their dog at my school has a macbook, and a select few with blackbooks. There are probably about the same amount, if not more, people with macbooks alone than all windows notebooks.
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