Save the Apple ][gs - CONTACT your local schools...

[There Ain't No LIfe Nowhere <rocketusa@delphi.com>]

Hi ho!  Reading the newspapers I saw that the local elementary school
was buying 25 computers for close to $100,000. That's $4000 per computer
or so, Macs, they are planning to get.
 
No doubt some Mac salesman paid them a visit, I thought. Then forgot about it.
 
I don't have any kids and hadn't been in this school until today. I
was visiting someone. I passed their computer lab and lo and behold
it was loaded with Apple IIgs's!  I was in heaven. When I went to school
we didn't have computers. In college, we had IBMs. I had never seen so
many Apple IIgs's, mi amour, in one place.
 
These were the computers they were replacing?  For elementary school
students, these are surely enough - and $100,000 could be spent better
on other things.
 
These computers, with RGB, didn't have hard drives, were hooked up
to dot matrixes and, I'm sure, didn't have more than 1.25 megs. Worse,
they were running Prodos 8.
 
I'm sure some Mac saleman came in and said "With a Mac you can grab an icon
and throw in in the trash. You could hook up a laser printer. You don't have
to boot from disk. Kids like icons more than commands."
 
I'm writing a letter to the superintendent tonight saying that for under
two hundred bucks per computer each of these IIgs's can do all those
things - and even swap text with a Mac using HFS. They can add a Focus
IDE HD with system 6.0.1 and a 4 meg card. Altech sells them both new for
$99 each. I'll install them for free - it is obvious that most administartors
don't know computers - even Power Macs, if they REALLY needed them, should
not cost $4000 tax deductible each.
 
Of course Mac OS or Windows 95 will look better than prodos, but 6.0.1
should be good enough for any grade school and the projects they do.
Darren Johnson