There’s so much buzz around Apple and education in the U.S. these days, you’d be forgiven if you assumed there was a “One iPad Per Child” program officially in effect.
Case in point, a school said to have “shunned” Macs in favor of PCs makes news.
Then you read the story, and it turns out that Adam Gerson, tech director for Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York City, is a lifelong Apple fan who opted for Microsoft servers after slogging through a decade of trying times while trying to keep a network of Apple servers running smoothly.
So now the school relies on Microsoft servers. However, Apple computers still “reign supreme” on the desks. There are 450 Apple machines now humming along happily with Microsoft servers – with better uptime and performance than the previous all-Apple network.
The all-Apple network “crashed frequently,” Gerson said. “I couldn’t sleep well at night worrying about crashes.” He was also concerned about Apple discontinuing the rack-mountable hardware the school used. Now, despite having to rely on third-party VMware software, everything “works great.”
The iPhone and iPad are “great consumer devices,” says Gerson, but he remains doubtful about how iPads can be managed easily in the enterprise right now.
Via Network World
