17 Aug
2005
17 Aug
'05
5:35 p.m.
On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:57:27 -0400
"Teo Zenios" <teoz at neo.rr.com> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Shoppa" <shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 7:49 PM
Subject: Re: Used laptop stampede
Since when does government (you know the entity that can actually just
tax people more or print more money as needed) care about wasting
money. A schoolsystem gets allot of their operating budget from local
taxes, so I would think they might want to be smarter about showing
how wasteful they are with the locals money (since they are close
enough to get lynched by those taxpayers).
You'd be amazed at how wasteful school districts are with computer
hardware money. I'm constantly amazed, at the auctions I attend. Most
recently, it was a college auction, not a grade/high-school auction, but
I found myself able to buy as many as several dozen Dell Pentium III
machines for $5 each (I only bought six). Most sensible people will
recognize that such hardware is still VERY usable. (I'll bring this
comment back to semi-ontopic by mentioning that I was the person at that
auction who got heckled when I tried to explain some of my bids by I was
buying 'vintage' hardware.)
Granted, I personally benefit greatly from the rapid-obsolescence-track
they put all those systems on, as I no longer buy ANY computers new at
retail.
You have
to ask why the school was ditching machines in working
condition (wasted taxpayer money)
I know of one large government organization in Washington DC that
uses its PC's as nothing but 3270 emulators... and upgrades them
every 1.5 to 2 years along with it's IT department recomendation.
Tim.