Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!decwrl!shelby!siegman@sierra.Stanford.EDU
From: siegman@sierra.Stanford.EDU (Anthony E. Siegman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Affordable Macs?
Keywords: mac affordable (cheap) education low-end thanks
Message-ID: <382@sierra.stanford.edu>
Date: 16 Nov 89 01:51:16 GMT
References: <254@spt.entity.com>
Sender: siegman@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (Anthony E. Siegman)
Reply-To: siegman@sierra.UUCP (Anthony E. Siegman)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 23

It's my strong belief that the only really good way to go even for
university education is "one student, one computer" -- every student
on campus, or at least every engineering and science student, should
be able to afford his/her own personal low-end machine, which should
be software-compatible with more expensive models found on faculty
desks and in university-operated clusters.

At Stanford at present, thanks to the Apple Consortium -- Mac Plus's
now around $900 plus 5% or 10% tax and handling -- we have something
close to that, perhaps not one Mac per student, but pretty close to
one Mac per dorm room.  The University provides AppleTalk wiring and
AppleTalked printers in nearly every dorm, along with one or anther
form of tip connection to the campus Ethernet for mainframe and email
access.

To be really what we want a "bottom of the line" Mac has to be
Mathematica-capable (along with other similar future software
developments), but I expect that will come. A total capital investment
around $1K to maybe $2K (today's dollars) is the absolute maximum we
can expect a hard-pressed student (or the university itself) to put
into a personal computer -- in fact, that's a lot for many students.
If Apple doesn't meet that need, it may or may not hurt Apple, but it
certainly will hurt us.