[K12OSN] OT: Apple Imac lab

[Jason Yeoman]

Where I work our secondary schools each have a mac lab (including the
art department) and it's used for multimedia, video editing etc.  The
rest of the school is XP with some classes having an entire lab of XP
machines.  If students need to work on the Macs they will have to wait
until one becomes available (outside their regular classroom time).

What kind of compatibility are they looking for between the macs and
the ltsp clients?  Outside of the lab what do they want to do with the
other machines?  Open Office is available for both Mac and Linux,
Firefox etc.  If they don't need to do anything more than video
editing then using the ltsp would probably be the best option.

> As I said above, this quickly degenerates into "remove all thin client
> technology and replace everything with Macs".  That is part of the
> agenda which is being pushed.  Once you have the lab, then you
> advocate to convert the libraries (for compatibility since the student
> and teachers will need to be compliant with the tech lab), then you
> add the classrooms since the libary isn't always available, then for
> the wireless labs, you upgrade for compatibility.  In a couple of
> years, thin client tech is removed, costs have skyrocketed and going
> back isn't an option.  Next would be the 3-5 year replacement cycle
> which would amount to 50K-100K/yr given the current number of systems
> in the school. So ... I'm just trying to really nail down the required
> functionality and meet that, trying to remain OS agnostic as much as
> possible.  Going from Windows to thin clients on 'upgrades' isn't that
> difficult most of the time, but the Achille's heel on this is still
> sound/video editing.  Even if could be done by adding a  dedicated
> video/audio app server it would be worth it to avoid the slippery
> slope.