Editorial: Alas, poor Macintosh

Chances are, if you see a Macintosh on campus these days, it's a pretty good bet it was not funded by the university, despite the spending of more than $837,000 on 350 new computers.

Now, any student who wishes to use an Apple computer for their research paper, project or anything must climb to the second floor of Amador Hall. There, in a room filled with antiquated computers, with no printer and no technical support, students may use a machine that uses the same system as the one they have at home or in the dorm.

If something goes wrong ... too bad.

If they need to actually print out their work, students must format a disk in the DOS format, save their document as text and travel to the nearest PC lab to print that paper.

While one may argue the pros and cons of supporting two different systems, the key point is that the change was made over the summer, with no input from either faculty or students.

The decision to in effect, eliminate the use of Apple computers from the open labs on this campus flies in the face of reason. The latest figures from the University Computing and Communication Services show that Macintosh users accounted for nearly one-quarter of the total use in open computer laboratories. Now by this decision, those studenst have been told to take a hike.

The economic reasoning doesn't hold water either. In the committee's search for new systems, Apple was not even contacted to submit a bid. With each workstation costing approximately $1,500, we know of at least two state-of-the-art systems by Apple that beat that cost, off the shelf before any educational or group discounts are applied.

This administration may not like it, but Macintosh is here and will be here for quite a while. To disregard one quarter of the campus shows at best insensitivity and at worst a callous disregard for the needs of students at CSUS.