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Our schools would barely get the teachers chalk if they begged hard enough for long enough publicly enough
Technology is weird though. Schools can brag about technology resources despite a total lack of integration into anyone's lesson plan.
My aunt is a elementary school teacher. They have like 10 3D printers. Nobody was trained on what to do with them or how they work. When I was in high school (2005), the district rolled out a Microsoft Sharepoint system. Not only did none of the teachers ask for it/know how to use it, there was a default-config directory page that was left on for months that had every student's name and confidential student ID number.
When I was in high school in the late '80s there was a rumor that the school owned an electron microscope. The school was in a fairly affluent area so it was certainly within the realm of possibility, but I certainly never saw it and didn't know anyone who had.
Affluent enough someone could spend a couple M in the 80s?
Or they're bought a used one from a nearby fab. Though the service contracts are no joke cost wise.
That's probably why it was never used.
Or donated from a facility that upgraded, to use that educational donation as a tax write off.
The story was that it was donated by the parent of a student who worked for a company that made them.
The 80s were wild man.
The company I work for now balks about $6k for the annual employee appreciation. Back in the 80s they spent $50k (in 80s $$) on a float for the small town's annual parade.
See one of those is marketing. The other is effectively payroll. Companies will spend a ton of money on useless marketing because it has a 0.0001% chance of increased revenue... but will refuse to pay a penny more than they are required to employees because that's always an expense.
I didn't finish public school, but where I went to college, you could graduate without ever touching a computer unless you were pursuing an IT degree and, even then, you only had to use one occasionally.
We had 2 full classrooms with computers, a big deal back then (the swedish "Compis" computer with floppy drives and one hard drive in one of the classrooms). Our class got to use them once (1) in 3 years.
When I was in high school I was in a electronics program. They won a grant for a ham radio station with repeater and everything. It was valued at about 150k around 2000. It sat in a backroom never set up. The school would not spend the $150 in bolts to mount the antenna to the roof.
At one of my early IT jobs, admittedly not a school, one of the PMs ordered (IIRC) four Xserves.
When I started there, they had sat untouched for several years. When I left there about four years later, the boxes were still unopened.
That was well over a decade ago and I would not be surprised to learn they were still there.
A recent job literally had a cabinet filled with keyence microscope lenses. Each one probably between 500-3000 dollars. Someone bought them, then left and they were given to someone else, I "inherited" them, then I left and I assume someone else was given them. There was probably atleast 50 of them of various focus lengths, magnification, mounting etc. None of them compatible with any microscope I saw while while working there... Corporate waste is on a whole different level in my experience.
Tech can be written off as a depreciating asset, and education budgets are strict about where money can be spent (surprise surprise its the tech companies lobbying the education department!). Chalk can't and there are no chalk lobbyists/grant money budget allocations.
The education system is rotten to the core, the maintainers are corrupt, the lobbyists tally the votes, all while the public blames the scapegoats.
The best my schools had were 10+ year old office PCs; enough to do work on for those who didn't bring their own devices.
It's a college
aaaaand they are gone.
school security being trained to stop anyone with a screwdriver coming in
With that being said where there is a will there is a way. Also I am a boomer and forgot about security.
only the hell on Earth called the usa has school security
I’ll upgrade them to an R (cough) X 5 umm 90 for free.
Overpriced mouse too.
Both will get stolen.
Who will steal a Razer mouse? It will break in a week, hardly worth the hassle.
Have you never been to a school before
I was just trying to make a joke about Razer's absolutely godawful QC.
I have a Razer mouse, it's lasted me years. I've had two in fact, one at work as well.
Same here, both wired. Lasted for years and still going strong. Wireless is just for toys, everything reliable needs a wire.
Yeah, same. Mine are also wired. 😁
From my very sample size, their wireless stuff is trash, but the wired stuff lasts ages. I had a Diamondback for 20 years.
Anecdotal I know but my Razer Basilisk turns 5 years old next week. I think this is the longest I've ever used a mouse.
I have a razer mouse and the paint chipped off. Terrible quality mice. Honestly though, that's the only razer device that still functionally works as intended though, everything else is unusable
We stole all the balls out of the mice in HS. They ended up having to super glue the covers on as it kept happening.
Eh, regular Deathadders are pretty cheap
it's fine. the mouse will break in a few weeks or a month or two.
Does your school offer some sort of graphics program? That's the only reason I can think of why they'd even bother with that.
Yeah, it's a media heavy class
How to be a pro Call of Duty player 101
Lesson 1 : Swearing, slurs and mom jokes to throw off the other team and gain a psychological advantage
Esports program?
What kind of school is this?
Too bad the service tag isn't visible, would love to know the other specs
It's my college, I took a gander at the specs, about 2.8 something ghz, 64gb ram, pretty respectable, this is for a video editing and animation class so it makes sense they've got some beefy parts
64GB RAM is pretty overkill imo
From what I've read, editing 4K video can use that much memory.
If you’re doing it wrong and actually trying to edit in 4K.
It's a middleweight workstation nowadays.
Our school had apple IIe's and I turned out just fine. Don't be distracted by what other people or things can do or look like. You are there to put knowledge in your brain that can help you survive the rest of your life. That's your goal and a shiny computer is not the only thing that's going to get that to happen. A shiny computer isn't even close to being a thing that adds new knowledge to your mind. It is simply a way to pose new knowledge for you to read and learn.... Just as much as a bike can take you to the library and a librarian can point you to a book about gardening.... Nothing will happen until you read the words about gardening and learn what gardening is.
Sure, but also learn and use the tools available. Unless you’re saying having an apple IIe wasnt shiny.
I dont know when you went to school but at launch the IIe price was $1995 with a disk, controller and monitor which would have been $6450 last year
Again... Not about the price or innovation. I assume that you're a student. So my suggestion is that you don't look at it as an awesome thing but as a tool to learn awesome things with.
I'm an engineer. I don't look at a computer with any sort of impressive response. I use the computers I have at my disposal to their max capacity.
For example, I have a 90+ core system with 200+ gb of ram specifically for finite element analysis using PrePoMax an open-source FEA program. No movies or entertainment games or anything to be impressed about. Just members in, numbers out. That's all there's to it.
My other computer is much less impressive and its for CAD, presentations, documentation and research. I'm just saying, they're tools. It's not like having a sound at home that you can ride
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2026
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