Mac Lab Report

Mac minis for the Classroom Despite 'No New Macs' Policy

- 2005.05.03

Any day now, my shipment of seven Mac mini's should arrive in the classroom. I have a bunch of Blue and White Power Mac G3s, two or three G3 All In Ones, and a beige G3 tower with a lot of peripherals.

And a couple of iMacs (one slot-loading, one tray-loading).

And some iBooks in various states of disrepair. (Apple's best kept design problem is not the infamous logic board problem, it's the poor power supply input port that breaks under the slightest provocation.)

The mini's will displace the oldest and most crash-prone computers, bringing my functional computer to student ratio to 1:2.

I ordered mice and keyboards, because my supply of USB spare parts is minimal - I've handed most of my supply out to various teachers. I'm sure I have enough monitors, so I didn't invest in any of those.

The most important physical feature of the mini for me is the extremely small footprint. I have limited counter space, and this will enable me to dedicate more space for experiment equipment instead of towers and peripherals. If I had more money, I would have gone with flat panel displays and minis instead of iMacs, because the iMacs are too tall for my limited counter-to-storage counter space.

As configured, each Mini is more powerful than any other computer in my room. They are coming with 40 GB hard drives and 1.25 GHz processors. The best computer my students currently have access to is a 500 MHz iMac with a 20 GB hard drive. Even my workaday computer, the once top-of-the-line TiBook, has only a 1 GHz processor, though it still outranks the minis on RAM and hard drive space.

I ordered the minis without modems to save a little money (a nice option that PC users have enjoyed for years). I only use a modem twice a year when visiting relatives and checking email - certainly never in the classroom.

I'll take some photos of the machines in use when I get them. I'm looking forward to setting them up, as these are the first Macs I've managed to order under the district's "No New Macs" policy. We have a lot of new personnel in our IT office lately - the current crop is still staunchly in the "One Platform To Rule Them All" camp, and the district administration is locked into that concept as well.

Nevertheless, with justifications they agreed to let me get Macs (primarily due to some software professional astronomers use that will only run in a Unix environment). That's something we've heard from scientists from everywhere we've visited lately - Lawrence Berkeley Labs, various professional astronomers, and others have told us that the best thing we can do for students is to give them an introduction to Unix.

The only way to do that and stay compatible with most district functions is to get Mac.

Join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, use our Google+ page, or read our RSS news feed

is a longtime Mac user. He was using digital sensors on Apple II computers in the 1980's and has networked computers in his classroom since before the internet existed. In 2006 he was selected at the California Computer Using Educator's teacher of the year. His students have used NASA space probes and regularly participate in piloting new materials for NASA. He is the author of two books and numerous articles and scientific papers. He currently teaches astronomy and physics in California, where he lives with his twin sons, Jony and Ben.< And there's still a Mac G3 in his classroom which finds occasional use.

Recent Mac Lab Reports

Macs in Space: Curiosity Rover Based on G3 Processor, 2012.08.07. When choosing a CPU for space missions, NASA looks for reliability above all else - and NASA chose a PowerPC G3 as the brains of the Curiosity rover.
Bike Across the Country While in Your Basement, 2012.06.25. By linking your exercise bike to a PC running Google Maps Street View, you can virtually bike across the country.
Microsoft Word 2004 vs. iWork Pages 1.0 for writing a book, 2008.01.10. Microsoft Word is great for technical writing, powerful yet slow, while Pages lets you concentrate on just writing, making it great for novels.
More in the Mac Lab Report index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Color Classic, introduced 1993.02.01. A cult classic, this was the compact Mac with color that everyone had been waiting for.
May 23 in LEM history: 00: A computer I understood - 01: Mac: A dream fulfilled - 02: PowerKey - 03: 12" PowerBook better than 15" TiBook - 05: The First Macs - 06: What's in your workspace? - Picking the right laptop - Sun has set on the G4 - 06: Running your notebook using flash memory - 08: MacBook holds its own against Dell and HP
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM Support Usage Privacy Contact

Mac Lab Report copyright © 2000-08 by Jeff Adkins. Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Opinions expressed are those of their authors and may not reflect the opinion of Cobweb Publishing. Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all.
Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2013 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Low End Mac, LowEndMac, and lowendmac.com are trademarks of Cobweb Publishing Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad, iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, Mac Pro, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it, and we don't share the information we have with others. For more details, see our Terms of Use.