Henrico County's $50 iBook sale a huge success - err, sort of . . .

If I were a taxpayer in Henrico County, I would be a might pissed that the county spent about $1000 a piece for these laptops, could bet $300 - $500 a piece for them on ebay, and were selling them for $50.

Dunno 'bout anyone else, but that seems to be a waste of educational funding...

(Keep in mind that I just bought a Beige G3 via ebay from the Arlington ISD for the whopping sum of 98 cents, and yes, I consider that to be a waste of funding for the AISD... but I don't contribute property taxes to AISD, so there )

Weeelllll . . . actually iBooks with this spec are now going for the low end of that scale (or less!) . . . individually. A thousand of them might fetch $50 each if sold off in one lot. Maybe they might fetch $100 apiece in lots of 50 or so. Thing is, it actually makes sense to distribute them into the community rather than dump them off to a wholesaler. That way the community gets the benefit rather than a (usually) for-profit company. Not that I'm against for-profits making a buck, but we are talking about public funds here . . .

Shame the replacements are Dell . . . hee hee - wanna bet there'll be no similar riot when Henrico County goes to flog off that lot in a couple of years? That's if enough survive to even bother!

dan k

Also, bear in mind that these iBooks have been handled by school children. As an onsite technician for a school district in the one to one initiative, I've seen some pretty chilling and horrifying things. Personally, I'd think $50 to be a high price for one of these machines after four years of the abuse they've taken. Though, one thing to keep in mind - the majority of machines deployed into the early one to one initiatives are 500 mhz 192mb/10gb/cd-rom machines, which strangely enough are the bulk of what you see on eBay and at places like wegener media. The retail value of a machine is based on a number of things, one of them being warranty. Without a warranty, $50 may be about fair, but be sure to get a second one so you have a spares kit in case of emergency.

- iantm

OK, that claim calls for some details. Or even a separate new topic!

Awaiting some gruesome (and surely entertaining!) stories . . .

dan k

dan k, I started a new topic titled "horrors of children" with some of my tales.

-iantm