Re:Why I use old hardware
by keithpeter on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @03:57PM
(#18982867)
Classrooms often use interactive whiteboards driven by PCs that can be quite slow to log in to the teacher's active directory profile as this involves pulling data over a network of variable speed. There can also be issues with software upgrades deciding to start at random times. The PC will need to be logged off and logged on 8 times a day...
Teachers don't talk to themselves in classrooms so time loss can affect a small percentage of up to 180 student-hours per day or 900 student-hours per teaching week per teacher. A typical '8 form entry' secondary school in UK will have around 100 teachers plus admin / head of subject / 'leadership'. School year is around 38 weeks.
I sometimes think something like ChromeOS but that can run IW software and just stay booted would be better. An appliance.
You need to factor in the time it would take for teachers to move all of their resources over to another format. Some teachers have decades worth of work that they teach with.
Re:Why I use old hardware
by michaelmrose on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @05:40PM
(#18983939)
The argument you are constructing is that we should invest more money in classroom computers not less in developers.
Re:Why I use old hardware
by keithpeter on Thursday January 24, 2019 @08:36AM
(#18988491)
Yup! Or at least 'appliance' style end points
A teacher spends presumably most hours actually interacting with students and use the computer for preparation and paperwork something your 10 year old dell is probably well suited for during the minority of the time they spend on it.
Your dev spends most of their time on their machine and even if they don't have to build software in a compiled language may still be running a heavy development environment, several browsers to test the result, virtual machines, etc etc etc.
To drive the point home lets consider the cost of a 5% decrease in productivity due to using an inferior machine.
If a teacher is contracted to work 185 days or 37 work weeks in a year and earns 60k the teacher earns $32 at 50 hours.
If the teacher spends 10 hours per week on the computer the cost is no more than $32 * 37 * 10 * 0.05 = $592
If your software developer is earning 100k x 50 weeks and spends 50 hours per week almost all of which is spent using the computer then the cost is $40 per hour x 40 hours on the computer x 50 weeks x 0.05 = $4000
This doesn't account for actual costs incurred by having to hire more developers because management is too incompetent to retain them buy buying them nice tools.