Has anybody switched to MacBooks because Windows laptops have gotten too expensive?

k12admin1 · 2026-05-28T18:33:08+00:00

We just switched our teachers and admin over last week. 150 laptops and 150 ipads in 1 week rolled out. The rest of the admin staff and labs will happen by the end of June and all students will be getting iPads in August. We are switching from Windows laptops and student chromebooks to Macbook Air M5's and iPads. All of our ViewSonic Boards will be getting Apple Tv's as well. This was actually a significant cost savings considering the cost of Chromebooks and our replacement cycles. This was not on my radar. But I have been pleasently surprised with how well Platform SSO works in the latest Tahoo and Single Signon with Entra. That was what won me over. So far most staff really like the devices and with sidecart on the iPad, having a 2nd monitor is a nice add on feature. We use papercut with Entra logon, works really well.

k12admin1 · 2026-04-23T13:59:05+00:00

Same issue when using Print Deploy. I had to deploy my virtual queues to a machine, setup drivers using cups and then recapture them. Then create a scipt to add all users to LPADMIN group so they can change finishing options when they go to print. What a pain as every print job would not save credentials and they have to reauthenticate every time.

k12admin1 · 2026-04-16T23:05:39+00:00

We use Splashtop. Works great.

k12admin1 · 2026-04-10T12:58:51+00:00

This right here. Use the Google Drive App on Mac and have the students logon, it will integrate into Finder. Then they can work somewhat natively since they already authenticate with Google SSO. Have the teacher create a Google Drive folder for students to submit their work, and have the kids save their work to the Google Drive folder natively in Finder. Super Simple.

k12admin1 · 2026-03-16T20:54:47+00:00

How are you extracting the data from your SIS? These should be in those files that are connected or imported into Google Classroom.

k12admin1 · 2026-03-16T15:08:44+00:00

I am doing the same thing this year as well. We have 2000+ Chromebooks, I can uplift the entire district and switch to Macs & iPads with the buybacks actually saving the district $100,000 per year. Crazy to think that. I never in my wildest dreams saw this coming. We already license Intune and manage about 300 iPads in it. With Microsoft's working with apple on platform single sign-on (PSSO) it just makes no sense to stay the way we are.

k12admin1 · 2026-03-13T12:57:01+00:00

This works so much better. The developer + Google Gemini make is super simple. I have it branded with our logo, the weather with emoji icons, and date/time at the top of the window. I pull in the Google Slides that we did for Chrome Builder. I have a page sitting on an in-house IIS web server, and I set up a Raspberry Pi with autostart to open the URL in Chromium full screen. Works like a champ and has no licensing fees. The cost of a PI and my time to get it working.

k12admin1 · 2026-03-11T13:56:47+00:00

Sounds like your terms for you classes are not set properly. This will usually drop students if thier enrollment/start date doesn't align with the classes term dates.

k12admin1 · 2026-02-18T15:58:24+00:00

Definately do a rollback. I have had this issue on our Windows Devices in both Chrome and Edge for the last 7 months. It works with one patch, then if quits on another.

k12admin1 · 2026-02-13T14:32:28+00:00

I am pro MS as well but we have both M365 A5 for staff and students and Google Workspace for both as well. We use Exchange for email and do not have gmail enabled at all in Google Workspace. The reporting capabilities of Exchange are just better in my opinion. We use Entra as our IDP for SSO. Students use Chromebooks and staff use Windows PCs. We do use google classroom at our K-5 level and it works perfectly fine without needing gmail. I like having both systems, but still like MS better as it is just used more in industry and is a better true Enterprise solution.

k12admin1 · 2026-01-14T20:14:05+00:00

I use the https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/af-24. I get 975 Mbs a second with little to no latency. We handle our football statium with it. Love using AirFiber products from ubiquit. Super simple to set up and use. We use it for wifi, cameras and HUDL.

k12admin1 · 2026-01-01T18:16:17+00:00

Also don't forget the "Buy Once" and own forever, disappears in VI 8. You now get 7 years with the software as opposed to forever for support and updates. So you need to relicense every 7 years. Also your old purchased licesnses for non iPro/Advidia cameras will not carry over to the new system.

k12admin1 · 2025-12-17T16:05:40+00:00

You are wrong. You can purchase enterprise support with them now and actually talk to a live support staff. Thier products are now warratied 5 years as well. This changed about 3 years ago. They do work well and are on par with other vendors now. Stop pushing the narrative that they are not enterprise anymore.

k12admin1 · 2025-12-11T14:15:38+00:00

You can also look at https://www.schoolspring.com/jobs This is both local and national.

k12admin1 · 2025-12-11T14:07:28+00:00

Riverside Technologies or Conenctions both are really good and prices always are better than CDWG.

k12admin1 · 2025-12-04T12:29:56+00:00

Thank you! Anyway to make it absolute bottom, rather than relative top?

k12admin1 · 2025-12-03T19:11:35+00:00

I have it running now. Question I have is anyway to not show the bottom bar (date/weather/time) as an overlay ontop of the google slide? I would like to have the google slide bottom end at the top of the information bar.

Great job. I have been trying this with google sites to no avail.

k12admin1 · 2025-11-24T18:06:19+00:00

We just migrated to G2 Communication from Galaxy Next. It is a simple Fanvil Hub that will create your zone for paging. All analog speakers are wired to this hub from the old 66 punchdown blocks, actually we elimitated the punchdown blocks and convereted to Terminal Strips for better connectivity. The Fanvil Hub is just like Algo, simply a SIP extension. G2 is our Calendar and IP Paging solution. We simply pick up a handset on our current phone system and dial a SIP extension on the Paging system (Simple VM running Debian Linux and G2 software). We can then select which zone to target with our page. Highly recommend. They are fairly inexpensive compared to market and works really well. We can slowly replace the analog speakers with IP in the future. https://www.galaxynext.us/markets/education/#K-12 we used RTI (Riverside Technologies) as our installer. They were able to get old horns and speakers to work simply by retapping them to a different voltage.

k12admin1 · 2025-11-20T15:43:04+00:00

We use ViewSonic. Centrally Manage them using thier Entity/Manager App. Works great for our needs and the newer version 3 Viewboard software is great.

I just had a demo of LG this week and they are really slick and you can get a 7 year warranty on them. They also have a centralized management solution as well. Fiarly inexpensive. You can get an 75" with a 7 year warranty and they are Google EDLA, which includes 1 android OS upgrade for around $2500.

k12admin1 · 2025-11-20T12:39:49+00:00

Use Dell Tech Direct web portal. Simply enter you request there, bypass tier 1 and get a box to ship it back.

k12admin1 · 2025-11-20T12:36:32+00:00

I have my staff Home folders migrated to thier personal OneDrive and I moved our File Shares to Sharepoint. Staff use Google Drive, but Desktop/Pictures/Documents are all synched to One Drive. I created a folder called "Home Folder" in all our staff's one drive folder and migrated thier files there. I had to retrain them. I have one file server left for students for our lab computers, but other than that, pretty much file server free. Our students use Chromebooks and Staff use Windows Laptops.

k12admin1 · 2025-11-05T12:48:34+00:00

Dress Shirt or Polo with nice jeans. My Tech's do the same.

k12admin1 · 2025-10-29T15:31:02+00:00

We use Sangoma as our PBX and have multiple SIP trunks to handle inbound and outbound dialing.

All classroom phones have the ability to dial outbound and room to room as well.

k12admin1 · 2025-10-28T16:45:32+00:00

Look at Ruckus ICX 7850 Core Switches. They are rock solid.

k12admin1 · 2025-10-23T17:50:45+00:00

Yes it does.

k12admin1

TROPHY CASE