In'eresting: Mac Marketshare at Universities Booming?

The DailyPrincetonian reports on a growing trend amongst at least some universities.

The Princeton University newspaper reports that Princeton's Mac marketshare has been rising dramatically, with 40 percent of students and faculty currently using a Mac as their personal computer. This number is up from only 10% of Mac users on campus only 4 years ago. And this number could still be growing. This year, the University's Student Computer Initiative reportedly sold more Macs than PC's, with 60 percent of students choosing a Mac, up from 45 percent just last year. Students were offered a choice of Dell, IBM and Apple computers.

This follows a recent report that looked at a similar trend at many other colleges. According to a separate Pioneer Press survey, Dartmouth is up to 55% freshman with Macs (up from 30% in 2005), University of Virginia with 20% of freshman with Macs (up from 17% in 2006), and Cornell with 21% dorm network users with a Mac (up from 5% between 2000-2002).

PioneerPress attributes the uptick in sales to the popularity of the iPod, security of Mac OS X, design and ease of use.

These numbers are much higher than the general population, in which Mac marketshare numbers have been hovering around 5-6%. (All of these figures may not be directly comparable, as marketshare numbers typically represent new sales in a particular time-period rather than the installed base. Regardless, the numbers are still significantly higher than would be expected.)

One of my bosses (who hasn't bought a Mac in 15 years) just bought a MacBook for his son who just started college. And somewhere I saw a picture supposedly illustrating "conformity" that showed a college classroom from the prof's POV - you could see almost all the students had laptops with the glowey Mac Apple thingie showing on the back of the display.

Capturing a significant part of the college market is awesome for Apple, as most of those Mac owners will probably remain loyal to Apple.

Ginger, it was a weird permissions thing that Vista actually got around. I hadn't been able to do it on Greg's XP. I finally got it to accept me this afternoon. Thank you and thanks DX. I just had to be persistent, I guess.

Mac Marketshare at Universities Booming?

You don't say...

You don't say...

Ah, that was the picture I saw....

When I was in college, I was amazed when I saw a student with a laptop in class. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80 100 (like this one: [link] which is the first widely successful laptop.

eta: first sold in 1983.

I used a Powerbook 100 in my classes in college. I'm pretty sure the semester I started doing it I was the only student in classes doing it.

Wow, now that I think about it, way to make me feel like college was forever ago. Most people had computers, but not terrrribly many had laptops. And only a few would bring them to class. Nowadays, do any college students still have desktop computers? Though part of it, I'm sure, is that a hell of a lot of them type faster than they write, too.

We didn't have cellphones in college either, but the next couple years was when they got big. Eep!

The "$100 laptop" reviewed. [link] Only $200. Awesome set of features for that price.

OK, actually it would cost most of us $400. For that price, you get two of them, but one gets sent to a child in a poor country (that part is tax-deductible).

I went to college with a slide rule.

I had to learn how to use a slide rule in Jr. high. But most everyone had calculators at that point (1978-ish) so I never had to use one outside of the learning stuff.

I still think they're cool, and am tempted to buy some old fancy slide rule.

I don't remember anyone at college with a laptop.