By Gus Weinstein
Staff Writer
A place once called “the dinosaur lab,” has been revamped and updated with new Macintosh computers. “I was super excited when I found out. I knew the students and the teachers would be excited as well,” said Haley Nies, the computer lab assistant.
On May 9, room G14’s old PCs were replaced with “Mac Mini” processors connected to brand new HP monitors. The reason the school has combined the two different computer models is because Mac doesn’t make just monitors. “(The computers) have 10.9 processors which means that they run the application Pages and have faster loading speeds on the Internet,” said Ms. Nies. Pages is a word processing program that allows the user to enhance the word document. Ms. Nies says she had been looking forward to that day for awhile now. “Everybody wants new technology in the classroom so to stay with the times we needed these,” said Ms. Nies. Ms. Nies believes that with more computers available for teachers and students, our school will be more efficient and technologically savvy. An indication that the computers were old was when the school went to get rid of the computers they had to recycle them because they were too old to sell or give away.
“I use to dread going to the old dinosaur lab. All the computers were so slow and outdated,” said junior Matt Schunk. With the new updates to the lab, students insist that they will be venturing to the new lab more often. “The new Maclab is pretty cool the new computers are way more efficient. Since the the maclab (G12) is always busy, the new maclab (G14) is an easy second option,” said senior Brad Carr. Carr also says that after using the new Mac Minis, he likes the new Mac Minis better than the Macbook Pros in G12. “I like how the new Mac Minis have Pages. They also seem to be faster than the Macbooks,” said Carr.
The teachers seem to like the new computers as well. “I am always for new technology. The new computers will help teachers and students complete their work faster;” said Lee Krukowski, “These computers will only affect our school in a positive way.” At first Mr. Krukowski was skeptical at the school’s ability to finally update room G14’s computers because he wasn’t sure if the school had enough money. “After I found out that we had enough money in the budget for the computers, I was all for the addition of the computers,” said Mr. Krukowski. Jamie Crawford is also in favor of the new computers. “The old PC lab was way out of date and the current maclab in G12 is always busy. We needed a new lab,” said Ms. Crawford.