<p>Why provide discounts when nobody complains? The student body is so small that even if a sizable percentage complains, it’s still only a handful of people.</p>
<p>NUIT wants to save money. </p>
<p>Providing site licenses for windows, and office is very expensive. I know that the University of Kentucky just signed huge contracts with Microsoft to provide Vista, and Office 2007 for all students and alumni. I use my Dad’s laptop since his work provides site licenses for lots of software.</p>
<p>Kellogg, and Medill grad school forces students to buy particular thinkpads. I remember it was somewhere in the range of $2500 for the Medill versions.</p>
<p>The discounts are mediocre at best. You can generally get these discounts just by using another school’s purchase site or even just waiting for coupons. I have friend’s that buy dell’s by clicking on links from other schools, because they offer a slightly better deal. I bought software from UFlorida’s website because it was very cheap.</p>
<p>As for Vista. There is really no reason to get it. NUIT is just covering their butts. Symantec Antivirus that NUIT provides doesn’t work with Vista yet. There is a version that does but they don’t make an easy link to it, and it only works on Vista. Rescons and “tech bay” support. But other than that all new versions of major software support vista. If they don’t they don’t use them. I mean seriously vista has been beta testing for years now, and if major software developers still can’t update their software then they are probably bad software.</p>