February 26th, 2008
Get this: in tech hub Seattle, School Board still uses dinosaur VAX!
For those of you who have been around the silicon-based world for awhile, the mere mention of VAX computers might spark a memory or two.
That pic might jog your memory.
First debuted back in 1977, courtesy of Digital Equipment Corporation. Was discontinued in 2000 by Compaq, which had acquired Digital, and was soon to be acquired itself by HP.
But now get this.
The Seattle Times reports this morning that the Seattle School Board still uses two Vax’s for critical management functions, such as how students are assigned to specific schools.
Board officials report these dinosaurs are slow and are prone to breakdowns. Replacement software and parts are best sourced on eBay, some of these same officials tell the paper.
The general tone of this article is that it would be nice to make this transition off Vax, and we will eventually, but we have more pressing needs.
I have two questions:
Isn’t it ironic that the main school district in the metro area with some of the most advanced technology companies on earth uses a dinosaur system such as Vax?
Why aren’t school officials more outraged than bemused? Is this a Venus-Mars cultural thing, in the fact that IT imperatives don’t register with non-IT educators?
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
