[qdpb]

The article concludes that Windows RT meets students needs perfectly, but it's hardly surprising since the college's workflow is so heavily skewed towards Microsoft applications.

It's equivalent to saying Mac OS X is an excellent development environment for iOS apps.

[jackbravo]

Or it's equivalent to saying that design students would rather use Apple products.

[edtechdev]

Yeah it's partly a byproduct of some schools being slow to change, which is partly from wanting tight centralized control (like at a business), partly from budget cuts, and partly from just being slow to learn new things and not wanting to have to do more work. Our university still uses Windows XP, just like at some businesses. Our students were still in elementary school when XP was released. And we still use Blackboard since before even XP was released. They don't support Apple or Google stuff at all, even when it's completely free (like Google Apps for Education).

[sliverstorm]

Bah, in the big picture I don't think it is any of those things. "Slow to change" was not the reason I used Powerpoint, Word, and OneNote in college. I used them because they were the best I could find at what they did, and I could afford them because they offered attractive pricing to students. As much as Office might irritate people on occasion, let's be honest here- Office is pretty good, and I'm not aware of any honest competitor.

The only other applications I used specifically for college were remote computing clients, Matlab, and a fairly slick PDF annotator.

[Guvante]

It seems to me he is saying "There is a market for Windows RT", for a while there was a lot of people saying "Why wouldn't you downgrade to Android or upgrade to Windows?"

[rtpg]

Could you be more specific? I feel like you're mixing cause and effect.

It's not like Microsoft invented spreadsheets and slide decks.

[isaacwaller]

But there are many more students than iOS developers.

[cbhl]

True, but someone at the institution probably made the decision to adopt (and/or keep) Microsoft/Citrix around for the department the author's kid is in.