Dueling Platforms

Once upon a time, long ago, Dartmouth was the most Macintosh-intensive campus in the country. But times change. For the first time since 1984, Kiewit Computation Center did not recommend a Macintosh package to the incoming class. Instead it left the choice up to the students. The reason? More and more academic software packages are simply not available on the Mac; students taking classes using those packages need a Windows box. The upshot is that, despite the cooliMac colors available, 37 percent of '03s bought Windows machines.

Academic software packages are helping decide the platform tug-of-war.