“We were surprised to learn how energy-efficient the iMac is.”
— Dave Ruby, Manager, Instructional Computing Services, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Boot Camp: Great for Environment and Bottom Line
Urbana, IL — When Dave Ruby first took a look at Apple’s Boot Camp application, he was excited about its potential. Ruby, who is the manager of instructional computing services at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is charged with supporting 900 computers. He believed Boot Camp’s ability to deliver a dual-platform environment offered the promise of dramatic cost savings. Today, the university’s 40,000 students have their choice of using the Macintosh or Windows operating systems, both of which run reliably on one computer — an iMac with Mac OS X Leopard. In addition, the University of Illinois is enjoying a significant reduction in its energy consumption and costs.
In 2006, when Apple announced its prerelease version of Boot Camp, Ruby was one of the first adopters of the application. He was visiting Apple’s Cupertino headquarters at the time, and loaded the product on his MacBook Pro to take home. “I really liked Mac OS X, and was intrigued by what Boot Camp could do,” Ruby recalls. “It was as if Windows programs didn’t know they were being run on a Mac!”
Pilot Program Seals the Deal
Returning to the University of Illinois, Ruby oversaw the purchase of 50 iMac machines for its computer labs. Each was configured with the Boot Camp software. “Those computers ran with the beta version for over a year,” says Ruby. “We didn’t put in PC keyboards, or swap out the mice, and we didn’t tell anyone how to use Boot Camp, or that anything had changed — and the students were fine with it.”
Remembering how easily students at Illinois adapted to the new computing environment, Ruby feels compelled to give them kudos. “I have to say how awesome our students are. There were no complaints, and no one had any problems; everything just worked. We ran two full labs off of that version of Boot Camp for the entire year.”
A Green Solution
In addition to the convenience of offering two platforms on one computer, Ruby says Boot Camp delivered “green” benefits to the University. He was tasked with assessing the costs of running all computers on campus, with the goal of charging individual departments for their power consumption. His analysis of the energy used by the Macs and PCs revealed unexpected results.
“We were surprised to learn how energy-efficient the iMac is,” Ruby says. “The reason is that Apple uses power supplies and components that are extremely efficient; when the computers use less power, there’s less need for cooling. In places like our library, where we have limited power supply, that was a huge consideration for us. We are always looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint.”
Significant Cost Savings
Thanks to the success of the pilot program, Ruby has converted a third classroom full of computers into a lab of dual-boot iMac systems. Another lab — as well as all of the lab computers in the Student Union building and the library — has been transformed as well. Ruby says the costs savings are a major benefit of the dual-boot solution.
“It doesn’t cost any more to run an iMac,” he notes. “In fact, it may cost less, depending on the type of PC you were using. Apple has very competitive pricing, and we’ve been happy with their equipment, so it was a good solution for us.”
Two In One
As older computers need refreshing, Ruby and his team will replace most of them with new dual-boot iMac systems. For virtually all of the students’ computing needs, Ruby believes Boot Camp has worked well.
“In the lab environment,” says Ruby, “you want everything to be clear, functional, and run the same way every time. If you have the need to run both the Windows and Mac platforms, the dual-boot Mac does just that. You get two operating systems in one machine, and you’ll use less power.”
