LabVIEW Student Edition

[Bpk9p4]

I just ran across this downloadable for a student edition of labview. It is at this website https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-30610. has any teams used this for developing code?

[FrankJ]

You get the full professional version with your KOP. Why use anything else?

[Alan Anderson]

That version of LabVIEW will be okay for learning how it works and how to use it in general. You won't get the additional tools and libraries necessary to program FRC robots.

[Bpk9p4]

that is good to know it does not have everything. The reason i was looking at this was it supports Apple computers. The school i mentor at requires all of the students to have an Apple laptop. This makes it very difficult for new students to try programming. This would allow new students an easy way to learn a little bit about labview without having to get windows on there computer

[Invictus3593]

Originally Posted by Bpk9p4

The school i mentor at requires all of the students to have an Apple laptop. This makes it very difficult for new students to try programming.

Why not run bootcamp on your mac and use the full version?

[Bpk9p4]

This would allow the team to save some money on windows licenses.

[Ether]

@Bpk9p4: Why does the school you mentor at require all of the students to have an Apple laptop?

[Bpk9p4]

This is something they decided to do a couple years ago. They have a contract with Apple to give each kid a new Apple laptop as a freshman. This is great for teaching programming since everyone has a laptop. however it gets very costly fast getting windows operating systems

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Bpk9p4

...They have a contract with Apple to give each kid a new Apple laptop as a freshman ... however it gets very costly fast getting windows operating systems

To clarify, I meant "Why Apple?".

Are you saying the school pays less for a loaded Apple laptop than for an equivalent Windows-based laptop?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Ether

To clarify, I meant "Why Apple?".

For a large school contract, the purchase cost for Apple vs. non-Apple tends to be about the same. However, support costs are significantly lower for a fleet of Apple/OS X computers than for a fleet of Windows computers. (It's especially problematic trying to support Windows at the moment, with the Windows 8 transition currently underway. The changes in UI and OS behavior are significant.)

Are you saying the school pays less for a loaded Apple laptop than for an equivalent Windows-based laptop?

I think he's saying that a Windows license is an additional expense for the Apple users when they need to run a program that's supported only under Windows. However, depending on how far you want to stretch the word "equivalent", a Windows laptop with the same performance, reliability, and rugged portability indeed does tend to cost more than its Apple counterpart.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Ether

To clarify, I meant "Why Apple?".

Are you saying the school pays less for a loaded Apple laptop than for an equivalent Windows-based laptop?

Lest anyone misunderstand, I am not a Windows fan. @Bpk9p4: Just wondering what was considered in the decision process in your particular school, if you happen to know.

[Bpk9p4]

Originally Posted by Ether

Lest anyone misunderstand, I am not a Windows fan. @Bpk9p4: Just wondering what was considered in the decision process in your particular school, if you happen to know.

I am really not sure why they went with Apple. The school board decided to go that way for some reason. The main cost i am talking about is the team having to buy windows 7 for the students to use on there laptop. I have tried going through Microsoft charity partner techsoup to get free versions but have run into problems with that.

Also having to partition a computer with windows also adds another hurdle for a kids to join the software team.