Wired Keyboards & Mice for new iMac's

[rframe]

We are looking for any ideas on provision of Wired Keyboards & Mice for new iMac's we will be purchasing & deploying in the next couple of months. Apple only ship the units with Wireless devices which are unhelpful in a University lab environment as they are prone to disappearing...

also having to charge them regularly isn't going to work for us either. We have considered that for Keyboards we could in theory attach the lightning cable and perhaps look at securing it to the keyboard itself but that would be a problem if the keyboard get damaged and needs replacing as the cable would be needing replacement too. have considered getting generic USB mice, but for keyboards their doesnt seem to be much on the market that we have found in terms of Apple layout keyboards, it isnt very good to deploy MS layout keyboards and just expect people to figure out the difference.

we tend to use the leftover wireless to convert staff on existing Apple desktop's or when buying new Macbook's where theres a requirement for them rather than having to buy more.

If anyone has either any ideas or has a stash of Apple Keyboards & Mice somewhere it would be great if you can get in touch

many thanks

[strider_knh]

I understand your issue. We have art and journalism labs that wireless devices would not work in. Forget about the batteries, the student are bound to steal them or move them ll around so that who knows what mouse goes with which iMac.

The fun of kids, and by kids I mean high schoolers.

[rframe]

thanks - i was trying to be polite and not say they were going to be stolen but that is our primary concern and i dred to think of the hilarious moment at 3am a student decides to move all of them around between machines or even labs! - we are dealing with University students but the issue still applies.

[dsavageED]

We have a few Mac labs and can foresee this as an issue too, Apple really aren't inclined to think of Macs as multi-user machines, possibly in open access areas... What about something like the ACCURATUS 301 MAC (part no: KYBAC301-USBMACW) or go down the (hardly ideal) keyboard sticker / keyboard cover route.

[dward]

we have been utilizing these as replacements:

http://www.matias.ca/aluminum/mac-rgb/

[Volker]

The iMacs are still configurable with wired keyboards, at least for Higher Ed, via the Institutional Store only.

And have you engaged your Apple Account Manager on this?

[Eyoung]

K-12 Education store allows for wired options as well.

[rframe]

we are in the UK and Apple dont sell to Higher Education direct. Our Apple reseller have advised they cant get the configuration from Apple to purchase Wired for us - we asked last year and ended up with 200 odd iMac's that we had to scramble to find keyboards and mice for

[jrippy]

Ditto to what @Volker and @Eyoung said. When configuring your iMacs, skip down to the keyboard section and somewhere in the middle of the options, there is an entry for the wired keyboard with numeric keypad. After selecting that, the screen will refresh and you can then go back up to the mouse section where it will be reduced to 2 items: Magic Mouse (which is selected) and Wired Apple Mouse. Choose the wired mouse and the Magic Mouse option goes away.

That should get you what you need.

[bpavlov]

That's a big F U to education international customers if that's really the case. Seems rather silly that they aren't providing an alternative.