This year’s seniors have had their MacBooks since sixth grade. When students first received them, everyone was ecstatic that they got to use MacBooks for schoolwork, but after a few years the wear and tear has begun to show.

Some students have reported that by the time someone tries to open Haiku, download notes or even open them, the teacher is already halfway through the lesson. The MacBooks have so many issues now that the Help Desk is constantly filled with broken computers, some of which have broken trackpads and dead or “exploded” batteries.

“In Macro we have to download our notes before we start, and by the time I finish downloading what we need he is almost done teaching,” senior Emma Rice said. “The MacBooks are way too slow and it takes too much time to prepare for class with them.”

If all goes according to plan, future students at THS will be receiving a new type of laptop: the Chromebook.

“They asked us for an amount of Chromebooks we need, but we are not sure when they will arrive,” assistant principal Tyrone Catledge said.

Students at Tupelo Middle School and Milam have already moved to Chromebooks.

According to laptopmag.com, instead of Windows or Mac OS, Chromebooks run Google’s Chrome OS. Chromebooks are designed to be used primarily while connected to the Internet, with most applications and documents living in the cloud.

“With the Chromebooks we won’t be able to run Balfour and InDesign so I’m going to ask Principal Harris if we can keep a classroom set of the MacBooks completely stripped down of everything except the things we need, like Photoshop and the entire Adobe Suite,” yearbook teacher Shari Chumley said.

Although these Chromebooks are small and more convenient and are hopefully faster than the current MacBooks, the yearbook staff needs to keep the almost ancient MacBooks to help design future yearbooks. This is also true of The Hi-Times staff, which uses Photoshop and InDesign every day.

“At first the MacBooks were very useful, and doing work was easy and the teachers don’t have to print out as much paper as they did, saving the school a lot of money,” senior and yearbook staffer Will Herrington said. “The concept of MacBooks had good intentions, but I bring my own.”