So whaddaya think-- is Michael Dell currently a) crying like a little girl with a skinned knee, b) trying to settle on an effective and painless suicide method, c) trying to settle on an effective and painful murder weapon, or d) all of the above? We speak, of course, of the news that Dell is no longer the king of education sales, having yielded the crown back to its original and rightful owner: Apple Computer, Inc. Faithful viewer The M@d H@tter took a few minutes off from reading Mac OS Rumors to tip us off to a MacCentral article about Apple's return to education's top spot; yup, Steve and his minions are back on top, at least if the stats from Quality Education Data are correct.

Of course, as with any statistics, that's a big "if." It all comes down to whose numbers you believe. For instance, when Dell did its little victory dance last October, it was citing numbers from Dataquest. But Dataquest's methodology had been shown to be flaky in the past; what many Apple watchers may have forgotten is that Dell claimed to have won the top spot in education sales the prior year by flaunting Dataquest's figures-- and Apple smacked them down, pointing out the fact that Dataquest had totally ignored Apple's direct sales to schools, which, when factored into the equation, left Apple firmly in first place.

Now, it's worth noting that Apple didn't refute Dell's claims last year, so presumably Dataquest fixed that particular gaping hole in its methodology and Dell really won. But now QED has thrown its numbers into the fray, and they clearly indicate that Apple is back on top-- or will be. For the current 2001-2002 school year, QED "estimates" that public schools in the U.S. will buy "311,896 to 447,994 Macs"; in contrast, they'll only buy "203,808 to 270,500" Dell units during the same time frame. Based on those unit sales, we can only assume that Mike Dell is sporting a big ol' frown while planning out an elaborate murder-suicide. Heck, we always knew he'd eventually wind up on the news attached to the phrase "before turning the gun on himself."

But don't go writing Dell's eulogy just yet; the key word here is "estimates." Without knowing upon what facts QED is basing its estimation, it's kind of tough to put a whole lot of faith in those numbers. For example, we here at AtAT "estimate" that we'll be the undisputed masters of the earth's ultimate fate in 16.2 years; sadly, that fact hasn't gotten us a penny of financial backing. See what we mean? Even QED president Jeanne Hayes "admitted that tracking such figures can be a 'tricky subject.'" So is there anything of substance here for Apple fans to celebrate? Well, sort of-- QED's own data did show Dell in the lead last year, so maybe the organization is pretty good at this estimation thing after all. We'll know when the actual sales numbers come out. Of course, then we'll have to decide whose numbers to look at once again...