To Each His Own ... Laptop
It was only in the last couple of years that the number of laptops
shipped annually exceeded the number of desktops. I can still remember
the thrilling moment when my boss agreed that it would be a "good
thing" if we began moving most of our professional staff from desktops
to laptops.
Our office, like many, still has to deal with
occasional issues about when it is or is not appropriate to have a
laptop open during meetings, but mostly we do have them open. Maybe
this epitomizes my geek status, but I get a thrill out of seeing my
colleagues sitting around a table during a staff meeting, discussing
something projected up on a screen from one person's laptop, and each
with their own open laptop in front of them.
It's as though we
have all of those creative minds present, working with each other, and
in front of us "windows" to just about anything we need to know to
continue discussions without ever a hitch for missing data or
background information on something.
The question of laptops versus desktops has been making the rounds on the university IT lists as well.
On the
Educause CIO list
recently, there was a discussion thread about whether or not colleges
and universities offer laptops or desktops for faculty, whether they
include docking stations, and whether the connectivity used for those
laptops is more wired or wireless. As typical of such discussions on
that list, several knowledgeable people provided some good information.
Let's take a look at that discussion:
On one campus, faculty
members are offered a choice. If they choose a laptop, then it's their
departmental budget that purchases a docking station. That institution
is considering offering the docking stations from the central IT budget
in order to induce more members of the faculty to select laptops.
Another
campus IT staffer offered up that they were addressing some of the same
issues, and the security concerns regarding possible sensitive data on
portable machines was an additional issue they were struggling with.
Yet
another campus uses the same model with regard to the docking station
being out of the departmental budget and notes that they have a
three-year refresh cycle for new machines. At this institution, faculty
may choose Mac or PC.
Another, fairly small, institution also
allows the Mac/PC choice but refreshes every four years and does not
provide any laptop peripherals from the central IT budget. It prefers
wireless, viewing docking stations as mere ways to handle various
cables, and jumpstarted the laptop selection process by providing one,
initially, to each department so that faculty could see the utility the
person using that one gained.
At a state university, the
scenario is pretty much the same as at the institution noted directly
above, except that there is no Mac choice. At that same university,
vice presidents determine whether employees in their departments get
laptops or desktops.
At the next university, all faculty get
laptops, and laptops are included in tuition costs for each student.
This school has a two-year refresh period, but permits faculty to keep
their machines for a third year if they wish. (Sometimes the pain and
agony of a new machine's learning curve just isn't worth it!) Faculty
choices are PC-only, except for in creative arts departments, and
one-third choose a tablet PC. This school also recommends letting
faculty keep their old mouse, keyboard, monitor, printer, etc. When
upgrading faculty computers, it provides each faculty member with a
large-capacity external storage device that has their entire "old"
machine's contents imaged on it. (Wow!)
Another CIO chimed in on
the security issue: That school's policies do not allow sensitive data
to reside on any portable device. Instead, they provide a substantial
virtual drive presence and access via the LAN and the Internet.
A
Canadian institution notes that they've been providing a laptop/desktop
choice for several years and have found docking stations to be a waste
of resources.
Another university moved to providing laptops for
all faculty the year before they instituted a "required laptop" policy
for students. It tries to accommodate faculty peripherals requests.
A
Midwestern university representative noted that they had just started a
small laptop initiative with 20 faculty receiving laptops, mice, and
security cables. Given that the laptops have 17-inch screens, they felt
no need to have docking stations and rely on wireless.
Finally,
another large university noted that they had been providing faculty
with laptops since 1999, including docking stations when requested. The
IT department encourages wired connections with faculty, especially
when faculty members are working with sensitive information, such as
grading.
Now, all of this, of course, is great information for
campus IT staff starting to consider the laptop option. Resources like
the Educause CIO list will be crucial as universities continue to make
the shift as the power of laptops continues to increase--with
multi-core processors and an ever-increasing array of standard
connectivity and multimedia feature--while costs decrease.
The
discussion cited above also speaks to the astounding global resources
available out there through professional discussion lists--available to
you just about anywhere, anytime, if you happen to be on a laptop
yourself. The entire conversation above took place between 11:06 am and
2:59 in the same day, and the
information was quietly and painlessly downloaded into the inbox of
everyone on the list. Members of the list can choose not to even look
inside this discussion, if it's not pertinent to them, due to the
single, shared subject line. I still can get a sense of wonder out of
this stuff.
The discussion provided not only a lot of useful
information in response to the initial query, but the person requesting
the information also knows the full contact information for people who
took the time to respond and can call any one of them to find out more;
especially if the response indicated a similar situation and a similar
school.
It goes to show that a good e-mail list is sort of like having all of the creative minds in an organization, and more,
virtually around your staff meeting table. The best online discussion
list I know of is
UWEBD
(for college and university webmasters). (Note: I am the manager of
that list of 2,500 people; it's never had a flame war!) Another great
one is
CUE-L (from CASE, for editors
of college and university magazines and periodicals).
If
you're old enough, try stepping back in time and imagining describing
this incredibly valuable resource to someone in 1985. I would have
found it fascinating had someone described this to me then. Of course,
if I were to be able to go back in time, briefly, I might leave "spam"
out of the conversation.