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Switching a College from Desktops to Laptops?
tverbeek asks: "The college of art and design where I work is going to start switching next year from a labs-with-desktops approach to computers, to a students-with-laptops approach. The president appears to have made up his mind that we're doing it, so that's not really up for debate. We'll be starting by equipping all the full-time faculty this year, then next year start requiring (as in 'you can use financial aid to pay for it') each new student to buy a laptop that meets our specs (Apple or Dell, depending on major). Does anyone have experience with this kind of transition? What were the biggest complications?"
"How did you handle software licensing, especially for high-priced apps? How do you do software installs/upgrades? What do you do for resource-hungry apps (e.g. CAD, 3D rendering)? What about traditional lab configuration issues like anti-malware software, classroom restrictions on IM/P2P/network gaming, standard configuration options, etc. that would seem impossible to do with computers you don't own?
I know that many other colleges have done this sort of thing, but what about *art schools* or other colleges with high-end needs but mostly non-technical users, and where something like Photoshop is considered a 'core' application more than MS Office? Also, I'm especially interested in info about much more/less support staff the laptop approach requires; my intuition says that 1000 unsecured laptops will take more work to support than 300 locked-down desktops, but I need data."
I know that many other colleges have done this sort of thing, but what about *art schools* or other colleges with high-end needs but mostly non-technical users, and where something like Photoshop is considered a 'core' application more than MS Office? Also, I'm especially interested in info about much more/less support staff the laptop approach requires; my intuition says that 1000 unsecured laptops will take more work to support than 300 locked-down desktops, but I need data."
... what are you going to do with physical security? 1000 persons walking around with laptops is going to be sweet for any thief.
please excuse my apathy
You might check with your local law school. Many of them mandate laptop ownership for all students.
Narrow it down to one laptop type, or better yet, a particular model, and offer a standard configuration for it, and only offer "official" support for that. Try to find a supplier that is willin g to offer the students discounts on it, since there will likely be a large number buying the "prefered" model. Otherwise, you better make sure that all of the apps you will require run on all the possible configurations that meet your spec. Good luck trying to support finicky applications accross different OSs'.
And that's not all -- it's stupid in general, but it's even stupider in this particular situation becuase of the expensive and resource-intensive software art students use (e.g. Maya). First, getting licenses for every student will cost a hell of a lot more than getting licenses for X computers in a lab that are shared between students. Second, those laptops are going to have to be really high-end not to absolutely suck for the art students to use -- we're talking $3000 17" Powerbook expensive. And yes, they actually need the big screens, because all their work is visual and people really do need access to decent tools (and they need fast processors for the same reason).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
These are the types of issues that, in a well run institution, are resolved before any change of this scale is put through. The fact that the president of the school has mandated this without any sort of investigation into the ramifications is a sign that you should polish up your resume and start looking for a new job. Unresearched, unfunded mandates from the higher-ups are a sign that you're working in IT hell.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Some programs at the university I attend do this kind of thing already (fortunately, not my program). Specifications for one program of which I am aware require a specific Dell notebook with certain software, etc.
There are all kinds of issues with this approach. First, you lock students into a particular vendor. My university has this annoying tendency to do this all the time (let's start with soft drinks, i.e., the Coke-only contract we have here) because of financial incentives from the vendors for such monopolistic contracts. Frankly, these contracts should be illegal for a public university. I really don't care if it pays for a new scoreboard for the football stadium.
More specifically regarding computers, it forces students into unnecessary purchases. For example, say I have an HP laptop that meets all the technical requirements except for being a Dell. Why should I buy a new one? Well, because we have this requirement that you get a Dell because Dell computers are better... No, the requirement exists due to a contract with Dell, period. Never mind people such as myself who run a dual-boot system. I typically use the Debian side for everything and get by quite well. Rarely do I boot into WinXP -- the last time I did so was to read something off someone else's flash drive because I don't have support for it compiled into my kernel (I don't own one). The last time before that was at least two months before. I do my assignments in OpenOffice. Does it really matter? No.
Finally, I would add that at least at some universities, you can get aid for any computer purchase. Ours allows an increase in subsidized loan amount for one computer purchase per student per degree (basically, one every four years). I am unsure whether such an allowance is available only at the university's discretion or if it is available to all students receiving federal financial aid loans.
I know this isn't exactly the "data" that was desired, and I know that most students in your school probably are not wanting to run Linux on their laptops and don't care about anti-trust issues, so they would be quite happy with the university requirements. But, I think the arguments against such a requirement are rather logical.
-William Brendel
And then you have the poor buggers who are paying their own way through school, and don't qualify for financial aid because they make "too much". You're getting to where higher education is something only the rich can afford, and only the very poor can get help paying for. $30,000/yr income and I'm supposed to afford putting 1/6 of it towards tuition? Thats half of what I pay for housing...are you kidding me? And now you're going to make me buy a laptop?
Maybe you need to rethink your goals?
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
You don't need to have the high-end software run only by lab computers. Get a license for a number of concurrent users of it and use a key-server to dole out keys to students anywhere on the lan (or VPN'd into it). You can get those types of licenses a heck of a lot cheaper than each of your students can buy them, and it still allows the students the flexability of using it on their own machines without going to 'the computer lab' to do their work.
The biggest problem you will have to deal with is two years down the road, when many of your students have dead batteries, and the only batteries available for their machines may be two year old, degraded stock. Schools need to use their leverage, with high volume purchases, to get the vendors to guarantee availability of fresh, new stock battery packs, at fair prices, for at least four years.
Apple Powerbook or IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T40.
[insert lame joke here]
If it is a school requirement, it's a school requirement. Can't afford it? Don't want to borrow money for it? Go to a different school.
My alma matta required every student to own a computer; believe me, back in '94 a 486DX2 cost a hell of a lot more than most mid- to high-end laptops do these days. But I knew it was a requirement when I applied, and I was excited to actually own a computer ("what's this 'DOOM Deathmatch' I keep hearing about?").
Now, there are other drawbacks to the "must have a laptop" scenario: labs have always been home to expensive hardware and software (Pro/Engineer, SGI machines, trick little AutoCad-specific pointing devices), and now you will burn a lot of money on software and mobile hardware that will spend most of it's life folded up in a book bag -- instead of in a shared envirornment getting constant use. But to address your issue:
If you don't like the laptop requirement, go to a different school.
But look above, I emphasize "addition" for a reason. They are not a replacement for true computing labs with high performance hardware and licensed software, especially since the colledge/university does not own OR maintain the systems. Yes, they are great from the standpoint that they will reduce your out of pocket costs of maintaining a lab full of high end computers, since the school no longer needs to support that infrastructure, but they are simply moving the costs around. The costs will now move to the students and IT help centers because you no longer have the ability to roll out massive patch sets, automate software installations, upgrades, or security patches. Now you are relying on students to keep their systems running properly, and most if not all of those students can bairly tell you the difference between a Mac or an IBM, let alone be expected to be able to patch their system or configure it to connect to your networks securely. The overhead for fixing these systems will easilly overwhelm your current IT department if they are the ones expected to handle the problems that crop up.
Let us not even get into the issues with software such as photoshop licenses, since you are now no longer in control of the license due to the student being the owner of the computer. You will effectively be requiring the students to need to purchase a full license of photoshop or AutoCAD or Mathmatica for their own use since there will no longer be any school operated systems which they can gain access to the programs. This is adding several thousands of dollars of cost burden onto all students, many of who may decide that they do not like graphics art and change to become an english major or some other major that will never use a full version of photoshop, which means they just wasted all that money.
There are many schools that have embraced laptops, but they are an addition to the rest of their computing systems. My college converted at least 3 major computer labs from your standard desktop setups to hot stations for use with student owned laptops. BUT they still kept very close to the same number of desktop systems throughout the campus, basically moving the desktops to smaller new labs. The students mostly purchased laptops on their own because the entire campus had wireless connectivity which made it easy to just bring the laptop to class and take your notes, etc., on it and work on assignments between class. But when things required true horsepower, they used the regular computer labs or a regular home desktop system to do the work. The laptops were and still are a convience system, not a real replacement for true dedicated computing labs.
So I personnally would try to convince they person who has this hairbrained idea in his or her head that it isn't going to fly for reason X, Y, and Z, or go job hunting because when the stuff starts hitting the fan it will be blowing in the direction of the IT department staff who doesn't have the power or ability to fix the problems generated on systems they do not own, but will be blaimed by the students because the students can not get their assignments completed on their laptops...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
But the users are still being forced to use -- on their own property -- the particular set of hardware and software (e.g. operating system) required for the application. If my school tried to usurp control of my property from me, I'd start looking for another one then and there.
Now, if they wanted to allow me to use whatever software I want, including using alternative software for classwork (i.e. any photo-editing software instead of explicitly Photoshop), then I might be less hostile to the idea. Although this is the case at my school (because it's not vocational), I highly doubt it would be the case at an art school. At least, it's not the case at the Art Institute -- I know for a fact that when they say they teach "3D modeling" they really mean "we teach you how to use the particular interface of Maya, but if you want to use some other program, like Blender, you're SOL." It's exactly like these "Technical Colleges" that tell you they're teaching programming but are actually teaching you how to use Visual Studio and MFC.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Good idea. Mainframe strategy. Let each student have a thin client, or whatever kind of stuff they want to bring from home, as long as it will run Citrix or whatever people are using today. That way you control the apps, the licenses, and the security.
I think it's a horrible mistake to tell somebody else what kind of hardware they have to use. That's just wrong. Build your system on some sort of standard so people can choose the hardware that works best for them (and may serve multiple purposes).
Also, you must provide a lab with some desktops, because if somebody's machine breaks, gets lost, or they are SOL on bursars hold for non-payment, they still have to be able to do their work.
I've worked on a lot of networks as a private contractor, and as a direct employee from operator level to executive level. By far the most frightening thing to me was a recent contract I worked on where an entire company wanted laptops and only laptops.
A lot of things have changed since I worked that contract, but one thing I would advise would be to focus on recovery rather than prevention. These students will break their laptops, they will get stolen, they will get damaged in ways you will never forget.
Secure your network from the students, and work towards easy restoration of data.
I would also advise that your school try to find an insurer willing to insure individual laptops against accidental loss, theft, and damage. If they purchase their machine from Dell they can get most of that.
For backups, I would advise students to setup their email to leave copies of all messages on the mail server -- and keep their local mail storage files off of the backup list. This is very cumbersome, and overall is the most annoying thing to deal with on backups. My personal mailbox has over 7,000 messages and it takes me less than a second to connect and check my mail when there is just a message or two that is new - so aside from the mail server itself there is no real additional load by doing this - and it allows the student to recover their mail easily.
Don't bother scripting profile backups - they rarely work and are more difficult to manage then simply recreating a users profile. Instead, focus on making the users profile settings part of your recovery process, with an emphasis on proper documentation procedures.
Find out who your local dell contractor is. Dell has contractors just about everywhere - you can bet there is atleast one near you. Find out who they are and open a line of communication. Let them know what is going on, and what your future purchase plans look like. I imagine this fellow will enjoy hearing from you.
Most importantly, keep excellent documentation of everything you do. Every complaint a sudent makes, every phone call, every change you make, everything. Don't wait until five minutes later, or the next day, document it right on the spot and date/time stamp it. It has been my experience that when users own a PC that you are given minor responsibilities over -- the users seem to think any problem = your problem. Eventually that works it's way up administration and next thing you know you're pulling your hair out. This way when some student with a family member who's friends with administration level faculty -- you've got the data to backup your position when you're in that drab office being asked questions like your a first year intern that cheated his way through school.
Also, I'd keep my resume fresh and an eye on oppertunities in my area. Just in case such a major shift in your work environment changes your outlook on the position.
Dealing with a network full of laptops has it's challenges, but it can also be fun. But it's not for everyone.
Except for us middle class people- those who's parents make too much to qualify for any assistance, but not enough to pay for college. Requiring us to have a computer (and we are NOT by any means a trivial population) is NOT a reasonable expectation. I barely had enough money in college to eat despite not drinking, forget about buying a computer.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It's hard enough getting students through the concepts in one program. Trying to simultaneously teach students how to do 3-D modeling or print illustration while each one is using a different program would be like trying to teach students who are each speaking only their native language how to, say, build a giant tower to usurp the heavenly power of the gods.
What school doesn't "force" you to do certain things on your property? At your school you can write your papers about whatever you want, in whatever format, language, font, and tone you'd like? Can you hand in a cocktail napkin with a drawing of your teacher as a nazi for your final project? Maybe at a few of the weirder art schools.
At any post-secondary school in a non-socialized country, you're paying them to teach you concepts. It's not high school, where the state is forcing your parents to pay it to babysit you and the law mandates your attendance. You're an an adult in a consensual situation and you've already placed an enormous amount of control in their hands by signing up. This is not an issue of freedom.
When I was at Waterloo it wasn't acceptable to simply choose to code an entire assignment in a different language in many of the lower-level courses. That definitely wasn't because Waterloo was a vocational college teaching us how to monkey with Java. Waterloo is about as abstract and conceptual as it gets, but they insisted on a certain language because spending the time to try to mark your assignment done in WeirdLanguage++ would take away resources from students who were willing to just do the damn thing, learn the concept, get the grade and then throw the source code in the trash, where most assignments end up.
Any assignment, any course, any major has requirements. If you don't like that schools require things of you, you learn in your basement. If you're getting bent out of shape over something as minor as whether you get to use open source, you need to grow up.
You've got a false concept going here. If the result is indistinguishable, they can't force you to do it. It's impossible, and you just ignore the rule. Nobody will notice.
If the result is not indistinguishable, any differences are your problem, not theirs. That's easy.
Most schools mandate so the students will have something to fall back on. If you want to spend extra effort doing something else, that's fine as long as it doesn't impinge on anybody. When students try it almost always does impinge on somebody, which is why administrators start to get pissed off.
My friend was in a class at a prestigious art school. They told her class "We're only teaching Macs in this class because we don't have time to go over the differences on each system and we need the colour matching. If you want to use a PC, taking care of the problems is your responsibility." 70% of the class just nodded because they had Macs. 20% nodded because they were willing to do the extra work to use PCs. 10% of the class spent the rest of the semester asking trivially stupid questions about key combinations and wasting everyone else's time.
So that's the upshot. You're pretending that you're all offended because it wouldn't make any difference, but if it wouldn't make any difference you could just keep your mouth shut and you'd be fine. The rules are there for the incompetent, right? But then you wouldn't get to make Charleton Heston style "from my cold dead hands" speeches. This isn't gays in the military. Don't ask, don't tell isn't a violation of human rights here.
There are *always* school rules that seem unreasonable. Look through any school handbook. Mine prohibits beverages on campus. These policies are unenforceable. Wise students don't make a fuss over it unless someone tries to enforce them. It isn't ok for the government to do this, but it is for a private institution.
And what of the significant portion of the student body that already owns a computer or three, as necessitated by their chosen major? They'll invariably have to buy an additional machine, probably at a drastically inflated price.
Of course, the school doesn't care. All they care is that they get their own personal cut; that is, they just want the students to buy the school's provided laptops.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Another thing that will happen: your campus technology will become, in essence, a propaganda field for software. Any course that is somewhat technologically related will be catered to by vendors, and instead of using the best tool for the job (ie, learning), you'll start using the newest (and usually cheapest, meaning probably Microsoft) wiz-bang technology available on the market.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Thirded.
Hell, as university _staff_ having a lab full of machines has been useful, when my desktop system has decided it just doesn't want to play nicely, and you don't have the time to get it working again. It's not a common thing, but it does happen.
Thought - has the president switched to using just a laptop? I don't mean, he has a laptop he brings into the office, and plugs into a monitor and keyboard, I mean that's all he uses? Maybe now's a good time to suggest that staff should be moving to laptops of the spec the students will be using, to work out any last minute bugs, then wait to see how long before one of them goes crazy.
I can't believe this crap still gets modded up. Just goes to show how mods only know what they hear on Slashdot. LCDs are *just fucking fine* for what most people, including professionals, do with Photoshop. There is *so* much to Photoshop that *doesn't* require accurate color. Design, layout, compositing--so little requires knowing *exactly* how it the colors will look when printed. When I started using Photoshop here ten years ago, it was on a 256-color Mac driving a 3-year-old (at the time) uncalibrated monitor. Yet somehow, the results were fine. When needed, you look at the CMYK values. And it's worth mentioning that even calibrated displays are physically incapable of exactly matching printed output, anyway.
I work in a publishing company with hundreds of people using *gasp!* UNCALIBRATED LCDs. I know many artists and photographers in the area and NO ONE uses CRTs any more. All the work is being produced on LCD screens. We do have some press people here with calibrated displays, but do you think we EVER let ANYTHING out the door without seeing test prints? No.
The fact is, most of the Photoshop work happening on this planet happens on uncalibrated displays, and yet somehow the books make it to press, customers are happy, and the world keeps spinning. I personally know several award-winning designers and photographers and NONE of them own calibrated displays. Which would you rather have: a talented designer on a crappy computer, or a crappy designer on a great computer? That last theoretical 1% does not matter in the real world.
Anyone who says "You can't use Photoshop on an LCD" ranks right down there with audiophiles going on about their $300 cables and how CDs, let along MP3s, cannot be listened to.
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