I work for a college of pharmacy that has a laptop program and I will say that it is probably the best I have ever seen. After skimming through a lot the posts already, here is my 2 cents on the matter.
A laptop program is not always a bad thing. At the college I work for, we have a 3 year lease on Gateway laptops through US Bank. The college builds in the cost of the laptop into the Tuition of the students. Since it is a 6 year program, the 3 year lease is ideal so the students have updated hardware midway through. All the laptops have 3 year warranties and are covered in case of theft or accidental damage. Also the lease for the second half of students, the ones who will graduate, is a lease to own deal where the students may buy the laptop out at the end of the lease to take with them.
The biggest trouble you will find is that students break them almost constantly. Because of this our school has worked out a deal with Gateway where we are what is considered a "Gateway self supporter". Each helpdesk technition becomes Gateway certified and we are able to repair the laptops in-house. We also recieve monetary compensation for doing so (i.e. $X.00 for every motherboard swap and $Y.00 for every screen ect) We order our own parts and repair our own machines. We also have about 10 - 20 extra laptops of each type for swapping out the ones that have issues. Because of this our general turn around time is a couple hours but 99% of the time its within 24 hours.
The downside to having students use thier own machines is that when they break they could be without the machine for a couple weeks and in most cases will not be able to do the assigned work or participate in class.
The downside to the way we do things is that it is an inventory nightmare. With the almost constant swapping of laptops it gets hard to keep track of who has what. I think laptops are very doable if the college is the one providing them, but having students bring in thier own could be a nightmare.
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A laptop program is not always a bad thing. At the college I work for, we have a 3 year lease on Gateway laptops through US Bank. The college builds in the cost of the laptop into the Tuition of the students. Since it is a 6 year program, the 3 year lease is ideal so the students have updated hardware midway through. All the laptops have 3 year warranties and are covered in case of theft or accidental damage. Also the lease for the second half of students, the ones who will graduate, is a lease to own deal where the students may buy the laptop out at the end of the lease to take with them.
The biggest trouble you will find is that students break them almost constantly. Because of this our school has worked out a deal with Gateway where we are what is considered a "Gateway self supporter". Each helpdesk technition becomes Gateway certified and we are able to repair the laptops in-house. We also recieve monetary compensation for doing so (i.e. $X.00 for every motherboard swap and $Y.00 for every screen ect) We order our own parts and repair our own machines. We also have about 10 - 20 extra laptops of each type for swapping out the ones that have issues. Because of this our general turn around time is a couple hours but 99% of the time its within 24 hours.
The downside to having students use thier own machines is that when they break they could be without the machine for a couple weeks and in most cases will not be able to do the assigned work or participate in class.
The downside to the way we do things is that it is an inventory nightmare. With the almost constant swapping of laptops it gets hard to keep track of who has what. I think laptops are very doable if the college is the one providing them, but having students bring in thier own could be a nightmare.