Compared to operation overlord, deploying and supporting laptops should be easy

Abstract

In 1997, Rollins College started to award undergraduate students with scholarships that included a laptop computer. In the program's infancy, support was supplied by a single student assistant. Eventually a dedicated full time staff member was hired and the office moved from a storage closet to the IT Repair Shop. After two more moves and the addition of two full time staff members, the laptop repair shop responsibility grew to the current 1700 machines. The supported population now contains three distinct demographics: undergraduate students, graduate students and employees of Rollins College. Each group has their own distinct characteristics that must be addressed, from the logistics of initial deployment to ongoing support depending on their style of usage. For the undergraduates, the students receive their laptops during orientation and typically use their laptops more for personal use than academic needs. This presents the challenge of preparing and then deploying 250 units in one day. In contrast, the graduate students attend orientations in smaller groups (approximately 30) that last 3 hours. This group is more demanding on their laptops due to daily academic use and therefore has a higher proportion of technical issues. Finally, Rollins College IT technicians individually assist employees in the migrating from old to new hardware, familiarizing the user with their new machine. Integrating all the different user styles with a multitude of software and hardware issues, and yet resolving these problems within a 24-48 hour period, is an increasing challenge to the IT staff of Rollins College.