Good morning everyone,

We are getting many requests this fiscal year from our reference librarians for laptops.  Before we move in this direction I wanted to ask some questions of the group.

1. Do people have staff with laptops? 

2. If so, are they a replacement for their traditional desktop machine or in addition to?

3. Are they assigned to one person or are they “floaters/loaners”?

4. Are they allowed to take them home?

5. Who is responsible for them if lost or damaged while out of the building?  Do they have tracking software on them?

6. What setup are people using for laptops if they are the replacement for a desktop?  Are staff using docking stations with separate monitors and keyboards?

7. What type of service agreement is in place with IT as far as off hours support and support at home?

8. What about personal/personnel data if they leave the building?  Is anyone encrypting them?  Massachusetts just enacted some of the toughest personal information laws in the country.

9. Are they taking up more support time/budget?

10. What type of security are people using on  them?  Especially as relates to bringing security risks inside your network?

I would really appreciate any experiences or opinions you may want to share and thanks in advance for your replies.

Rick Heckbert
Library Systems Adminsitrator
Tisch Library
35 Professors Row
Tufts University
Medford, MA 02155                                                                                                                          
“The difference between men and women is that, if given the choice between saving the life of an infant or catching a fly ball, a woman will automatically choose to save the infant, without even considering if there's a man on base.”
-Dave Barry