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Background and purpose

"The Laptop Loaner Program" and "The Program" are used interchangeably in this document.

The Laptop Loaner Program was chartered in 2003 to bridge the gap between personal laptop ownership among students and increasing reliance on student laptops as part of MIT coursework. At the time, while personal laptop ownership was high, it was not high enough to make a general purpose pool directly available to students a feasible model. Instead the application of the loaner pool was focused by limiting it to faculty-sponsored requests for course-specific needs.

In light of significant resource reductions, increasing personal laptop ownership among MIT students, and a dramatic decrease in course-specific demand for loaner laptops, the Laptop Loaner Program is being reorganized to more directly meet the needs of individual MIT students requiring the use of a laptop in their MIT academic work, because they do not own a laptop, their personal laptop is in for repair, or in situations where their personal laptop is insufficient to meet a particular (temporary) academic need.

The goal of the program continues to be to supplement significant (and now pervasive) personal ownership of laptops among MIT students with limited central resources to ensure that all current MIT students have the computational resources required to do their academic work.

Who is this program intended for?

  • Currently enrolled MIT students who do not own a laptop, and need one for specific academic work
  • Currently enrolled MIT students who own a laptop that does not meet a specific academic need, which could be met by a model in the loaner pool
  • Currently enrolled MIT students who own a laptop that is temporarily unavailable due to hardware or software failure

Who is this program not intended for?

  • Programs and classes looking for a pool of laptops for use by the program (rather than specifically assigned to individual students)
  • Programs, classes, or events not intended for currently enrolled MIT students
  • Community events, conferences, professional programs
  • Other activities not directly related to academic use by MIT students

Please note that these are guidelines articulating the intent and priorities of the Laptop Loaner Program. In the past, the program has occasionally met needs in the "Who is this program not intended for?" category. The program will still accept requests falling into this category, but please be aware that such requests can only be accommodated after all other priorities have been accommodated, if equipments is available, and if there is no chance of such a request interfering with upcoming requests more in line with the program's intent.

How does one get a laptop?

Faculty sponsorship is no longer required for laptop loaner requests. Any currently enrolled MIT student can request a laptop directly from the program at Request a laptop from the Laptop Loaner Program. Each participating student can only have one laptop out at a time. Any student picking up a laptop, once a request has been approved, will need to present a valid MIT ID. Laptop loans are tracked via students' MIT ID numbers.

What's in the package?

The standard "package" is a laptop, currently a Windows laptop, with a current, patched version of Windows XP SP3 installed on it, along with a standard set of software. We do not create custom software images for individual students' needs or to support specific classes a student may be enrolled in. However, students with loaner laptops are able to install software on the machine just as they would on their personal laptop. In addition, each laptop has VMware Desktop installed on it. If course-specific VM images are available they can be run on these laptops. Details of what's included (hardware and software) are summarized below.

What are the borrower's responsibilities?

Students taking advantage of the laptop loaner program are expected to take good care of the laptop and observe best practices related to the physical security and protection of the equipment. Equipment will be returned to the program in a timely fashion and in good condition before the lending period is over. Students are not responsible for normal wear and tear or hardware failure.

However, students are responsible for significant accidental damage to the equipment, lost equipment, stolen equipment in cases where theft was preventable (police report needed!), and other damage due to misuse or carelessness. In the event equipment needs to be repaired or replaced in this situation, the student's Bursar's Account will automatically be billed for actual repair costs or a replacement fee of $1000, whichever is lower.

Equipment will automatically be considered stolen and reported as stolen to MIT Police if it is not returned by the end of the lending period, unless special arrangements are made for the laptop's return. Students are responsible of initiating contact before the lending period ends and making acceptable special arrangements for the laptop's return, if it cannot be returned on time.

Students are responsible for removing any personal data from the laptop before it is returned to the program. The laptop will be re-imaged upon its return and any data on the laptop will be irretrievable wiped. No accommodation can be made for recovering personal or academic data left behind on the laptop once it has been returned to the program.

Special information for faculty

Occasionally faculty may be able to anticipate a need for a certain number of their students to obtain loaner laptops through the program, based on enrollment in a class or participation in class projects. For example, a class may have anticipated enrollment of 80 students and it is expected that 25% of these students will not have personal laptops. Yet the class has several individual student projects that require the use of a laptop. In such cases faculty may request a "special hold" on a certain number of laptops before the beginning of the academic term in anticipation of the expected demand. The program will make every attempt to set aside a sufficient number of laptops for a limited period of time. Laptops will remain "on hold" for students in the class until they have all been checked out or until the end of the second week of classes, whichever comes first. Students enrolled in the class will still be responsible for individually requesting and checking out their loaner laptops.

Faculty may occasionally sponsor academic programs with non-MIT-student participants and may need to request a small number of laptops for these participants. The program will attempt to accommodate such requests if possible. They will be prioritized below requests aligned with the intended use of the program, but before any similar requests without faculty sponsorship and requests not related to academic uses. An MIT account number will need to be provided for any such requests, since laptops cannot be directly checked out to individual MIT students in these cases. Replacement or repair fees that MIT students returning loaner laptops would be held responsible for will be the responsibility of the sponsoring MIT department in cases where laptops are requests for non-MIT students, and will automatically be billed to the provided account number.

What's in the box?

The table below summarizes what is included in the standard loaner laptop package. Note that we can't usually accommodate requests for specific laptop models or configurations. While such requests are welcome and will certainly be considered, options are severely limited by machines and resources available in the loaner pool.

  • Hardware
    • Core 2 Duo laptop, 14"-15" screen
    • Discrete graphics with dedicated video memory
    • 1024x768 resolution or higher screen
    • 2GB or more of RAM
    • Built-in CD-RW/DVD media drive
    • Built-in hard disk with 160GB capacity or larger
    • AC power adapter with US plug
    • Padded protective laptop sleeve
    • Security cable laptop lock and key
  • Software
    • Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3
    • McAfee VirusScan Enterprise
    • Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote)
    • Student MATLAB for Windows (network edition, requires cxn to license server)
    • VMware Desktop
    • Certificate Installer Tool for fixing certificate issues in IE
    • Kerberos single sign-on software
    • SecureCRT (SSH) & SecureFX (sFTP file transfer)
    • Firefox web browser (in addition to Internet Explorer)
    • Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files
    • Gaim instant messaging client
  • Account setup
    • Laptops will have both an administrator and non-administrator account configured
    • Both accounts will be password-protected
    • Laptop users should use the non-administrator account for all work on the laptop
    • The administrator account should only be used if new applications need to be installed
  • Network setup
    • Both the wired and wireless network adapters in the laptop will be registered for DHCP on MITnet
    • These registrations will be centrally managed and will not be administer-able by the student

First draft, 23-July-2009

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