Licenses & Student Owned Laptops

[byron67]

I'm trying to bolster an argument I'm making with my admin and am hoping that the community can either provide support and information, or give me a better direction.

We're launching a laptop program but no provisions have been made for student access to software beyond MS Office. My admin is afraid to purchase site licenses allowing the students to use our software while they are a member of our community. This is what I want to do as it would allow us continuity and similarity for all of our users.

How are other laptop schools handling this problem?

Schools I have had this conversation with have all said that they have lic'ed software they put on the kid's computers and remove it when they leave. We've got a mixed environment of laptops and I don't want to go open source for reasons that don't fit in here.

[localzuk]

Do the laptops belong to the school? If they do, then you are fine installing (most) site licensed software on them. (Check the individual licenses).

If they don't, then unless the license for that software specifically covers pupil usage (such as the 2D Design student license) then no, you can't install software on them.

[Software4Students]

Our experience is that you bundle the software onto the master laptop with network configuration included and then replicate the image. You'll need to purchase a student license which adds a small license cost to the laptop but it is the cheapest option, especially if the students want to hold onto the laptop and software after they leave the school. Also there is no license implication for the school and laptops are ready to go on the internal network.

[maniac]

Not sure where you stand if the laptop is actually owned by the student, in my experience with most licenses the owner of the machine and the owner of the license have to be the same. You may find you have to purchase seperate licences for them.

I'd recommend speaking to a licensing specialist from a company like Pugh who can advise you what the best options are for the products that you run.

Licenseing for software is extreemly complicated in a lot of instances, and you can sometimes find you are un-knowingly breaking the agreement because of one line of smallprint, even though you had the best intentions of sticking to it.

Mike.

[GrumbleDook]

From the conversations I have had with Microsoft, Adobe, Macromedia (before the merger), and a few other companies (large and small), if you have a site licence for an application or suite of applications the computer it goes on to must be owned or part owned (eg you have a part stake in it with both the parents and a leasing company) by the licencee for the licence to apply.

Should a student bring their own machine in they have to pay the 'retail' or 'student/teacher' cost of a licence and not the academic price (which is offered to academic institutes as a body).

When school look at laptop schemes this often one of the bits that gets miscalculated. If a laptop costs £400 in the shops then you have to add a number of costs onto it ... take that original £400 (1 year return to base warranty) then add another £200 for the extension of the warranty, £150 for the insurance, £150 for the leasing costs and £200 for software (this also covers you for possible upgrades, which is a good idea on a machine you want to have a life expectancy of 5 years ... at some point you will roll out some improvement of software).

Speak with a variety of software resellers as Ramesys have a variety of deal aimed at students to own their own licences, as do RM.

[logonui]

Plus if you start installing software on a student machine then they will expect you to support it