Staff Laptops

[ajg]

Hi, just been informed by the head that the governors have agreed to provide funding for potentially all staff to have a laptop (could be anywhere from 40 to 100!). Not entirely sure where the money has been found but certainly not out of my budget. I've got a whole list of questions that I want answering when I have a meeting with the head next week which I won't go into now but just trying to gather advice on what other people do here in terms of purchasing staff laptops as not something I've had to do on such a scale.

 

We have staff desktops in all classrooms and no plans for this to change to my knowledge. Currently the SLT have laptops so only about 10 in school. We don't lease any devices other than MFD's but was curious to know what others do that have staff laptops in these kind of numbers? Putting aside the extra time etc that will be needed to deploy and support these laptops can anyone offer any advice on whether you would lease or purchase outright? Thanks.

[localzuk]

Every teacher has a laptop in our Trust, plus senior management, and a number of other roles.

 

The thing is, financially this is managed by replacing a small number of them each year. It means we have about 5-10 different devices in rotation.

 

In terms of management, it'd be easier to have a single type of device, all purchased at once. A lease would help spread this out but ties the hands of your school into having to pay for them every year so a lot of bursars are not keen on it.

[stottio]

Had this at my last School, Purchased outright, absolute waste of money in my opinion. Each room like yourself also had a computer in it plus a staff room area with additional units. Unboxing, asset tagging, dumping of waste, bit locking and then eventually deploying is a long laborious drag made worse by the fact the majority wont actually need a device. Then at the end of life after 3 or so years you have the problem of disposal as SLTs will then want to offer it back to staff rather than dispose of. Licensing issues, continued support of out of date equipment and deciding who is entitled to the devices then becomes another issue.

 

If I was to do again I would ask that each user who would be eligible would at the very least have to fill out a business case to justify the spend. The School needs to understand what it wants to achieve first before agreeing funding and pushing through a solution, no proper business would do this.

 

The second hand market is great for computers but even a bog standard i5 would cost at least £250 a unit, that's £25,000 for 100. If new say £600 a unit, £60,000 which would be where leasing would probably be the only real option considering the state of School budgets. Doing this would surely have to be fully justified to prove the benefits to the pupils and the School. Disappointing you haven't been consulted first before the powers that be have agreed the funding, to easy to just buy a load of laptops.

 

Good luck dude, sounds like their decision is made

[mavhc]

Is this so they can work from home as we'll be doing for another year?

 

Buying: Phone up a few companies, I prefer HP Probook over Dell Vostro these days, not tried anyone else, pick a laptop with USB-C charging and hopefully DP. Don't forget laptop bags. Ask if they can send 1 straight away for testing.

 

I'd just buy them, I assume they've found the money.

 

How do you image computers? How to config the bios/bios pw. HP have a bios config program, or can save settings to a usb and load them into all the others.

 

Where will you set them up to image, IT room probably?

 

I scan the bar code for mac address on the box into a spreadsheet, add an asset tag, put that number on the spreadsheet, and use those 2 to create the mac address and name combo to make it auto install in WDS

 

Put the staff member's name in Description in AD.

[Ditto]

Would be good if you get a chance to assess need first and then propose a solution. Try to get insurance cover - they'll be breakages - or at least ask for 10% extra as spares.

[VeryPC]

Morning @ajg - hope you're doing well!

 

Just wanted to let you know that we're on hand to help you out with your upcoming purchase! Whether it's our own brand of VeryPC laptops, we've also got a fantastic pricing and additional extras on Tier 1 devices. This includes: our famous custom branding options, software imaging and asset tag management.

 

I'll get one of our sales champions to send you a PM this morning

 

- Ryan

[Brimstone]

Every teacher has a laptop in our Trust, plus senior management, and a number of other roles.

 

The thing is, financially this is managed by replacing a small number of them each year. It means we have about 5-10 different devices in rotation.

 

In terms of management, it'd be easier to have a single type of device, all purchased at once. A lease would help spread this out but ties the hands of your school into having to pay for them every year so a lot of bursars are not keen on it.

So bursars are not interested in saving money as you pay less than the capital equipment cost with an operating lease, plus it gives them the ability to plan finances for 3-4 years ahead?

[localzuk]

So bursars are not interested in saving money as you pay less than the capital equipment cost with an operating lease, plus it gives them the ability to plan finances for 3-4 years ahead?

With the way budgets plummet constantly? Not really, no. In my experience across 10 different schools, none of them have liked leases, because it means that they couldn't decide to simply not put any money into the IT budget in a future year, and make the old kit last longer. A lease ties them in to paying out an amount they may not have.

[mavhc]

Problem starts because they're apparently not allowed to save any money, so they're constantly on the brink of bankruptcy.

 

More expensive laptops have a LTS type thing where there's much more compatibility over a period of say 10 years. Now there's USB-C for docking and power, and Windows has keys for things like Projector display it's less of an issue.

[ajg]

Thanks for the input everyone. To be honest the leadership here are very good at consulting me on IT matters so still very much in the discussion phase at the moment although I think it will happen. I've always preferred desktops in the classrooms but just trying to persuade them if they go this route that we need a longer term plan and that the sensible option (well from my point of view anyway) is to longer term replace the teacher desktops with the laptops. I know this a hot topic and divides opinion but both methods have there pros and cons but having both is an untenable solution in terms of cost.

 

Purely thinking ahead I'm thinking laptops with USB C charging and then a USB C docking station/connector with a USB C power adaptor already attached in each classroom so just one cable for the teacher to connect and will be powered at the same time seems the way forward. Does anyone use this kind of setup?

[mavhc]

Really hard to use desktops to teach from home, that's the main problem

[psydii]

FWIW In an ideal world: Thinkpad L13, no lease. 3 or 4 year replacement programme (you can stretch to 6 year without issues - which is why you would have a lease in an ideal world but don't tell anyone that). USB/C Docks in all the classrooms.

 

I leased the last lot we bought because I needed 100 and we didn't have enough cash to cover that many, which makes deciding what we do in a couple of years time tough. I have in the past been able to get 5 year operating lease on IT equipment signed off at an Academy/EFA but the process in an LA has proven more tricky.

[ictgoodpractice]

On a different note. We have about 6 staff laptops. All there files and shared areas are in one drive / sharepoint. However, they download to machine as they use them. Also e-mail is on them viz 365 but outlook saves locally too as far as I understand.

 

Do people encrypt staff laptops. They take them home etc to do school work. GDPR says technoligival measure to secure. In my opinion a user name and password not same.

 

My laptop is Bitlocked. Does doing this affect one drive or connecting to server etc.

 

Any help massively appreciated.

[mavhc]

bitlocker encrypts the whole drive, so if you remove it from the laptop to access it it won't work. The thief can still guess your password though. One drive is cached on your drive, so it's encrypted

[ictgoodpractice]

So you would not encrypt the drive with Bit locker?

 

Is there any where I can show from Microsoft to Head about one drive encrypting what it caches from cloud please?

 

Thanks, really helpful

[RobD]

So you would not encrypt the drive with Bit locker?

 

Is there any where I can show from Microsoft to Head about one drive encrypting what it caches from cloud please?

 

Thanks, really helpful

 

Everyone should encrypt their laptops. The whole disk is encrypted and the keys stored in RAM, the files are unencrypted on the fly.

 

Passwords are cached locally as are security tokens so you could in theory remove a disk from a laptop and try and extract passwords.

 

Test, take the heads disk out and see what info you can get off it.

[ictgoodpractice]

Thanks, I am more looking to make sure we have followed GDPR. I am sure there is a way to get into things with the right knowledge. However, I want to make sure now we have new server and system that it is following gdpr on removable staff latops

[kennysarmy]

From my experience most will end up at home and you'll never see them....

[ictgoodpractice]

Ours are what they use each day for their computer as no workstation in classes

[djm968]

Buy the laptops outright, ask for a couple of spares for breakages, phase out the desktops and install USB docks. Encrypt with Bit Locker for GDPR compliance and tell Head that the replacement cycle will be 3-5 years instead of 5-7. Approach a few suppliers and see if you can get some "value added" Some suppliers will install your own image on them saving a chunk of time. I have even got suppliers to send someone to site to unbox, asset tag them and clear the rubbish.

[jmak]

You (your institution) would have to answer some awkward questions if you ever lost a device and couldn't prove it was encrypted. There's nothing specific in GDPR that says you have to encrypt laptops, but you do have to take reasonable technical and operational measures to protect data and realistically it's difficult to meet that requirement without encrypting any devices that are removed (or easily removable) from site.

 

If you have an MS domain, bitlocker is pretty straightforward to manage and almost transparent to users.

[Norphy]

So you would not encrypt the drive with Bit locker?

 

Is there any where I can show from Microsoft to Head about one drive encrypting what it caches from cloud please?

 

Thanks, really helpful

 

Bitlocker is enabled and enforced as part of our build process if the device has a TPM.

[TwistedHelixis]

All the primary schools I look after have the hard drives encrypted using bitlocker. Back at Christmas one of the schools was broken into and a bunch of laptops stolen including the bursars, they were all found intact down an alley as they obviously couldn't boot into the laptops. Bitlocker took no time to deploy but saved us so much hassle.

[ictgoodpractice]

Thanks, was that as that with a password to unlock or auto un-lock please. That is the sort of concern I have for staff ones.

[TwistedHelixis]

I set them up with a pin number. I actually use the same number on each laptop, as it stops the teachers writing it down, as they can ask each other for the number if they forget.

 

Bitlocker will lock the device after a few failed attempts, so guessing the number does not work.