Laptop Standards
Hardware Life Cycles and Performance
Laptops by their very nature lag somewhat behind the desktop market in hardware technology and performance because of several factors. These include minimizing component size to a useable form factor, heat dissipation, weight, and power consumption. Because of this and the increased abuse suffered from portability owners may expect a shortened life cycle.
The end result of these issues on hardware has been to extend the average life cycle of a laptop computer out to 3+ years, potentially 4. As hardware and software changes occur into the future this recommendation may increase or decrease depending on the consequences. Individuals making laptop hardware purchases or developing technology plans should be aware of this life cycle and make appropriate adjustments.
Hardware Maintenance Support for Laptops
When defining specifications and making purchases of desktop PCs and laptops for use on the University, it is imperative that these machines be purchased with a warranty period that extends through the full expected life cycle of the system. At the present time this would not normally be less than 4 years. This warranty can be purchased initially from the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) or provided for through a fixed maintenance program with the current contract hardware support vehicle in place at the University.
It is strongly recommended that the hardware warranty/maintenance issues be addressed with the acquisition of hardware. The small amount of savings that might be realized by leaving this out of the initial purchase is only a fraction of the costs that may be incurred later in the life cycle as system components begin to fail.
A very recent trend in certain areas is to have and use a laptop computer as a desktop replacement. This concept is extremely valid for staff that travel frequently or need to take their IT resources with them on the road or to other locations meeting with customers. It allows users to work in an "offline" mode from any location. Flexibility and resource availability are a laptop's greatest strengths.
Managers and users should be aware that support costs associated with the maintenance of older computer hardware are beyond just the cost of the hardware component itself. Whether the issue deals with the continual use of severely antiquated hardware that provides marginal or poor performance in the desired area or the correction of hardware maintenance items, additional costs can be expected.
When a faculty or staff laptop experiences a hardware failure, there is technical staff time and costs along with the loss of productivity of that individual. As the equipment ages more of these incidents can be expected to occur resulting in delays correcting the resulting problems.
Hardware End of Life for University Owned Equipment
As of January 1, 2005, OCCS support personnel will no longer provide technical support or maintenance for any desktops or laptops beyond 5 years of age (as defined by the OEM Serial Number/birth date). These PCs and laptops have fully served their usefulness in the technology area and should be replaced by newer equipment and sent to property control for disposal.
Also at this same time, OCCS support personnel will no longer provide technical support or maintenance for any desktops or laptops beyond 4 years of age (as defined by the OEM Serial Number/birth date) unless those systems are currently under a fixed cost maintenance contract with the OEM or current hardware support vendor.
The University support infrastructure is made available to maintain University owned equipment and resources. At no time will University support personnel provide maintenance and support (hardware or software) for personally owned equipment. Users who need support can contact the Technology Store to see if current low price contracts are in place that can be used or contact local computer businesses that provide this service (i.e. Geeks on call).
The hardware support requirements apply to all systems installed and supported by OCCS and will provide for a more robust and useable computing environment:
Laptop Support Within the University Environment
Although laptops provide many desirable features that may enhance a user's ability to function, they create a number of unique challenges to provide adequate and robust support for a stable platform in the University environment.
The ability to move to any location and adjust hardware and software configurations, along with the ability to install software and drivers requires administrative or elevated rights for the user to correctly perform. This directly relates to the greater strength of the device. Due to the complexity of laptop systems and the potential for problems where untrained users are acting as administrators, OCCS does not offer support for systems where the user is acting as the administrator.
In an attempt to bridge the gap on these issues and ease the burden of support staff and users alike, support for University laptops with user administrators will be handled in the following manner:
At the discretion of the users supervisor, users may retain all administrative or elevated rights and responsibilities on laptops owned and operated by the University. Any user experiencing problems with their laptop may contact and arrange to drop the laptop off with their Technical Support Person (TSP), or OCCS technical support staff with the general expectation of a 3-day turn around time for repair.
Technical support staff will make a "best effort" to correct any issues or problems that have been reported. If they cannot fix or determine the correction for those problems within a reasonable amount of time (tentatively defined as four hours of technician time), the technician working on the problem will contact the user and advise them of the status.
At that time the user will have the opportunity to have the laptop returned as is, or have the hard drive formatted and reloaded with the original operating system and image it was purchased with and any applicable service releases or updates. (Note: coordination to save any user data that is on the laptop will be discussed during the notification.)
The technical support person will load both the operating system and all device drivers necessary for the embedded peripherals and insure the laptop is functioning correctly. The technical support person will also load any major applications that the original media has been provided by the user and any additional connectivity agents desired by the user (i.e. Novell client, etc).
It should be noted that support personnel will not configure multiple configuration profiles on a specific piece of hardware. If this is desired option by the user, they should plan on doing the configuration when the laptop is returned.
After the operating system and additional applications have been loaded and the laptop is functioning correctly, it will be returned to the user to reload any secondary applications needed (note: data previously removed will be copied back to the laptop to the same location as removed).
If you have any questions or comments concerning these issues please contact the Technical Support Center at 757.683.3192 or email to occshelp@odu.edu.