By Jonathan Stankiewicz
Starting this week, a joint venture between IT and the Student Center will have students begin renting out netbooks, or thin clients, for free.
The trial run begins with 10 thin clients, is a “display only” computer or device, meaning that it displays programs and applications that run on network servers rather than on the computer. Essentially, it’s a netbook, without the luxuries of the programs that usually accompany a PC or Mac. Users do not have the same flexibility as they do with their own PC and have to login to the Citrix servers that IT provides for CCSU.
“These netbooks have Windows embedded on them and they have a filter installed so that students aren’t able to write anything on the machine,” said ResNet Systems Specialist Tom Klecha. “It looks like Windows on a PDA, a locked down version of Windows with basically no programs.”
All students have to do is login as they normally would to the Citrix server and follow the instructions to get started, Klecha said. “All of our software is on there, just in a much safer way to approach this.”
Students will not be able to store anything anywhere on the thin client, as soon as they restart the machine everything is erased, said Klecha.
To save something students can save to their personal M: drive on the server or to their own flash drive.
“We are going to rent them out for as long as the battery lasts,” Mamed said. The computers will be given out fully charged and have the ability to last a good eight hours on one charge. Students will have to return it once the battery dies, if not sooner
“Battery life on them is phenomenal,” said Klecha. “They are ultra-portable and students can bring this thing home with them at home and use the Citrix service as if on campus.”
“Initially we were thinking full blown laptops,” said Student Center Director Otis Mamed.
IT and Mamed reconsidered on full blown laptops because of the cost and maintenance.
“We hope students like it,” said Director of User Support Services & Campus One Card Amy Kullgren who helped Mamed make the new service possible.
The way the rental works is through barcodes that will be on the bottom of each unit. The barcode on the unit will be scanned and the barcode on the student’s CCSU ID card will be scanned as well. Students will get a form that has them agree to bring the unit back and that they take full responsibility for the unit. When the battery dies they bring the unit back and the barcode will be scanned again and students will get a form saying that they returned the unit.
Students just have to make sure they bring the thin client back to the Student Center.
“The way we’ve set it up is if you don’t return it then it will be a $500 bill on your student account,” Mamed said.
Kullgren sees a lot of students using the computer kiosks around the Student Center and if they need to do more intensive work and want to sit down the new rental program will make things easier.
Mamed has used the new computer at his home and on campus and didn’t have any problems.
“We’ll see how it goes,” Mamed said. “If we’ve done it right it will be useful, if we haven’t done it right then we will go back to the drawing board and see what we need to adjust.”
Klecha has high hopes for the new service.
“I don’t see why we wouldn’t be able to rent a high number of them,” said Klecha.
