Followup from moi. == Craig Begin forwarded message:

From: Craig Stacey <[email protected]> Date: June 18, 2009 11:16:33 AM CDT To: [email protected] Subject: Laptops for Admin Staff 2: Electric Boogaloo

As Rusty noted, we came up with a strategy for generally equipping administrative staff with laptops so as to allow people to effectively work remotely in the case of a laboratory shutdown. We decided that, as machines are refreshed on their three year cycle, we will replace all admin staff desktops with laptops (as well as monitors, keyboards, and mice) so that the primary machine is a laptop, but the portability and option to work remotely (with supervisor approval) is addressed.

We've hit a small wrinkle in this plan. Recently, as supervisors and scientists have been getting new laptops, we've been getting asked to set up their old laptops for use by their administrative assistant. Before you promise a laptop to your administrative support person, I am requesting that you first coordinate with MCS Systems. Here's why...

Laptops in MCS are, in general, self-supported. Anyone who is buying a laptop is assumed to be willing and capable of taking on the support of that laptop. Most importantly, this includes keeping the system patched and up-to-date with its Operating System. Laptops are, by their nature, nomadic and not easy for us to manage, so this self-supported model was the best option.

However, in the case of the administrative staff, we handle the support for their machines. When we planned and executed the last hardware refresh for the admin staff, we set up a model where an admin staff member who uses a laptop does so to the exclusion of using a desktop. Reassigning your old laptops breaks this model.

As many of you who are laptop owners no doubt know, keeping your environment synced between multiple machines can be a challenge. When you give your administrative staff a second machine, you pass that challenge on to us. We're now in the position of supporting laptops for users who infrequently use them or, in some cases, rarely turn them on. Thus, these machines also fall behind in important security updates.

When a laptop is used as the primary machine, it's generally on and operational, and we can remotely manage it, apply patches, and keep it secure.

If you want your admin to be able to use a laptop, you've got two paths I'd like you to consider. For occasional use, instead of simply assigning laptops to your administrative staff, I suggest you turn the laptops in to the Help Desk, where we will keep them patched, and up to date. When your administrative assistant needs to use one, they can let us know and we'll have one ready for them borrow, and they can check it back in when they're done.

Alternately, if you feel you'd like your administrative staff member to have a permanent laptop sooner than the next hardware refresh (scheduled for next summer), work with us and let us specify a current machine to buy, replacing the existing desktop. This avoids the situation of a user having multiple machines, but also lets them have a current and generally useful machine instead of a hand-me- down that you stopped using for a reason. We've found that even though the admin staff aren't developing or compiling code on their machines, they are quite capable of pushing the machines to their CPU and memory limits, often thanks to the always efficient and miserly coding practices that come out of Redmond.

Thanks!

== Craig Stacey, IT Manager [email protected]