NOTE:
Never check out a laptop to yourself. Student Laptops are for on campus students only. They are paid for through student computing fees. Staff, faculty and Distance Education/ or Online Only students cannot check them out! Latops are available at the first floor desk.
When you check out a laptop:
When you get a laptop as a return:
If a laptop is returned, ALL users (even employees) must wait for ONE HOUR before they can have another laptop. This is so other users can have a chance to check out a laptop. Even if there are many laptops available, everyone must wait for one hour.
About the laptop image
The checkout laptops are configured using a product called Deepfreeze. This program is designed to keep the laptops at a baseline of when they were imaged. Every reboot places the computer back into this "frozen" state. This allows us to maintain a stable image and gives us the opportunity to allow anyone that uses the laptop to be an administrator and do what they need to do. Since restarting the laptop returns it to the frozen state, no damage can be done.
The flip side of this is that we disable windows update and virus definition updates since at reboot they're just going to be removed anyway. In addition, many windows updates require system reboots which will cause the machine to revert to a frozen state and cause a reboot loop. If you are seeing a machine that is getting error messages on boot then something has probably gone wrong and the machine will need to be reimaged.
In short, windows update and anti-virus updates should be turned OFF since turning them on will cause problems. When a machine is reimaged it gets the latest updates and definitions but that is the only time that a machine should be updated.