Hi,
Do you use a school issued laptop that is restricted by their student policies? Apparently the restrictions have been increased and we can no longer install software or access Windows settings.
I am wondering if we should request a more open profile or just get a new laptop that is not tied to the school at all.
Yes, we get school issued laptops.
Your best bet is going to be to just buy a team laptop for teams software operations. In my experience, school districts are not willing to bend policies for anyone, much less robotics.
Seems we’ve had better luck than you. It’s worth at least trying to get exceptions made, but don’t be surprised if you get turned down.
I also recommend having your own team laptop for your driverstation and not a school issued one.
Agreed. Our district antivirus magically un-disabled itself and tried to scan right before a match at worlds in 2017, said match was delayed a lot longer than it ever needed to be in part because of this.
We had camera feeds on what felt like an RNG that decided whether or not it would come up on our drive station laptop last year until I got fed up and gave the drive team my own laptop. Didn’t have a single problem after that. This year we’ve got the district tech coordinator as one of our mentors, so that issue probably won’t crop up again.
This happened to a friends team too. They were not happy about it.
Thanks all for the feedback.
We use school issued student laptops (MacBook Air’s) all the time. For software we need to use, we get it to the right person, who puts it in the school’s App Store, then anyone on the team can get it quickly and easily.
I would just get a team-owned one, doesn’t need to be that expensive. Ideally it would officially be owned by a senior mentor or sponsor and not by the school to avoid IT acquisition policies. There may be a guest network that can be used for staff personal devices that it could be added to, if not, you may just have to not have internet on it which isn’t ideal but workable.
It’s not even a case of the school being overly restrictive or inflexible–plenty of standard practices such as basic firewalls are likely to interfere with FRC usage. Plus, having a minimum of applications installed and running is critical for a drivestation, so you don’t want extra stuff the district may normally install on there. On that note, I would strongly recommend looking for one with an SSD, even if it is very small. You don’t need to store a lot, but you will greatly benefit from the fast boot times in the event of a reboot for troubleshooting, power loss, etc., and the increased durability for inevitable drops while running. I’d look for a used ThinkPad on eBay in the $350 range. You can also check your state/county surplus property sales, a lot of times there are fairly recent durable business-grade laptops for sale with no HDD, which you can couple with a cheap 128GB SSD for a low cost drivestation.
We have a set of team laptops that we use specifically due to the ability to install what we need at any point. They’re almost all used with SSD upgrades I installed.
When my sons started in FLL in 2009, I went shopping for a laptop. One of the IT guys recommended I get a low end business class machine since they are better built than the consumer grade ones. That laptop is still working even though it has done many miles of travel. It is being put out to pasture because it is slow for doing real work and the USB ports are worn out and unreliable.
I suggest your team get a laptop that isn’t tied to the school or use students personal laptops. With experience from my school IT department, I don’t think they would give a more open profile. You would have less restrictions with getting a laptop not tied to the school
Where is your team located? If your at all near Southeastern Pennsylvania, my team may have some laptops for you.
Thanks vmorgs. We are in Michigan. As a mentor I will consider buying one as a donation to the team.
Avoid possible hard feelings when the driver station gets damaged.
We use team-owned laptops, and get a new one about every other year through donors choose. That has been a great alternative source of funding for us.
Team owned is much more convenient - we can install software and update as needed without being at the mercy of our school’s tech department.
Use the school laptop hardware and just throw your own drive in it and do as you please?
Most school IT departments won’t like students opening up their laptops and changing out hardware. I guess they don’t have to know, but that still sounds like a bad idea.
Most people on my team use school issued Macbooks. They’ve been granted access to the software they need. However, we have a few team laptops that are not under the school’s jurisdiction. Our driver station is a Dell Inspiron that we purchased last year for just under $500 and it’s great. I personally use a Dell XPS but I got that because the school laptops are not great (to say the least ) at running Adobe Photoshop and Premiere.