Design Student at Canadian College Adds Laptop Security to Her Portfolio
A Standard at Kwantlen College, Absolute’s ComputraceComplete Tracking and Recovery Software Helps Return Stolen Laptop to Rightful Owner
With 17 years experience in the IT department at Kwantlen College, Joseph Leong, Coordinator of Desktop Hardware Services, watched as faculty and students slowly embraced omputers in the early 1990s. He also saw the IT department grow from eight employees to 50.
“Only two or three of the professors at this campus used computers back then,” recalls Joseph. “But in the last ten years, funding for computers has increased dramatically. Now, all of the instructors use laptops and almost all the students.”
As the College’s computer hardware buyer, Joseph has seen an unmistakable trend toward laptops and away from desktops: “Now that laptops are so affordable, I am buying more of them for the College. A few years ago, it wasn’t feasible to buy laptops in large numbers. Not anymore. I’ll be purchasing 100 Dell laptops this quarter, and at least 150 new laptops every year after that. And we’ll be putting Computrace®Complete™ on every one of them.”
“We use cables and locks on the desktop computers, but people don’t want to use them on portable machines; it defeats the purpose. ComputraceComplete is the only thing protecting them, not some physical deterrent.”
After installing ComputraceComplete Computer Theft Recovery, Data Protection and Secure Asset Tracking™ from Absolute Software on the machines in June 2006, a college laptop assigned to an Interior Design student disappeared. Computrace helped local law enforcement track and recover the laptop soon after it had been purchased at a local flea market. The investigation continues, but the original owner was elated to get her computer back.
“The student was very pleased, as was management. Maggie Fung, IT director, was very impressed with Computrace. Now we are both very confident we can allow our laptops to go wherever our students and faculty go, and if the computers go missing, we can get them back.”
Joseph also found that ComputraceComplete was a great tool in reducing computer drift: “We purchased 100 used Dell Latitude 510 laptops at a great price, but we still wanted to protect them, so we installed Computrace on all of them. We thought we had lost about ten of them, but then we checked our inventory with Computrace asset reports and found that at least half a dozen had simply drifted to other parts of the college. It’s a great tool for school or college IT departments. I recommend it.”
Over 17,000 students attend four campuses of Kwantlen University College in Surrey, Richmond and Langley. Kwantlen is a comprehensive undergraduate university offering bachelor’s degrees, associate degrees, diplomas, certificates and citations in over 135 programs.
