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Faculty may occasionally sponsor academic programs with non-MIT-student participants and may need to request a small number of laptops for these participants. The program will attempt to accommodate such requests if possible. They will be prioritized below requests aligned with the intended use of the program, but before any similar requests without faculty sponsorship and requests not related to academic uses. An MIT account number will need to be provided for any such requests, since laptops cannot be directly checked out to individual MIT students in these cases. Replacement or repair fees that MIT students returning loaner laptops would be held responsible for will be the responsibility of the sponsoring MIT department in cases where laptops are requests for non-MIT students, and will automatically be billed to the provided account number.

What's in the box?

The table below summarizes what is included in the standard loaner laptop package. Note that we can't usually accommodate requests for specific laptop models or configurations. While such requests are welcome and will certainly be considered, options are severely limited by machines and resources available in the loaner pool.

• Hardware
  • Core 2 Duo laptop, 14"-15" screen
  • Discrete graphics with dedicated video memory
  • 1024x768 resolution or higher screen
  • 2GB or more of RAM
  • Built-in CD-RW/DVD media drive
  • Built-in hard disk with 160GB capacity or larger
  • AC power adapter with US plug
  • Padded protective laptop sleeve
  • Security cable laptop lock and key
• Software
  • Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3
  • McAfee VirusScan Enterprise
  • Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote)
  • Student MATLAB for Windows (network edition, requires cxn to license server)
  • VMware Desktop
  • Certificate Installer Tool for fixing certificate issues in IE
  • Kerberos single sign-on software
  • SecureCRT (SSH) & SecureFX (sFTP file transfer)
  • Firefox web browser (in addition to Internet Explorer)
  • Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files
  • Gaim instant messaging client
• Account setup
  • Laptops will have both an administrator and non-administrator account configured
  • Both accounts will be password-protected
  • Laptop users should use the non-administrator account for all work on the laptop
  • The administrator account should only be used if new applications need to be installed
• Network setup
  • Both the wired and wireless network adapters in the laptop will be registered for DHCP on MITnet
  • These registrations will be centrally managed and will not be administer-able by the student

First draft, 23-July-2009