Tag Archives: loaner laptops

Circ laptops and wireless (or, “The Death of Midd-Standard”)

As some of you may have heard, Midd-Standard will become extinct on Monday 1/25. This means a couple of things for circ:

1. We can no longer give guests the Midd-standard password. Well, we can, but it would be useless to them and they’d probably get mad. Instead, direct them to this page: https://cpauth.middlebury.edu/guest/portal.php?url=https://cpauth.middlebury.edu/%3f&_browser=1 where they can create a quick guest account.
Go/guestwelcome/, go/guestwireless/, and go/wirelesswelcome/ will all take people to the page above.

2. The student laptops will no longer automatically connect to Midd-Standard. However, thanks to our good friends int he Helpdesk, they will now magically connect to Middlebury College wireless MAGICALLY without an Ethernet cord! The Dells that are currently out will need to connect once WITH the Ethernet, so we’ll need to catch those when they come back. Along with a few Macs, but I put a note in those records.

3. Faculty laptops will technically no longer need to login with the Ethernet at the desk. In real life, though, we should still have them login (and for now, WITH the Ethernet, since I didn’t go through all of those and make sure they were updated with the change) to make sure things are working before they fly to Burma. But within a few weeks, we should be able to get rid of the cord.

4. iPads will not connect to Midd-standard, so anyone using them (us included) will need to actually login to Middlebury College.

Let me know if you have questions.

Slighlty updated procedure for cleaning Mac loaner laptops (fac/staff)

Macs
Upon check in, log in as yourself
In the upper right corner, click on the magnifying glass to search.
Type in Self Service, then enter
It should default to “Loaners” (in the menu on the right), and there should be three items in the folder. (Adobe, Express delete, and OS). Apply all three things.
Shut down the computer

Long-term laptop loans for students

I updated the equipment wiki page with the following paragraph. We should all try to be on the same page with this.

Long-term student loans

In the event that a student’s laptop fails and they need a long-term replacement, the student should obtain emailed permission (email library_circulation@middlebury.edu) from a faculty member or dean. The loan will be a Dell laptop and the loan period will be 2 weeks.

Circ Upgrade News: New MacBook Air & Dell PC Laptops for Faculty/Staff

       Zach at the Help Desk released the latest batch of laptops for our faculty/staff borrowers on Thursday. So far we have processed (into Millennium) 17 available Dell PC, Model #E6430 laptops.  Additionally, there will be 20 MacBook Airs eventually processed into Millennium.  Armstrong will have theirs to loan out as well.  Since there is not a built-in drive on the MacBook Air models, we have ten “Superdrives” which will be barcoded  separately, and they can be checked out with a laptop (or without).  There is a space on the top shelf of the fac/staff laptop cabinet designated for the Superdrives. We are using the previous laptop cases for the new laptops, but of course the tags and labels have changed. The Middlebury loaner ID numbers are printed on the luggage tags for easy reference. As Dan mentioned in an email, we have a new (and simple) loaner reset process for the Dell PCs, found in the Wiki. Not to be too repetitive, the folder lives in the LIS folder called “clean me,” and instructions are easy and quick:
—      Login to the computer as yourself.
—       Go to C:\LIS and double-click “CleanMe”
—     Accept the UAC prompt (click Yes) to get admin permissions
—    You will see a window that says “Delete inactive profiles on COMPUTER-12345? (Yes/No)”. Type “Y” for yes.
—    The program will delete normal user profiles other than yours, then say “Done. Press any key to continue…”
 —   Press any key to close the window. That’s it!

As for the MacBook Air laptops, we will maintain the same loaner/reset process as we did with the older MacBooks. I have done this and it works well. Keep in mind that you will be using the USB to Ethernet connector, instead of connecting the Ethernet cord directly to the laptop. These will be in the pockets formerly used by the VGA adapters.

All of the Dell and Mac laptops are fully charged and ready for borrowers’ log in. I am checking the laptop cabinet for any of the older laptops which get checked back in during the day so I can replace them with newer models. Feel free to place them on my desk if you think of it (as opposed to placing them inside the metal cabinet).

The older Dell and Mac laptops will be transferred over to the student pool.

Enjoy the new models!  Thank you Zach at the Help Desk, and to all others involved in getting these to Circ! I have a hunch that once the word is out, they will be checked out frequently.

Mac laptops – Logging in and deleting

From the Helpdesk:

We’ve seen several Mac loaner laptops over the past few weeks that wouldn’t let people in. Re-binding them to the domain usually fixes this. Nate recently added Mac loaners with Casper (which ought to be all of them, but may not be) to a group that will automatically re-bind them to the domain once on startup.

So, if you can’t get into a Mac loaner, please make sure it’s plugged into the network, restart, wait 2 minutes for Casper to do its thing, and try again. This may save you a trip to the helpdesk. If that doesn’t work, of course, let us know as usual and we’ll take care of it.

Faculty/Staff Laptops for the summer

We already have summer faculty asking to take laptops out for the entire summer. The answer is no. We can provide them for two weeks. When we run out, there is a small reserve of laptops we can dip into, but at that point we should encourage patrons to book (or offer to book for them) laptops when they are returned. The Helpdesk also does not have any available to lend out, so we have been asked not to send patrons to them. Please direct all resistant patrons to Dan.