In early December 2004, IBM sold its personal computer business to Chinese competitor Lenovo for $1.75 billion. The sales agreement also gives Lenovo rights to the ThinkPad-related trademarks and copyrights for at least five years and calls for a gradual integration of Lenovo and IBM personnel in the PC division. The Mobile Computing program, currently in a three-year contract with IBM, will begin distributing Lenovo-manufactured laptops.
Since 1999, RPI has required all incoming freshmen to have laptops, and most have elected to purchase them through the Mobile Computing program, which provides students with uniformly configured laptops at volume pricing. Students may lease or buy the laptops, and, during any academic year, buyout their lease, or trade in their laptop for a newer model at additional cost. Of the Class of 2008, 95 percent chose to participate in the Mobile Computing program.
Sharon Roy, director of Academic Research Computing, and Myra Williams, assistant director of the Campus Computer Store, when talking about the acquisition of IBM’s PC business, said that they were “still dealing with all of the people at IBM we have known and worked with over the years our IBM contract has existed…The change is mainly a corporate one and will not affect out contract with IBM, which we have the option to extend should we choose.” As long as RPI chooses to continue its contract with IBM, ThinkPad laptops or their successors will still be available to students at the competitive price RPI acquires each year after reviewing prototypes from different price categories.
The Mobile Computing program is familiar to students as the program that provides them with IBM ThinkPad laptops, but the program is more complicated than that. In 2000, before beginning bidding for a new contract for the Mobile Computing program following a highly successful pilot, the program put out a request for proposals to prospective vendors. Many offers came in and were considered, but IBM “far and away” won the three-year contract with an option to extend, according to Williams and Roy.
Beginning in April 2000, and every April after that, a first prototype is sent to RPI for software installation and testing. The image consisting of software applications configured especially for RPI is then tested extensively at IBM before being pre-loaded onto all of the laptops—T42 models for this year’s freshman class.
The Mobile Computing program is not just a field strategy for getting laptops to students, however. It also coordinates and works toward the integration of laptops into the curriculum through such classes as CAD, studio biology, and many other classes. A survey conducted by RPI’s Anderson Center for Innovation in Undergraduate Education indicated quite positive attitudes among students toward the program—78 percent agreed that the presence of laptops in classrooms significantly enhanced their learning. Of course, a variety of technological integration is found on campus, from the professors who rely on their standby overheads and Elmo projectors, to those that make laptops and the Internet central to the curriculum.
For the remainder of the IBM/Lenovo contract, ThinkPad laptops will continue to be provided to students at about their present price levels—just higher than $2,000.
