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Background
All student laptops at South Dakota Mines are on a four-year lifecycle. Depending on what year your laptop was manufactured, you may be due for an upgrade and may have the opportunity to keep your off-lease computer.
Students that are due for an upgrade will be upgraded at the beginning of the Fall semester and can keep their old laptop from that point onwards.
Students graduating with an end-of-life computer will get to keep their device.
NOTE: You will be notified if you can keep your laptop. Do not assume that just because you are graduating that you can keep your old device.
FAQs
How do I know if my computer is going off lease?
If your computer is going off lease you will receive an email from the ITS Laptop Program. If you have questions you can contact the ITS Help Desk.
I am graduating, do I get to keep my laptop?
Not necessarily.
All laptops are on a four-year cycle. Please contact the ITS Help Desk to confirm the lease duration of your device.
I am leaving campus, do I get to keep my laptop?
Not necessarily.
All laptops are on a four-year cycle. Please contact the ITS Help Desk to confirm the lease duration of your device.
What if I don't want to upgrade?
Some students really like the model of laptop they are currently assigned and choose not to upgrade. This is fine, but as long as the student is taking at least 6 credits they are still part of the student laptop program.
In addition, if anything breaks on your old device, ITS will not be able to repair the out-of-lease machine and will automatically upgrade you to a newer device.
I have upgraded my student laptop, what will happen to the old laptop?
The old laptop is now yours to keep and will be disconnected from the campus network soon.
This means that:
- Windows will deactivate.
- You will no longer be able to connect to the campus' secure Wi-Fi.
- Your campus software will no longer license.
- You need to reload your laptop to use it as a personal device.
How do I reload my old laptop as a personal device?
The old laptop is now yours to keep and will be disconnected from the campus network soon. You have some very important steps to do to keep this computer running:
- As soon as possible, go to Azure Development Tools and obtain a license key for Windows. You can find instructions here.
- Purchase an end-of-life flash drive from the RockerShop that will reload your computer to factory settings.
- Before using this flash drive, backup all your computer files to an external drive (the reload process will erase all your data).
- Boot from the flash drive and reload the laptop.
- If you are still a student, you can obtain a full version of Microsoft Office from portal.office.com
Can I buy out the rest of my laptop's lease?
Please contact the ITS Help Desk to continue this discussion.