Computer Transporting for reimaging

[jreeves]

i was curious about what other school districts that have a 1 to 1 are doing.

We are taking up all student machines at their schools and we need a way to transport them back to our central office and back to the schools. we were thinking about getting stackable crates to put them in but i didn't know if anyone had any suggestions.

we have 13" macbook airs and the dimensions are 12.8" wide by 8.94" tall, when stood up sideways.

I'd be interested to hear how other districts have done it or if anyone has any suggestions.

thanks in advance :)

[RobertHammen]

Talk to your JAMF account rep. JAMF has some custom crates that they use to ship Airs to locations where they have CCA/CCE classes. They might be able to tell you where they obtained them.

I suppose a DP/NetBoot environment at each school isn't enough to prevent the transport?

[Chris_Hafner]

What kinds of numbers are you looking at? Transport has it's own set of issues potentially. We tend to work with districts and the like to handle imaging at each location on demand.

That said, there are a number of companies that use 5-10 laptop cardboard universal laptop shipping boxes. I'm not sure where to get them specifically, but every single repair facility I've ever dealt with can get them. I would call either Apple or www.decparts.com/ (This place is great by the way. I sell them all of our old macs!) if your JAMF account rep doesn't have a good idea.

[rderewianko]

Something like: 5 Laptop Roadcase would probably suit your needs.. I'd suggest googling a local roadcase maker and see about getting a more special one built (it'll cost you a few bucks but is the best way to transport them)

[Chris_Hafner]

Yep... unless he's moving a few hundred units. This is the most durable solution for sure. Heck if I had to move computers that mattered for me this is awesome! However, That type of solution can add up real quick. Say you've got 100 laptops to move at once. That's something like $8k for the 20 cases that would require. Again, this is down to the specifics of the situation. If they are moving 20 at a time in someones personal car then hey there you go.

Still, if each school has something like 20-100 computers I'd probably recommend portable SSD imaging (or a small netboot environment), more than that I'd certainly be recommending NetBoot imaging. It's just going to be faster and easier assuming that there are no special circumstances that might otherwise be involved.

On the flip side, if we're talking about 20k computers, plus repairs then it's a whole other ballgame.

[roadrunner2348]

We issue ours computers in bags, so they get packed into cardboard boxes in their bags and get put in the back of one of the school's pickup trucks (it has a bed cap to keep them out of the weather). We've never had to move more than about 400 notebooks. Usually we can get 8-10 per box depending on the size of the bags. Never had one broken in transit before this way, but they're never going more than a few miles down the road. Depending on how many you are moving at once you may be able to get inexpensive sleeve to pack one or two into and then into a box. The cases we've used were these were case logic ultra sleeves part no: QNS-113-BLACK

Depending on the quantity you can probably get something like these very cheap, we were able to get them for less than $10 each from one of our vendors (we purchased several hundred for our 1 to 1). Might be more cost effective and last longer than purchasing packing materials or hard cases.

EDIT: Forgot to mention we stack them in the boxes vertically, NOT one on top of the other, and the boxes are fully closed so that they can hold the weight of up to two more boxes without putting any load on the laptops. We usually pack them tight enough to prevent them from moving around too much, but not enough to make the box budge or put any pressure on the screens.