COLLEGE PARK, MD (March, 2017) – If you are a College of Education faculty or staff member, we strongly encourage you to utilize our consultation services prior to purchasing a UMD-owned desktop or laptop computer through your department.
You can request a new computer consultation via a ticket submitted by your department technical contact (DTC). A complete list of DTCs can be found at: http://www.education.umd.edu/ETS/techSupport/dtccontacts.html
There are multiple benefits to having Educational Technology Services involved in that process. First, we can ensure that any hardware purchased is business-grade (vs. standard consumer), is robust enough for your needs, and will be able to run the appropriate operating system, virus protection, and related base software to provide compatibility with campus systems, including wired and wireless networking. Second, we can generate quotes through campus-purchasing options that make the process easier for your business office, and provide the appropriate warranty level for your needs. Finally, it lets us standardize and reduce the types and lines of computers we support, which in turn, helps us provide you faster, more reliable remediation to problems, should they arise.
We will be piloting a second method later this year which will allow department business managers to identify a pre-configured model from an internal list, should those specs meet an individual’s needs. That would eliminate the need for an actual meeting, and further streamline the process for many requests.