A steady stream of incoming St. John's freshmen eagerly lined up
the week before school started at the University Center to pick up
their new IBM Thinkpad R Series laptop. This is the second year for
the University's successful laptop program and approximately 1,240
laptops were handed out on the Queens campus and over 500 on the
Staten Island campus. St. John's is now the largest private
university to equip its students with personal computers.
University employees volunteered their time distributing and
setting up laptops for new students as well as running seminars
that taught everything from basic use to theft prevention (with a
representative from the NYPD). Included with the laptop is a
carrying case with accessories that include a battery, power pack,
and ethernet cable for dial-up or high-speed access at home.
Over the last year St. John's wireless network was upgraded
giving students much greater access to the wireless network from
nearly any location. Students can now enjoy the advantages of doing
Internet-based research across nearly every public space of every
campus.
Last year the St. John's Academic Computer Initiative attracted
the attention of leaders in the high-tech industry and resulted in
St. John's being the only New York-area university to make Intel's
"Top 10 Most Unwired Colleges." The "Computerworld Honors Program -
Search For New Heroes" also recognized the University as an
academic leader in technology.