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Those new HP minis are sweet to have. A colleague recently shared, “I just bought one of those, and took it to a meeting. The technology director asked me, ‘Is that a district laptop?'” She paused in her story. “That was the beginning of a longer conversation about connecting non-district equipment to the district network. I didn’t know about spyware and all that other crud.” Alex Russo (This Week in Education) also is enamored with these machines (and, to be honest, who wouldn’t be? We’ll see soon enough).

Minimalism pervades Amazon’s laptop list; over the last few weeks, the great majority of the 25 best-seller slots have been occupied by various permutations of the Eee PC and other souped-down, sub-$500 machines. In the computer industry, these miniature computers are known as “netbooks.”
Source: Slate Magazine

Deciding what to do with the HP Minis is going to be one of the top questions school districts have to ask. While many netbooks come with GNU/Linux which forestalls the spread of spyware/malware/viruses, the preference in places where MS Windows IS the only thing people know is high. In handling several HP Minis, the main complaint I heard from the tech folks was, “I can’t allow this out there because there is no way to manage it on the network.”

The complaint is valid in a world where viruses and malware spread from unprotected Windows systems to others over the network. This PC World article points that out, “This is a threat that IT managers are just beginning to recognize,” says Brian Wolfe, a security analyst at Lazarus Technologies Inc., an IT consulting service in Itasca, Ill.

The article also shares:

Minimized hardware resources force ultraportables — and their users — to cope with weakened system software. Most models ship with a stripped-down Linux operating system or, in some cases, Microsoft Corp.’s previous-generation operating system, Windows XP. Newer and more capable operating systems, which also tend to have the latest internal security safeguards, demand processing and storage power that ultraportables typically lack, Wolfe notes.

Ultraportables’ reduced resources also limit their ability to run add-on security software, such as data encryption and anti-malware tools. With processing power, internal memory and storage space all at a premium, it can be difficult — sometimes impossible — to squeeze security software onto an ultraportable. “As a result, the machines are often sent out into the world with little or no protection,” Wolfe says.

How are you handling these kinds of issues in your environment?

In the meantime, the article makes these recommendations:

• Never store unencrypted, critical data on a Netbook but rather, access it remotely.
• Use a secure flash drive (easy to make that with TrueCrypt, a free tool) and store data on that. Should a netbook be stolen, the data won’t be on it.

The best option, of course, is professional development on the use of a netbook for staff and students (these are so inexpensive that I have no doubt that Parent-Teacher Organizations will want to buy them for students to use in and out of school; I’ve already had one request for this!).

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