53 Anderson Road, Woree
PO Box 259E, Earlville
Cairns Qld 4870
T (07) 4044 4200
F (07) 40546617
E [email protected]
www.smcc.qld.edu.au
Dear Parent/Guardian,
St Mary’s Catholic College is working in conjunction with Compnow to bring the best possible
offering for Parents and students on a cost for benefit basis for your son’s or daughter’s
computing needs whilst attending St Mary’s. A link to the Compnow / St Mary’s BYOD
purchase portal has been placed on our St Mary’s website or you can use the following link:
http://compnow.com.au/stmarys-woree
I know everyone is seeing the latest advertising for laptops that are touted as what you need
for BYOD, however there is more involved in your choice of machine that you might think.
There is a difference between consumer grade laptops and business grade laptops that
cannot be easily seen looking at the specifications and price. St Mary’s has run a laptop
program putting laptops in the hands of students since 2009 and we know what is required to
make these laptops last and be productive. The offering we have put forward will provide a
Laptop that we are confident will last a full three years and also be productive during that
time.
Points to think about when purchasing a Laptop for students include:
 The main cost of a laptop is not for the hardware components, it is for the warranty, if
you are looking at a Laptop with a 1 year warranty it speaks volumes about how long
the manufacturer wants to support you and your Laptop, and I know you can extend
the warranty at a cost however extended warranties are not usually factory backed.
 Accidental Damage Policies are critical to getting the best life from your purchase.
Accidents happen and the most likely part of the laptop to break also coincidentally
is the most expensive part to replace, which is the screen. Our relationship with
Hewlett Packard and their local support is strong resulting in a cost per incident
charge being cheap in comparison to replacement parts or a full replacement
laptop.
 You might expect that if you purchase a laptop from a local store that they would
offer local product support, but this is not always the case. Make sure you ask prior to
purchasing as I have had more than a dozen parents contacting me asking for loan
laptops since our BYOD program started whilst their laptop is sent to Brisbane for
repairs taking between 4-8weeks. The benefit in selecting one of our recommended
Laptops is that St Mary’s IT support will manage your support calls by logging your
warranty and accidental damage requests on your behalf and a local repair team
will provide onsite support.
 St Mary’s has negotiated with a number of partner IT organisations to find the best
possible options for parents in regards to the cost of equipment and the payment
terms on offer, we are trying as hard as possible to get the best possible equipment
on the most suitable terms for all Parents and Guardians.
 Please ensure that your home & contents insurance provides for the loss or theft of
the device whilst it is outside of the home. If a laptop is stolen we will provide a loan
unit until the replacement is sourced.
St Mary’s offer the following services to all purchasers of recommended equipment.
 Software Management: for 2016 St Mary’s will be implementing a tool to more easily
allow our IT Support area to ensure that required software is installed on your son’s or
daughter’s laptops which should make laptops an even more useful tool for their
education.
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Software Licensing: St Mary’s will continue to license major software titles for all
students involved in a requisite curriculum area and will also provide all students with
access to core software used across all classes such as Microsoft Office 365, Adobe
Creative Suite 6 and also the availability to install Microsoft Window 10 if running an
older Operating system such as Windows 7 or 8.
Loan Laptops: St Mary’s offers all students who purchase College recommended
laptops access to loan laptops whilst their own laptops are being repaired for any
reason.
Battery Swap Program: If you purchase a school recommended laptop St Mary’s will
have a battery swap program to suit your laptop and this will be important in the
second & third year of your laptops life when the batteries start to decline and also if
your son or daughter forget to charge their laptop once and awhile.
Anti-Virus and Software Re-installation: Part of our software management system will
ensure that antivirus is installed and up to date however sometimes these malicious
programs slip past the net and require a software re-install to make the laptop
function as it should. By purchasing a school recommended laptop this is an
automated process that takes less than 3 hours and is provided at no cost by school
IT support. A store purchased laptop needing the same re-install would take many
hours to manually install or cost at least $120 at your local computer repair agent for
the service plus your time to take it in and pick it up.
Other Laptop Information:
 Apple Laptops: Whilst Apple products do work with the St Mary’s college network we
do not recommend them for use in years 9 through 12 as the college has specifically
invested in design and music based software that has no compatible version for
Apple products at this time.
 Acceptable usage of college resources, St Mary’s has always strived to provide an
open environment where students can make good choices for themselves and whilst
we do content manage some information available and access to some sites we
have very liberal policies on what can be accessed so we ask all Students and
Parents to sign an agreement to use our resources educationally.
 Device labelling / Engraving: St Mary’s since 2009 has laser engraved every laptop, it
allows IT Support to track the allocated owner of the Laptop and build a database
and history of work completed on each laptop in our fleet. We highly recommend all
parents have their laptops either labelled or preferable engraved to ensure that we
can always determine the correct owner of each Laptop.
Regards,
Gavin Wiltshire
Head of Information Technology