Background
Dating back to as early as 1886, Conroe Public School’s first classes were opened in a one-room building, called Conroe Mill School, near the present community of Beach, Texas. Today, the school has made major strides with over 50,000 students enrolled, 5,700 full time employees and 55 individual campuses stretched over the 348 square miles. The success of Conroe Independent School is testimony to its on-going commitment to the quality of its teaching practises and continued investment in the best student facilities and learning equipment.
The Challenge
As a large and well established school that operates over many locations, Conroe Independent faced a number of IT project challenges. In particular, their existing thin client notebook supplier had stopped manufacturing the particular specification that was required and they also needed an affordable notebook that delivered an extra-long battery life performance through an external battery facility.
Furthermore, to support the Conroe’s ongoing development plans, the school also recognised the need for a reliable and class-leading I.T. supplier that not only made economic sense, but also offered excellent thin clients that were durable, tamper-proof, virus protected, secure and low in energy consumption.
The Solution & Benefits
In order to ensure an on-going reliable IT infrastructure for its students, Conroe School’s needed to find the right hardware solution to complement its existing IT environment.
After conducting a series of tests on competitor thin client devices, Conroe choose the high-performance VXL-Lenovo Thin ‘ThinkPad’ notebook with crucial external battery facility.
With minimal moving parts, compared to a conventional notebook, for an extremely reliable operation, the use of VXL-Lenovo thin notebooks also had a beneficial effect in lowering the school’s annual IT capital expenditure. Combined with the low power consumption and lower overall maintenance requirements, the notebooks also guaranteed further total cost of ownership savings.
Summary
Conroe’s Co-ordinator of Network Services, Terry McClaugherty, commented; “the outstanding performance and suitability of the VXL-Lenovo thin notebooks was very important, however it was VXL’s ability to customise and recommend the right solutions for our teaching requirements that was key in our selection” he added.
Conroe Independent School district has to date deployed 1500 VXL-Lenovo notebook thin clients across its many campuses and the school’s technology refresh strategy is to eventually replace all existing models with VXL-Lenovo thin client notebooks, rising to 4,500 units, as the school fulfils its growth plans.
For further information, please contact: VXL Instruments 32107 Tamina Road Magnolia, TX 77354 USA Tel: +1 281 305 1800 Fax: +1 832 934 1200 Support (Toll-Free Number): +1 877 242 7801 Email: sales@vxl.net
Ian Cope, Marketing Manager, VXL Instruments Ltd. Tel: +44 (0) 161 775 4755 Email: ian.cope@vxl.net