Fujitsu employees from Japan, California, and Toronto visited SAC last week to help ensure a smooth rollout of the School's new-model convertible tablet PCs.
As per SAC's policy to replace machines every three years, the Fujitsu LifeBook T902 in use since 2012 will be retired this year. Over the last month, SAC’s IT Department has been testing out the Fujitsu T935 to ensure it’s a worthy replacement before putting it in the hands of over 700 students and faculty come September.
The verdict? “We like it a lot,” says Steve Rush, SAC’s Director of IT. Not only is it “cooler looking,” it’s a bit thinner and lighter, has a new and more power-efficient chip set, and “an amazing” touchscreen and pen. One difficulty Steve and his staff identified, however, was the responsiveness of the touchpad.
Fujitsu had trouble reproducing this problem in their lab; however, they were able to replicate it in Steve’s office. Kevin Wrenn, senior VP North America, Yosuke Konaka, engineer, and Hiroyasu Takeda senior purchasing agent, discussed how making changes in the BIOS or Synaptics driver may be necessary. They took many notes and promised to provide updates on how they would solve this problem within the next few weeks.
The delegation, including Fujitsu’s Toronto representative, Karin Kozicki, also visited Middle School classrooms to observe how the current machines were being used. They spoke to several students including Bryce Neal, whom they recognized from his appearance in the Fujitisu case study video. Steve said the group was “wowed” at the sight of twenty boys in a grade 7 math class, all with tablets out and using their stylus pens.
“The engineer really sat up and took notice of how frequently they used the pen’s eraser,” said Steve, noting that the newer model is so thin there is no room for an eraser. “It was a real takeaway for them, one they said they are going to re-examine.”
Mr. Wrenn said it continues to amaze him how much they always learn from our customer, stating "We value your input toward helping us improve our product offering."
For these high-level employees to come to SAC to observe how we use their technology indicates a serious desire to address our concerns, says Steve, who has no doubt that the September launch of the T935 will make our users very happy.
Story by Cindy Veitch
