are tablets just toys? how to get workdone (and be green!) with mobile devices. thanks so much for joining us todayeveryone. my name is becky wiegand and i am the program manager here of ourwebinar program here at techsoup global. i’ve been with the organization for about7 years and prior to that spent a decade working at small nonprofits inwashington dc and oakland california. also joining us is techsoup’s own jimlynch who’s had a long career at techsoup and has been involved in creatingall of our environmental programs. he has written extensively about mobiletechnologies, tablets, apps, and telework, and how they are revolutionizing the work place,decreasing operations cost for organizations.
i like to refer to him as the godfatherof our refurbished computer program because he really is the person who establishedit and helped refurbishment take off worldwide. so i am proud to call him my colleague, andmy friend. mr. jim lynch will be joining us and sharing a little bit about the green benefitsof tablets because we are in earth month after all. also joining us today is glenn collinswho has been with cdi for more than 7 years and heads the development and delivery ofthe company’s mobile technology offerings. working with microsoft, intel, and otherleading technology companies, glenn’s goal is to lend a hand to our through customersin the education and nonprofit sectors by improving learning outcomes by thedeployment of cost-effective mobile solutions.
his extensive experience with technology andcustomer relations helps him generate solutions that bring exceptional value to cdi customers.so he will be talking to us about tablets overall. and later on in the program we will also havetime to talk about some of the discounted hardware that they make available to nonprofitsand public libraries in the united states. you will also see assisting with chat, mycoworker ale bezdikian who is the interactive video and events producer here at techsoup. and shewill be on hand to help flag your questions and help you with any technicalissues throughout the webinar. now techsoup, we are here in san francisco’soffice and jim is actually traveling today in the great state of texas. and glenn is joiningus from i believe a suburb outside of toronto
in canada, but i believe cdi’s headquartersis in the chicago area. so go ahead and chat in to let us know from where you are joiningtoday. and i know everyone can't see what is being chatted in, so i will share a fewof the places i have folks saying they are from, minnesota, illinois, colorado, north carolina,pennsylvania, new york, arizona, new york, california, north carolina, alabama, vancouver,all over the world, and all over the country. so we are glad to have you all joining us.thanks so much for chiming in in the chat. if there are things that you chat into us that wethink would be useful for other participants to know or hear, we will be sure to try and share thoseback out with you. we have around 160 people on the line with us right now, so i’mreally glad to have you all joining.
a look at our agenda, we will doa quick introduction to techsoup. we’ll have a poll to get you to weigh inon how you are currently using tablets. we will talk a little bit about how these are greenertech. and then we will talk about the big question of the day, are tablets tools or toys for yourworkplace? we will spend a little bit of time talking about laptops v. tablets, andwhat to look for in office grade tablets if you decide you want to go down that road. andwe will have a couple of minutes towards the end to discuss new and refurbished hardwarethrough techsoup, and time for q&a. so techsoup global is a nonprofitnetwork of 63 ngo partners worldwide operating in 121 countries working toprovide technology, knowledge, and resources
around the globe to social sector and civilorganizations. you can learn more about our work in our 2014 year in review which is linkedon this slide. you can't click it today but you will have the slide deckand you can look at it later. we have done this all over the world,delivering services to more than 615,000 ngos to the tune of nearly $5 billion in technologyproducts and grants for the greater good. so i am proud to have been not only atechsoup user before i started at techsoup, but also a techsoup staff person. you canlearn more about our programs at techsoup.org. now we are at the time where it is up to youour users, our participants in today’s webinar, feel free to click any of these that makesense to you. are you currently using tablets
at your workplace? yes, for staff, may be yesfor patrons or constituents, maybe you are not and you don’t know that you will botherwith going with tablets at any point soon, may be you aren’t yet but you plan to sometimein the near future. and if you have something else to tell us go ahead and chat in thecomments. i think it is interesting to note that around half of our registrants for today’swebinar came to us from public libraries, so we are glad to have you on the line withus. we serve public libraries and nonprofits with our programs, but on our general webinarsthat are not specifically library focused, we tend to only have 15% to 20% participationfrom libraries. so we are glad that this is a topic that is of interest to both ouraudiences that we like to serve.
so i’m going to give just a couple of minutesfor people to respond. i have a few folks saying that many volunteers are bringing tablets in.somebody else is saying, “i’m in between no, not sure, and not yet, and plan to soon.â€and maybe this webinar will help you make up your mind on that. some peoplesay, i use my personal tablet at work but internal staff use desktops, clientfacing staff use laptops,†so whole variety. people are saying they use it for workshop sign-ins,or student college visits, bus trip sign-ins, lots of great responses coming into thechat. so i’m going to show the full results so everyone can see how our audience stacksup. and it looks like half of you, i’m sorry, not half of you. around 40% of you are usingthem for staff in some capacity or another.
and around almost 30% are not, and are not surethat you will. so that’s a pretty good spread between our audience on the line with us rightnow. and around 20% are saying not yet, but we plan to soon. and another 21%, yes,for patrons or constituents. so this is really helpful for us so that as weget into this topic more we can use the experiences that you have shared with us in this poll to educatea little bit about what we – how you are using them and how we can serve you in using them. allright, i’d like to have glenn collins from cdi join us on the line to talk about thatbigger question of how we frame today’s event. are tablets just toys? glenn, what is yourtake? what do you think about that question? glenn: i think it’s a great question andi think the right answer is it depends.
so i’m going to jump in and take over andwe will come back to jim i assume shortly. so thank you very much for inviting metoday. i’m very happy to be a participant, and certainly we enjoy ourpartnership with techsoup. and when becky asked me to do this, originally itwas a bit of a challenge because of the diversity of the audience. so i tried to say if it was me, whatwould the questions – and if i was in the audience what questions would i want to know. and iam assuming that everybody that has joined is looking at, and at least 40% of youare using some type of mobile device. the question really starts to be shouldi be looking at a laptop, a tablet? what can i actually do with a tablet if that’swhat i choose, and then maybe that will help me
make my decision? and then i guess the lastquestion is if that was the road i was going down, what should i look for in a tablet? sohopefully i will give you some answers, or at least invoke some questions you needto think about as you’re making these choices. so laptop v. tablets, really i guess, the line of allof these devices is beginning to blur substantially so i just really want to start out by talkingabout the dominance that mobile computing is starting to take over the world. and that isreally because people want the ability to do computing anywhere, any time, and the convenience of havingsomething that comes on, turns on in a hurry, as opposed to what we are used to in a desktopenvironment. in many cases the tablet is adequate. you may need a laptop etc. we will touch onall of those things in the next little while.
but the real move to mobility for the convenienceof being able to do stuff anywhere any time has been made available to us because of thepowerful systems available that are affordable, and available today and are so differentthan they were just a few years ago. the internet world if you will, whereall of the applications and content, and in the case of libraries oftene books are available electronically. so we consume informationsubstantially different than we used to. and that really lends itself towards that mobilityand being able to do that anywhere any time. so we are starting to see the mobile devices takeover the market, but we are also starting to see the delineation between form factors to beginto blur. so you’ve got form factors like a phone,
and you’ve got what they consider a phabletwhich is halfway between a tablet and a phone. you’ve got a tablet which is a pure,maybe an ipad would be a pure tablet. and then you got 2-in-1 devices that are verymuch kind of a crossbreed between a tablet and a laptop. and then of course youare all very familiar with the laptop. the reality is that all of those devices have ause and a function. and many of us including myself carry, i carry a six-inch phone, i carry a 10 inchtablet, and a laptop that has touch on it as well, and a desktop. so i have for devices that iuse every day depending on what functionality i am trying to do. and i don’t think thatis going to be abnormal going forward. but let’s talk a little bit about when is thechoice right for a laptop v. a tablet. and you know,
laptops have obviously been around for a longtime and they’re very popular with a lot of groups and for specific users. and likewise, tabletsare the same way. so let’s take a quick look at the strengths in each of those. sobasically the laptop is more into a device that is now almost as powerful as anydesktop out there with the convenience of being somewhat mobile, somewhatlight, and somewhat fashionable i guess, to some degree. and as time goes on, they arebecoming more functional, more powerful, lighter, and more slim. the mobile computerstarted out many years ago as what looked like a sewing machine you used to carryaround. they’ve come along the way since then in terms of functionality, quality of thescreens etc. so these actually have taken over
and will out sell desktop computerssubstantially, all the mobile categories will over the next little while. so you are allvery familiar with them. i think there is a move to kind of move laptops to be more tabletlike, so the size from the 17 inch devices that we used to see are now morphing downto 11.6 inches. they are becoming convertible so that i can actually flip the lid over and dotouch – the screen over, i’m sorry. lay it flat and touch technology just like a tablet. so i thinkagain, the laptops, the strength of the laptops is for creation. so if your functionsthat you do on a day-to-day basis are more from a creation standpoint than a consumptionstandpoint then there are a lot of benefits to using a laptop. and then we look at tablets.and tablets are lighter. they are the most current
of all the technologies at the moment.all of the manufactures are racing toward coming up with the ultimate solution for everyone.thank you steve jobs for creating a category that didn’t exist that was ignored by microsoftand intel, was ignored by a lot of people, but steve jobs had a vision that it was going tobe a category. and he basically created a category that is new within the last 4 or 5 yearsand is now, they are predicting by 2016 there will be more tablets sold than all of theother form factors combined, laptops, notebooks, desktops, all combined. there will bemore tablets sold. but again, as i said, that’s a tough measurement because theform factor, the tablet is becoming, is getting closer to the notebook and the notebookcloser to the tablet. so the line between them
is starting to blur. so the strength of thetablet devices are actually, some of them are very obvious. they are light. they are reallyeasy to move around. they turn on in a second. they’re basically instant on machines which ifyou want to do some quick surfing in a restaurant or you are mobile somewhere, theseare very convenient features to have. the design of the devices is actually, thechips set and everything else, they designed them so that they are fanless devices sothey could make them a lot smaller. they created a chip set that allowsthem to be almost without causing heat. so the challenge for years in portable technologyhas been the heat that the chip set gave off. well, that wasn’t that long ago that intel cameup with a chip set that they used in these devices
that allows them to be fanless and allows themto remain cool. so that chip set is also one that allows for a long life battery. so it has somelimited functionality because they gave it the things they thought people with mobile deviceswould want. so some of these devices, because of that chip set will get 10 or 12 hoursof battery, some of them as many as 14 hours. they are also designed from a graphic standpointso they will produce higher resolution graphics quicker than most of the other devices. soyou’ve got these devices that are designed for consuming information, consumingmedia rich information at a very high speed in a very expensive way. so again, in avery general terms, if you are a consumer, more a consumer than a creator of contentthen this is a great device to have.
and the younger generation in particular loves thetouch. they love the ability to to use this anywhere. some of us older people are lookingfor keyboards and we want to engage with the device differently. but the newergeneration a very much used to this form factor and pick it up and learnit almost instantly. so i just tried to put a little comparison in. again,understanding i even stuck in a picture of a 2-in-1 which kind of sits between a tablet and alaptop. but if i just do a quick check list, the laptops tend to be more powerful.they are much more powerful chip sets. the chips of course create heatso most laptops require fans, and it causes all other kinds of technologyissues, but it also drains the battery
so you don’t have long life batteries in thelaptops. typically you’ve got 2 to 3 hours. again, i talked about the creation versusconsumption. if you are doing a lot of work, if i have to type a long paper, i am much morelikely to do it on my laptop than i am on my tablet. many of the devices out there aren’ttouch. so if you get used to touch, you have to spend a little more money on a laptopto get touch in it, but most of the experience we have are not touch devices. and relativeto tablets they tend to be more money. although there are some introduction of somedevices that actually use the tablet chip set in them that they now look like just a notebook, butthey have the insides if you will, of a tablet. and the price point on those is in the$250 range. so the industry is changing
depending on the customer’s needs. and if ilook at tablets, i talked about the strengths being the battery life, the graphics abilityto present rich media in a better way. they are typically better priced than anequivalent laptop or notebook. they are smaller. they are lighter. they are more portable. again,the device is really designed for consumption. and if you are trying to make a decision betweenthe 2 of them, there are a whole bunch of things and we will go through that shortly, but therereally isn’t a clear choice because it depends so much on what you are going to do with it, orwhat your employees, or staff, or customers are going to do with the device asto which one makes the better choice. so what i tried to do is just put together, sothese are some statistics and some information
on tablets. i apologize for breaking the rulein powerpoint and putting too much text here. but basically i thought there was some informationthat was relevant, and that is really as i said earlier, the concept of the growth in the tabletindustry is beyond anybody’s imagination. there was 235 million sold in 2014, and in2016 they assume that 30% of all small business, medium business, large business, enterprise,education, will all carry a mobile device of some kind. and further to that pointas i mentioned earlier, it is expected that either this year or next year the sale of tablets willeclipse the sale of all other form factors combined. so there are many ways that you can boostproductivity. people tend to use the devices quicker, more often. they are more responsivewhen the device is with them and they can use it
anywhere any time. so from an employeestandpoint there are studies that show that you actually, if the application iscorrect, the productivity of that staff goes up by having the devices in their hands.you can utilize it anywhere any time which i think is important. so you thinkthe applications that are available, you are not tied to a desktop. you are noteven tied to where you have to find a place you can set your laptop down, open it up, waitfor it to boot. you can basically turn these on. they are instant on and off you go in termsof utilizing the device. and often now, particularly in north america, wi-fi is so readilyavailable that the device is not only up and running – and on all of these devices you canactually do work on them without connecting,
but most of them have, you haveaccess to wi-fi just about everywhere. so that makes it a big difference interms of the usability of these devices. so tablets for business, and i lookedat this knowing, and i say business which what i really meant was fororganizations and nonprofit organizations that are on the call today really, because alot of the functionality that a business does the nonprofit organizations have to do aswell. so things like the cloud or the internet or whatever we want to call it this week,are really allowing the world of business or nonprofit organizations to utilizethese devices way better than ever before. the access to having all of your documentsin one place that are accessible from the web,
the concepts of having online applicationsavailable to you, they all make these devices almost interchangeable. so you may have adesktop at your desk and a tablet elsewhere when you are mobile, and yet you can do prettymuch the same function maybe not as easily on the tablet as the desktop, but you can actuallydo those things. so myself as i said earlier, i happen to have everything in a windowsenvironment. but you can do the same thing with apple and you could do the same thing withandroid. i have a windows phone, i have a tablet, i have a desktop in my office, and i havea notebook and all of them are synced. all of my documents are online. no matterwhere i am, and what device i have in my hand, i can actually utilize those devices. and actuallyi use windows just because i’m 100 years old
and i’ve used it forever, but the sameholds true if you are using google docs. the same holds true if you are using icloud oripad applications. all of those things are available to you. so the concept is really, the deviceis important and it is what you are used to and you use the right device for the rightactivity, but truly in today’s world almost everybody has the ability to use multiple devices tocreate and get access to their own information. i saw somebody talk about office 365 in thechat room. i mean microsoft, google, apple, they’ve all done a really good job ofmoving productivity tools to the cloud that allow you to do all kinds of things on allkinds of devices. in the microsoft environment with windows 10, the actual operatingsystem will recognize what it is running on
and it will provide you an interface that isappropriate for that software, or that device. so you could use powerpoint onany device. and if it is on a phone i am going to have a slightly differentinterface than i am on my desktop because it will automatically figureit out and design it for the phone. that’s where all of these things are going.and i know google is doing the same thing. i work with google all the time. i know wherethey are going in terms of google docs etc. so i guess the interactivity of all these devicescertainly is something that you are going to have to provide if you want productivityout of your organization. so lots of new devices, almost every new appis being designed not only as the application,
but to have the ability to present itselfdepending on the device you are utilizing. so all websites now when you producea website you are producing it so it can be seen on a desktop, a notebook, oron a mobile device, a phone, a phablet, a tablet. all of that is trending toward us beingable to use the right device depending on what we are trying to accomplishand where we physically are. tablets allow you to do all the web activity.we talked about this. it is great for consumption of information. you can do basic emails on it allthe time. you can actually, what i do with mine all the time is i talk to it. i don’t have to typeon it. i can just using the windows environment, i can speak to it and it will do voice to text, andthat way i don’t get caught texting while i’m driving.
so i can utilize that functionon my tablet or my telephone. productivity tools, again, in windowscase it would be office 365, google docs. you can use microsoft office on an ipadenvironment. all of those are available to you. productivity tools, there are tons ofthem for tablets. and in android’s world there are lots of free ones. so theyhave kings soft software for android which is very much like microsoftoffice. it will actually allow you to edit microsoft office documents. and then ofcourse, everybody who is producing applications are trying to produce it so it isavailable in the cloud. so the move from owning the licensed software to rentingtime, or renting a subscription to a service
that provides accounting information, or all ofthese things, you can do all of that online today. so there are, it really makes the devices muchmore – and of course, like we are doing today this meeting online, you could do it on a tablet.you could do it on a phone. all of the meeting tools are now allowing you to utilize mobiledevices. so you could sit in on this meeting while you are at a starbucks having coffee.and so i started then – given the audience today i thought the other thing that was interestingis i spend a lot of time with educators talking about utilization of tablets intransitioning the way we educate our students. so i went back and started looking at whatdo i know that i can help the library folks on this call with. and what i started tofind out was that many of the libraries –
obviously for a long time there were pcsavailable in libraries, desktop computers that they shared with their members. a lot ofthose are now being replaced with mobile devices and because they are cheaper you can havemore of them. they are also on loan now. so there are a lot of libraries that areattracting members by lending out these devices. and obviously with the advent of e-books, thewhole concept of the hard copy book is changing. some will argue for the worse, some will argue forthe better. i probably read a book every 2 weeks and i haven’t bought a hard copy book in4 years i don’t think. so the convenience of being able to buy a book at 1 o’clockin the morning when i need to sleep and i need something to read, faroutweighs the hard copy concept.
any ways, i think libraries can utilize thesedevices in a creative way that draws more customers and draws more members. there’s a buzz abouttablets. it is, for the lack of a better term, a sexy device right now. if you are able toprovide your public with the access to these that they normally wouldn’t have in away that is obviously meaningful to them to consume information, it makes a greatdeal of sense. i also found some libraries that were providing training sessionsfor ipads, and windows devices etc. so i thought that was a pretty goodconcept because again, i know libraries are constantly trying to figure outhow to continue to drive people in and to build up your membership. so those weresome of the things that i was able to come across
in doing a bit of research for today. so if you are going to buy a tablet, if youare going to buy tablets for your utilization, then what are the things you need tolook at and does it make sense to you? and as i said earlier, it depends. thefirst thing i ask everybody when we start is what are you going to do with it? what doyou do most often? what functions do you do when you are utilizing technology? so is it theright fit? what environment are you working in? and when i say that i’m talking aboutecosystems. are you in the windows environment? are you in an apple environment etc.?how long do you expect it to last, because most of the consumer devices are builtwith about a 24 month lifecycle expectancy.
and that isn’t from necessarilyjust a manufacturer’s standpoint, that is what they anticipate the consumerwill own it before buy new technology. so if you are expecting a device to lastlonger than that then you need to start looking at different form factors may be, or adevice that is built to last that long. then you start saying from a mobileperspective, what screen size should i look at because they range anywhere from 7 inch whichis almost a phablet to an 11.6 inch device that is a 2-in-1 with a detachable keyboard. theyare in a wide range, so you’ve got 7 inch, 8 inch, 9 ⽠inch, 10 inch, 10.1 inch, 11.6 inch.those are the fairly standard screen sizes but you also have to consider screen quality andi will talk a little bit about that in a second.
so what kind of connectivity do you needor do you have? so you have to kind of marry the ability of the device to utilize theinfrastructure you may have invested in. storage space, how much storage?what do you expect to keep on it? how are you going to utilize it? those thingswill determine what configuration of a tablet you might want to consider. and then what appsare you going to run on it in what ecosystem, and what accessories andhow much do those cost? so i’m going to get into just kind of the highlightsof those things. i get asked this question more than any other question andthat is, which ecosystem is best? should i buy a windows device, anipad, an android, or a chrome book?
and the answer is, it depends. the one thing i prefer to do is i liketo have one ecosystem for all my devices but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. itjust makes the transition between devices easier. so i tried to put this together without gettinginto great detail but from a windows device, some of its strengths are it’s familiar,it’s compatible with other devices you’re probably working with. there are tons ofapps. office 365 i talked about cloud services available for microsoft. there are actually quitea bit of them. you get free storage, free mail, you can get free outlook online. so theykind of provide all the same functionality that google does. although, google hasgoogle docs that you can use online,
microsoft has microsoft office online that isfree for anybody that buys a windows 8.1 device. you just log in and you set up an outlookaccount and you have mail, you have storage, and you have all of their devices.likewise, ipads have some strengths. obviously they are familiar to everybody. theyhave been around the longest in this form factor. they are intuitive to use. you put them in astudent’s or a child’s hand and they pick it up and are working right away. moreimportantly, there is enough exposure to them through the interface with the iphone that the ipadyou can learn it pretty quickly when you pick it up. it is a consumer device that’sbeen borne out as a consumer device and the consumers have driven into the businessworld. if you talk to the it professionals
they are not crazy about it becauseit is a hard device to manage and there are some security issues around it.but most people that have used it would prefer to stay with it. it has as i said, the cloud serviceis much like microsoft. you can use cross devices so you can use an iphone and a windowsdevice, a windows tablet and likewise an ipad and an iphone and a windows environmentand everything that is on the cloud is accessible from either device.android is the next platform and android is typically less expensive thanthe other devices. i would say that its strength is that you kind of get what you pay for. you canbuy android devices for $70 and you can buy them for $700. the challenge is the quality of theproduct. it is a very popular interface in phones.
it is now, if you look at all of mobiledevices, it is now the largest of them all, so there are more android devicessold than windows and ipads combined. now that is primarily in the phone market but theyhave done very well in the consumer tablet market as well. and then chrome is fairly new.and chrome is really just a very thin os that allows you to operate an internet appliance.so you basically have an internet terminal that you can carry around. as long as youhave wi-fi you can use it fairly easily. and then windows again, windows has come outwith 8.1, soon to release 10. i’ve seen 10. i played with it. it’s actually a really coolproduct the way they present it. the biggest challenge with the windows device i think is justthe learning curve. it is quite different
than other windows interfaces and it takes a littlewhile to learn, but it is an extremely powerful tool and it is a wonderful tool touse and a great platform to use. we talked a little bit about applealready. i’m just kind of hurrying up because i’ve got about 3 minutes left, soi’m going to pace through some of these things relatively quick. apple has tons of applications.you can’t really go wrong with the ios machine. android devices, the only downside to anandroid device that i see is that google has no commitment to backwards compatibility.so if you bought a kitkat version of an android device and they come out with lollipopwhich is their next version of android, there is not any guarantee whatsoeverthat it will be compatible. and that to me,
is a bit of a concern because it’snot the same as the other guys. so what other features do you need tothink about? from a screen perspective size, the type of touch it is, the resolution, andprotective glass. if it doesn’t have protective glass then you can add it, but you need to buy a coverotherwise you will scratch it and make a mess of it. wi-fi, the single most important thing if you areusing it all the time online is how quick is the wi-fi on the device compared to what i amconnecting with. so if i have ac connection which is a gigabytes to the desk, i better havean ac tablet or i’m going to be waiting a while. again, this is all relatively new. the wi-fifeatures in the tablets has really improved over the last 18 months. and what i seeon the horizon is almost every device
will come with gigabyte wi-fi. ports,i always look for a full size usb, some kind of memory slot, hdmi device so ican connect it to a tv or something easily. and then you start looking at what accessoriesyou are going to want. so the price of the device is one thing, but if i need a keyboard, and astylus, and a case, i should be looking at that as a package as opposed to the device. ipromise i’m going to get done here shortly. and then what other things to consider,warranty coverage, price obviously. serviceability, so not only warranty but whereis it serviced? do i have to ship it back? can i be without it? all of those things,and then how long do you expect to own it? all of those things will help you make adecision on which device is right for you.
and, i am done. becky: terrific glenn. we have a lot ofquestions that have been coming into the chat and we will get to those in just a few minutes.so if he is not back on the line i will go ahead and cover these even though it is sad not to hearjim’s voice since he is really an industry leader in refurbished technology, and not just refurbishedtechnology but all things green technology. if you are not familiar with some of his work,you might have heard of the microsoft authorized refurbisher program which has been worldwide innearly every country where microsoft partnered to give refurbishers licenses worldwide, andreally made refurbishing computers an industry of its own where it had previously not existedfor the green benefits of extending the end of life
of pcs that were cycling out every 2 to3 years in larger corporate institutions. and jim was really the person who came upwith that idea and founded that with microsoft in partnership, so he’s reallykind of legendary for his work. so i was hoping to hear his voice on theline but it sounds like he is not there yet. so we’ll quickly cover these couple ofslides and then we will move into a little bit about the discounts and donations thatare available through techsoup’s site and then we will get to your q&a. sotechsoup obviously has a long tradition of green it and we do that in a whole host of waysby introducing technologies and inviting partners to help nonprofits, libraries, and churchesuse less paper, use less energy with your it,
cut down on travel, and promote telework which iknow is part of that work from anywhere any time functionality and benefit ofhaving mobile tech in your office. and we also help to reduce electronicwaste with refurbished hardware programs like the partnership that we have withcdi and some other refurbishing partners. and we also help insure that there isappropriate end of life for your it equipment. so if you request a tablet or desktop pc,or a laptop through any of our programs through techsoup, there are electronic takeback programs that help insure those products once you are done with them are properlyrecycled and the parts that can be used can be put forward into other products and reusedand re-create it, and the parts that can’t be
are properly disposed of so that they aremore safely put out into the environment. so we have a green technology product donationpage that shows all of the different green it donations we have in our programand a lot of content that we share on our green tech twitter feed. and justto give you some idea of the comparison of why tablets are considered greeneris that looking at these first 3 bullets, desktop computer’s use 150 w of electricityduring normal use, a laptop is 30 to 40 w. a tablet is using only 10 w and costs only a coupleof dollars of electricity per year to run them, so huge difference in your energy costs and yourusage. tablets also take less and fewer materials to create than larger desktop pcs. andbecause tablets contain these circuit boards
they should be properly recycled at end of life isso we can get those copper, gold, rare earth pieces out of them to be reused and the toxics out ofour natural environment. so keep that in mind if you’ve got tablets and you are cycling throughthem with that statistic that glenn shared earlier, every 24 months, that they are going in and outof service it is kind of shocking and appalling how quickly we are rotating through thisand creating so much ejunk that you are aware of how to properly recycle and get those backinto appropriate channels so that they can use what they can extract from those can be reused,and what they can’t is disposed of properly. you never want to throw those in your trash bin.there is also this little greener it challenge and an energy savings calculator. so if youare looking to lower your own energy costs
of your organization then you can go ahead anddo that little challenge to see how much money you can save on your technology withyour green changes that you may make between getting laptops or desktops or tablets.it will calculate out the details for you. so moving us forward, tablets through techsoup, ijust wanted to highlight, we do have a cdi discount program with techsoup and cdi hasboth new and refurbished computers. i mentioned in the description of today’s event thatone of our attendees today will win an apple ipad ii tablet which you see highlighted hereon the screen as one of the options. there are a few others that are on their program aswell but i just wanted to highlight a few of these. these are all higher end business grade tablets.the edugear, there are actually 2 edugear ones,
one that i don’t have a screen shot on the page,but those are really best tailored for educators or people who are doing more classroom likeeducation because they come preinstalled with a bunch of resources that are reallyintended for an educational community. and then the others are a variety of thesereal pro tablets. and they vary in price. i think the lower price end of the spectrum forthese was i think around $178 through our program, so certainly more than the off brand chineseone that you might buy through a co-op or something like that where it may only costyou $100, but they are also much more powerful and they come with a lot of softwareand benefits installed on them already. and then i also wanted to mention the refurbishedcomputer initiative which i highlighted briefly
when i was talking about jim’s work that he startedthis program. and it is to help keep and extend the life of computers, particularly thosehigher grade higher end business computers that giant companies like general motorsor dell. they might have 30,000 employees and they might be cycling out a third of thosecomputers every 2 years and those computers can then get directed into channels toextend their life another 3 to 5 years often. and we do that. you can go to ourrefurbished computer initiative catalogue and actually i am just going to highlight herereally quickly. do you see at the very bottom of my screen this blue browse rci productsbutton? i don’t know if you can see that there. if you click on that, the next screen it takes youto is this drop-down tab screen where you can look
at rci tablets. you can look at desktop pcs. youcan look at laptops. and then you can also select this under tablets. it offers refurbished tabletsor new tablets. if you are looking at pcs or laptops you can select high tier, or mid tier, orlower tier, and they have different benefits. some of them have different things installedand they all have warranties which is great. so the cdi tablet i believe come with a one yearwarranty which is a terrific out of the box warranty that they offer. and then i think you can evenextend that directly through cdi for up to 3 years, so you can keep it lasting and keep it inservice for long time with your organization. so before we turn over to q&a i wantedto highlight a few additional resources on techsoup’s site that extend a little bitof what we have been talking about today.
so for those of you looking for real guide tobuying tablets we have those resources on our site. laptop v. tablet, what to consider, how tochoose a mobile device, and these go over all the details of how how much ram, howmuch memory. if you are doing cloud primarily, cloud applications and you’ve got your datastored elsewhere, you may not need 64 gigabytes of memory. you may be able to do it witha much smaller memory as long as you’ve got a good connection to the internet, ormay be built-in 4g or something like that. so these different guides can help offer someplaces to start if you’re looking for comparisons. we also have lots of content on apps and how tojump start your productivity with 75 mobile apps. this is a webinar from last year on mobile tech foroffices and people. it has a lot of information in it
for bringing your own device. so forthose of you who have staff or volunteers who bring their personal devices to the office,things to consider and how to help set that up so that your network is secure, your data ismanaged well, you are not violating any hipaa or pci compliance laws that you may berequired to follow at your organization, so lots of different resources.mobile for nonprofits and libraries, definitions and terms, how to get startedtelecommuting, all kinds of resources. i also highlighted a list of resources specificto libraries. since i know so many of you are joining us from libraries we have a lot ofcontent that we have covered on this as well. if you are helping patrons with e-readerswe recently ran a webinar on that topic.
it’s a great event that you should check outthat gives some tips on how to do that well and support your patrons. lots of differentresources here on using apps for story time, e books, excepting mobile payments atyour library, things like inventory. so these are all included in the slide deckthat you will get from me later this afternoon. you will get a follow-up email that includes thefull recording. they are all available on our website too so you may have to do a little searchingto get this full list, so look for the email and pop open those slides. i’ll be sure tocall a few of them out in the follow-up email in the body of that email as well. so withthat i am going to open us up to questions. and let me pop this window open and let’ssee, allison asks about hipaa compliance
which i mentioned, and concerns about using thecloud with tablets. glenn, do you have any advice or tips for organizations that want to be kindof embracing some of these new technologies which often require a little bit more of our useof the cloud instead of locally installed software, how they can manage regulations likehipaa compliance or pci compliance that limits where they can hold theirdata? do you have any suggestions on that? glenn: most of the providers of those serviceswill publish whether they are compliant or not. i know, because i built some data centers towhat the requirements are for their end of it, and i am positive microsoft, google, and all ofthose folks fall within – have the physical capability of doing that. quite frankly, i haven’t had aconversation with them whether they check that
box in terms of utilizing their services,but i do know that most of the cloud services and applications, if you ask them you’ll make adetermination whether they are compliant or not. becky: yeah, and i would agree that it’s alwayssomething you want to go to that individual cloud vendor or whoever the host of that serviceis and ask them. i can say for microsoft office 365 having done a number of events withthem on that specific topic that they say they are fully hipaa compliant and they aremaintaining a huge battery of security, checks, double checks, and backups and things likethat to ensure that you’re data doesn’t get into the wrong hands. we can say that, but we alsoknow that in reality, people hack the icloud and get celebrity photos and sharethem online. so things can happen.
so for sure if you are in an industry or sectorthat you have sensitive health data of your clients or users or constituents and that isnot supposed to be available anywhere and you need to track data lineage and thingslike that, than i would definitely recommend having that conversation with the vendor, doingsome research online before you migrate your stuff to the cloud, or at leastmigrating that stuff to the cloud. glenn: the value of having stuff up in the cloudis it is always so convenient it’s incredible, and there are all kinds of servicesthat allow you to do those things. becky: absolutely. you know because wementioned office 365, i’ve got a handful of questions on the back end that i’m going toquickly try to answer that are not specifically
related to tablets but really for people wantingto use tablets and needing more info on the cloud. it is relevant in that regard. amy asked, “ifwe are already using office 365 is there a way to still take advantage ofthe free for nonprofits offer.†i believe the answer is “yes.†i’ll include alink to microsoft’s office 365 for nonprofits page and it is essentially signing up for free trial andthen you are verified as being an eligible nonprofit, and then your account goes fully free, and it is nolonger a trial. now i don’t know how data migration is because it may actually create a whole newaccount, so that is something you would want to check into. i know you can access theoffer but you may have to do some migration or talk to them about how to access yourdata that already exists in office 365
as you currently have it. so carlasks, “how are companies separating the tablet’s work and personal personality inthe work and home.†so if a lot of companies, he gives the example, offer people to bringtheir own device, if they are bringing their own and they have their own facebook andtwitter installed and they are running apps kind of all the time in the background fortheir personal things, how do you also separate the work stuff and ensure that the 2 don’tget mixed? do you have any recommendations on how to do that well glenn? glenn: it’s a challenge for sure. so ifit is a bring your own device environment where you are allowing them access to utilizeit, it’s really tough to tell them how to run it.
some of it is just behavior policy in theorganization. you don’t get to spend time on facebook or twitter or anything else duringwork time. because even if they don’t have it on their tablets or they are using theirtablets for work, they have it on their phones and it is at their desk. i mean it is almostimpossible to get people not to do that stuff. but providing them – i’ve heard the argumentfrom both sides where kids in classes for example for years were prohibited to usetheir phones. and what the schools did was they started to incorporate usingthe phones in the day-to-day teaching. and the kids started using them muchmore effectively for school work. so it’s kind of that argument that if imake it taboo it is pretty hard to enforce,
but if i somehow allow them to incorporatethat device in a more productive way then you actually win out of it as anorganization. i’m not sure i answered the question because i’m not sure there is one. becky: yeah, i would agree. i can sayfrom prior events that we have done – and i am going to point to this resourceagain on the additional resources slides, the mobile impact 401 webinar thatwe did. we had a bunch of examples of bring your own device policies and templatesthat are out there already existing in the world that we thought were good examples toshare because if you are going to have folks bringing their own devices whether you like itor not, it would be a great idea to have a policy
around what data they can take from your networkand have traveling around with them on that device to really try to make it clear what the expectationsare of those staff people, board members, or volunteers just to ensure that you’redata and your information is protected, and also to ensure that it doesn’t get lost iftheir tablet busts and that was the only copy of a really important board report or somethinglike that that you’ve got a process in place and expectations are around how toback those up, how to keep them secure, and how to ensure that if they are doing things thatare unsavory on their personal devices after hours that that doesn’t get mixed in withyour organization professional reputation by accidentally sharing that online in someway. so i think it’s a really good idea to try
and have some type of bring your own device planor policy even if it is not a huge big long thing. it just helps set those expectationswith people when they come in. let’s see, what else do we have? we have just acouple more minutes here for questions. let’s see. we have some folks were asking about thepercentage of nonprofits using the cloud. and i can say i don’t have that number fromthe participants. since it was just chatted in i don’t know exactly how many of the folks said thatthey were using the cloud, or a percent of the total. we did do a big cloud survey of nonprofits butit is probably 2 years, maybe 3 years even old. but i am happy to share a link to the survey resultsand this is a global nonprofit usage of the cloud and adoption, kind of the barriers to adopting.but like i said, its a couple years old
and we know that this cloud migration of nonprofitsand everybody else has really expanded rapidly, so keep that in mind when you readit that it is somewhat dated already. we had kind of a specific question but sincewe had so many libraries i wanted to ask if you had any ideas glenn. we had people askingif there is any software that helps lock down a tablet like deep freeze or clean slatewhich is a common program used in libraries between patrons. so they would use them ontheir public computing computers or machines where one person logs off and it cleans it andfreezes it so that they can’t install anything unsavory or that shouldn’t be installed, andso that the next patron kind of starts fresh. and i don’t know if you have any ideas of thingslike that. i have a couple thoughts of my own
that i can share but i want to leave itto you first if you have any thoughts. glenn: the easiest answer is if theyare windows devices, deep freeze works. so any of the devices where deep freeze workson a laptop or a desktop it will also work on a tablet. becky: yeah, and i found that to be true. i wasgoing to say i found that to be true too for onyx. deep freeze does work on windows 8 tablets and8.1 tablets. and i have also seen other folks using vm ware which has a similar program. andi know there are some android specific programs that are similar though not necessarily the same.so i would look at whatever operating system, whatever platform you are using,and do a little searching online
because there are some equivalents to deepfreeze. it may not be something you can deliver across a network like you would like a network of abunch of thin clients, and a pc lab in your library for example, but those apps are available.so we are at just about time here so i am going to go ahead and open thisone screen again to chat in one thing that you learned in today’s webinar that youwill either try to implement or move forward and help you in your own decision making.i would also like to invite you to join us for upcoming webinars and events. next week wehave 2 webinars, one specifically for libraries and how they are community connectors who areoften referring social services for their patrons and connecting them to the servicesthat they need. and then next thursday
we will be talking about how to find freeand legal to use images and media online. we will be joined with creative commonsand free music archive to talk about that. and jim lynch our presenter for today who isblocked will also be presenting on that one, so if you would like to hear his voice pleasejoin us for that. then we will be talking about launching your 2015 grants plan for thoseof you who are writing grants or hoping to soon. and we will be talking about copyrightingfor the web, how to improve your website copy and communicates better withtoday’s web enabled audiences. thank you so much glenn. i really appreciateyou taking the time. and thank you ale for helping on the back end. i’m sorryyou guys didn’t get to hear jim today.
he has been on the backend watching thequestions come in but has not been able to get his audio to work again. soi apologize for any inconvenience for missing out onhis contribution today. please connect join us at techsoupglobal.org,techsoup.org, and on our facebook and twitter for more like this andjoin us for those upcoming events. lastly, thank you to readytalk our webinarsponsor who provides the use of this platform. we are using their readytalk 500 tool todaywhich is also available in techsoup’s catalog. so check that out if you are looking for awebinar tool. and please take a moment to complete the postevent survey. it will pop up onceyour window closes. 5 is excellent, 1 is poor
so tell us how we are doing so we cancontinue to improve our webinar programming. thank you all so muchand have a terrific day. bye-bye.
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