Sargeant immediately faxed his order to IBM and found a trucker who could pick up the computers the next morning, at a plant in North Carolina. By Sunday evening, the trucker was six hours away. Then we organized a group to come in at eight o'clock, including four or five people from IBM, to distribute them to the students. We had people unboxing them, writing the serial numbers down, and giving them to the students. By 5 p.m., we had 90 percent of them out, and we hadn't even sent a notice out that they were there.
Students use the laptops for far more than writing papers and taking notes.
All the kids would have computers. What they did, they spent the summer learning about computers and trying to find ways to integrate them into their classes. When the students showed up, the faculty were basically about a week ahead of them. The customers were chasing them all year, and they were running as fast as they could. That's got to change the culture.