Notebooks Still Reign Supreme on College Campuses

Notebooks Rule

More than ever, college students prefer notebook computers: Eighty- five percent plan to purchase a notebook, while only 14 percent say they plan to buy a desktop. Notebooks have outsold desktops among students now for seven years running.

About 5 percent of college students plan to purchase a tablet PC.

Personal Pages

During a recent webinar on Web 2.0 at universities, Educational Directories Unlimited asked 75 attendees whether they have any personalized web pages. A narrow majority of 51percent said they do, while 49 percent said they do not. When the attendees were asked if they knew of students who have personalized web pages, 79 percent said they do. Only 5 percent said they do not know of any students with personalized pages, while 16 percent were not sure.

Colleges On Notice

Colleges and universities across the United States have made significant efforts to expand and enhance emergency notification systems over the past year. A recent survey found that only 5.5 percent of colleges do not have an operational emergency notification system. This is down significantly from 25 percent a year earlier.

SOURCE: The Campus Computing Project

Online Convenience

A recent study of higher education trends predicts that by 2012, enrollment in online courses will be greater than 30 percent of the total number of students enrolled at colleges and universities in the Western world.

Another research group that tracks online enrollment recently reported a 138 percent increase in unique visitors searching for online degree programs, compared with the same period a year earlier.

SOURCE: Gartner; eLearners.com

Database Security

A study of 260 IT managers reports that 96 percent of databases export sensitive data to other systems, including backups, file servers and application log files. The study also found that data security concerns continue to climb: 58 percent of respondents have become more concerned about data security in the past year, while only 2.5 percent say they are less concerned. On the plus side, universities, banks, SMBs and other types of companies are recognizing that their databases are no longer safe inside their perimeter firewalls, intrusion prevention systems and other edge protections. The survey found that some type of database logging and auditing now takes place at 83 percent of the organizations surveyed.

SOURCE: Unisphere Research; Vormetric