Monday was a beautiful day at MIT – sunny, 70 and the complete opposite of Seattle. Arriving at the college for the Windows Campus Tour, I was excited to spend the day outside learning how students felt about Windows 7 PCs, Xbox 360 and Windows phones. For those of you who don’t know, Windows has spent the past two months showing up at campus all over the country to let students see, feel and experience first-hand great new technology. MIT was the final stop on the tour and it gave us a chance to meet some cool interested students and Windows 7 UCrew Reps.
In the above photo Caroline Justice a junior at UConn in Nutritional Science (right) and Caily Doran a Communications and Political Science major at Villanova (left) pose with characters from Family Guy. The two girls who had already finished college for the year were on hand to meet and greet with students who were interested in learning more about PCs. Their personal favorite was the Asus Eee netbook (red of course!) and its “cool little keyboard—perfect for school.”
Two of the student reps from MIT were interested in more than keyboards, though. Lauren Hernley, a second year Mechanical Engineer, and Maya Hubbard, Chemistry, were talking about what they could do to make their dorm floor even more awesome. Maya and friends have decided to set-up a server on their floor to increase their power and capabilities while gaming. The students play a variety of games but seem to love anything that has to do with the Kinect. Their RAs purchased two Xbox 360s with Kinect to use on the floor which the girls noted really helped bring people together. “Now, I’m definitely running it (the server) with Windows 7,” she shared after learning all about it. When asked about building, what I thought was, a novel idea; she let me know that this is normal in college and an especially common practice among fraternity students who want to network and interconnect their gaming and entertainment experiences.
Official UCrew MIT Rep Adam Delton didn’t come become a fan of Windows 7 PCs just for entertainment or because he liked the look and feel. Although, he’ll admit that he thinks his Sony VAIO E series is awesome. Adam, a mechanical engineer who is interested in creating and developing electric cars needed a PC to run school programs specific for engineers. Having a PC means that he can do the work he needs to, on a cool machine, without having to constantly go the lab. The time he saves working at home means that he has more free time for his heavy class load. Adam will graduate after only 3 years and hopes to work for Tesla Motors. The colorful design, superfast processing system and aesthetically pleasing lines of the Sony VAIO E series are a perfect complement to Adam’s personality, brains and appreciation of design.
These great UCrew representatives kept answering the barrage of questions from students all day by explaining that SkyDrive has 10x more storage than Dropbox, that HP computers have app docks and that any number of great Windows 7 PCs had the form, functionality and speed that they needed. Plus, everyone was psyched to see how well Xbox 360 consoles and Windows 7 phones worked with the PCs. The interconnectivity of all the devices was a big selling point for students constantly on the go.
The two day festival of all things tech finished off with a laptop giveaway that drew over three hundred MIT students who kept remarking that they loved all the cool products, tools and demos they had seen. We loved being a part of their campus!
