Think of all of the new changes Freedom went through at the beginning of this year: new teachers, new classes, new students; but the one thing that has gotten everyone in a tizzy are the new laptops. In the beginning of the year, everyone was freaking out about the new laptop initiative and fuming that they had to spend $50. However, as the year has gone on, students have warmed-up to the program. It is an enormous time saver to not have to power on a computer, wait for it to load, then plug in your flash drive and wait for it to load . The upperclassmen remember previous years of borrowing laptops from carts; there was always the chance that the laptop you grabbed for class had 10 percent of battery left or a couple of missing keys. These annoying problems are gone this year. The hassle of lugging around a five pound hunk of plastic is nearly outweighed by the convenience of having all of your work in one place. One new problem, though, is the threat from teachers to confiscate students’ laptops if they misuse them in class. Many teachers plan their lessons around the availability of a computer to all students; what happens when one student doesn’t have their laptop? It may teach them a lesson about proper laptop use in class, but what about the other classes students have that day? If another teacher planned a lesson around the laptops, and a student shows up without one because it was confiscated, that is hurting the other teacher. Suddenly their lesson plan is messed up and unnecessary stress is added to their day. Instead of confiscation, teachers could consider docking students points from an assignment, or issuing a detention. It’s also annoying that every time you shut down your laptop, everything – besides what’s on your Thaw Space – is completely erased. There is no opportunity to save things outside of that, such as bookmarked web pages. Of course, there is always the solution of creating a Microsoft Word document with all of your favorite links in it, and then saving that file to your Thaw Space. But it would be a lot better if somehow bookmarks didn’t have to be erased, as they can be beneficial for classes if you frequently visit a particular website. Overall, the laptops are a good idea and further into the school year, when all the kinks have been worked out, this program will be even better. To best take advantage of the laptops, students need to be responsible and stick to the rules that they signed in the technology agreement, even if some of them are a little over the top, like the prohibition that laptops may not be used for any “nonwork or nonschool related work.” As society continues to become more tech-dependent, we hope the school will move to lessen prohibitions on sites such as Facebook, which has become an important part of both social and business worlds. Once we have common-sense rules in place, students will be more likely to follow those rules, and teachers will be more justified in enforcing them.