Teacher Laptops

So, how many of us educators have gone to a meeting or collaborative session and thought, "Man, if only I had a laptop with me, I'd be able to keep notes a lot better." How many times have you looked up at the clock and it's almost5:30-6:00 and you are not finished typing in your grades? Our district has taken a huge step forward to integrating technology by starting to make it accessible to teachers full-time. Thanks to a 4 year technology plan, this summer each teacher in the district was issued a Dell laptop.
This is quite a big step for the district as they progress in their technology integration throughout the schools. This is also a good chance for "non-techie" educators to get their hands on and use some of it, to hopefully begin to integrate it into their classrooms and practices. Each teacher was required to go through a "laptop training" course, which may seem kind of cheesy and dull, but there were several things that would be helpful to those who are unfamiliar. The term I heard over and over again was, "Play around and experiment, you won't break it." While, that is something one doesn't have to tell me twice, for those reluctant people, it was comforting. Hopefully they will take advantage of it. I have a laptop at home as my main computer, so I am familiar with the workings of one. I am excited however about the new Office programs which I haven't had any experience with, but they look and feel really nice upon initial use.
Now, for my personal purposes. Having a laptop at my disposal now has made it easier to collaborate with my other colleagues and administrators during meetings. During a meeting in our building's conference room about my student teacher for the fall, my grade level partner and I used the laptop to create a tentative timeline for them to follow. We will both be having student teachers in the fall and wanted some consistancy between them. This timeline will then be placed in Google Docs to be refined by either of us and shared with our student teachers.
Now for some troubleshooting. I can see already that our district has run into some snafus with all of the laptops that are being distributed. Most of them have come from the docking stations and connectivity to the districts servers. Currently, my laptop is experiencing a hiccup with the absence of the All Programs menu, which will definitely be a problem on down the road. I'm thinking that this is one of those docking issues (other teachers are experiencing the same thing) and will be resolved once I dock the laptop at my workstation, which I haven't visited yet this summer. I'm still on vacation right?
We'll see how it goes as we progress through the year and hopefully I will be able to see more teachers feel more comfortable around the computer now that they have one to explore and "play with" at home. I know that I've enjoyed mine so far and having it will definitely provide an easier opportunity to use some to the Web 2.0 offerings throughout the year.