Overview
It is tempting to buy the cheapest equipment you can find when looking for a new laptop. However, you often get what you pay for and it is nearly always the case that important enterprise features are missing from devices purchased from stores that target the home user.
The following are some important technical features that EOAS Compstaff recommend you consider when purchasing a new laptop computer. These recommendations include the consideration of what will give you the greatest bang for your buck, as well as ease of refund or repair and devices that can meet the University's various policies and requirements such as encryption.
In general, contact the EOAS IT Help Desk (helpdesk@eoas.ubc.ca) before purchasing any solution and we can help identify the best purchase that will also meet your needs.
Laptop recommendations - Windows
Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
TPM is a feature built into enterprise laptops that supports hardware-level cryptographic keys. The result is that a TPM module in a laptop computer will allow storage drives to be securely encrypted with minimal hardware performance impact, and by including a TPM it means that you will not need to remember additional passwords to access the data on your laptop's storage drive.
The Internet offers a helpful solution to identy various hardware laptops that include TPM functionality.
https://us.hardware.info/products/2054/trusted-platform-module-tpm-laptopstablets#allproducts
Laptop recommendations - MacOS
All MacOS-based computers sold in the last five years include a built-in encryption solution called FileVault (https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204837).
Laptop recommendations - Linux
Linux offers a variety of device encryption solutions that tend to work better on one particular distribution of Linux than another. It is strongly recommended that you contact the EOAS Help Desk prior to selecting a Linux laptop solution, so we can discuss what Linux distribution you will be using and how best to secure your data.
If you opt to proceed to purchase your own Linux notebook, we have information on how to encrypt the data specific to the Ubuntu operating system at https://helpdesk.eoas.ubc.ca/kb/articles/56.