In my role as Systems Administrator at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law, I recently compilted the results of th IT/Computer portion of the annual 1st year student survey. Here is a link to the three page survey. Here are some highlights from the Survey:

• 94% of incoming students own laptops, and 98% of those laptops are wireless.
• 87% have high speed internet at home, and only 1% do not have any form of internet access from home.
• The average purchase price for laptops dropped again to $1358 (down from over $2000 in 2004).
• See the last page of the report for student comments (page 3).

I guess it’s not surprising that wireless capabilities on student laptops is approaching 100% given that you cannot buy a laptop now without a wireless card built in. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed large numbers of students using skype for their long distance calls, rather than land lines, cell phones, and/or calling cards. I wonder if that will change now that the "Skype-out" to regular phones is not free. It is interesting that laptop prices continue to fall at a fairly steady rate, which in part is helping increase the number of students who can afford to arrive at school with a laptop. The only question is what are they doing with their laptops in class 😉