This is a point of contention for many programs. There are ways around it without forcing people to buy the a laptop they don't want. I looked into this with some faculty at my previous school. The "deal" they give you is not really much of a deal. At least with the lenovos, dells, and a few others. Fixing things isn't really THAT much easier or cheaper. Our alternative wound up being to allow students to buy whatever laptop they wanted and if it broke (which is really rare unless you slam it against a wall) we gave you one to use till the other was fixed. We had cabinet with about 30 laptops. At any given time we MIGHT have 2 laptops out, and the school had about 600 students there. Dell would give us new ones for free, but we had a little bit of a deal to make it worth their while. Also, for most of the problems that do happen, a warranty will cover them, which you should have a warranty regardless. My macbook went down and I had it back within the a couple of days with no charge. It sucked, but I have a backup laptop for basic work.
