Time For A New Laptop?

You're reading this article likely because you are a returning Breck Student or Employee, and you'll be transitioning to a new laptop soon.


Laptop collection times


Grade 5: May 28, 3:00pm

Grade 6: May 29, 9:00am

Grade 7: May 29, 2:45pm

Grade 8: May 29, 8:30am

Grade 9: May 29, 11:30am

Grade 10: May 29, 10:30am

Grade 11: June 3rd, 12pm

Grade 12: June 2nd, 11am (see article about Leaving Breck)


What to turn in


Plan to have your:

  • laptop (You can leave your stickers attached)
  • power adapters
  • power cable


Failure to turn in the power adapter, cable, or laptop will result in charges.


You'll keep your bag for next year


Personal iCloud Accounts

You can save the tech department, and yourselves, significant headache by signing out of your Personal iCloud account.


If you are a member of a family group, your parent/guardian will need to disable screen time temporarily in order to sign you out of a personal account.



Access to Breck accounts

During the transition to a new laptop, remember that you still have access to your Breck data via any web browser at https://drive.google.com or https://icloud.com - you will sign in to either of those using your Breck Google Account.


Local Data on MacBook

During a laptop transition, your local data is removed from the computer!


Ensure the following is in place:


1. iCloud Drive syncing Desktop and Documents is enabled in System Settings as shown:


Click your Name in the Upper Left, Click the Drive Button. Turn on "Sync this Mac" and "Desktop & Documents Folders"



2. Google Drive Back up is turned on


Open Google Drive in your Applications Folder. Click the Drive Icon in the menu bar, click the Gear / Options Menu, ensure that the Desktop and Documents folders are added to your Google Drive Backup.





3. To save personal data on your device, such as Movies, Music and Pictures, follow these steps.


Purchase a reasonably sized external hard drive or flash drive. Typically 256GB will be sufficient, but a larger drive may be desired for future use. Sizes of 1TB, 2 TB or more are available. Ideally, purchase a device with a Thunderbolt or USB-C connection.


Once you have the drive, plug it into to your computer. Open the Finder:



The finder will all you to review all of the documents in your home folder, and selectively copy the files you would like to save from your laptop to the external device.


In this example, I'm copying my GarageBand folder (where I've saved all my podcasts) to my external drive, named UNTITLED.



Take care to move through each of the folders in your home folder and copy the data that you would like to save, but remember that you will not need to copy files that are backed up by cloud services.



New laptop deployment times


Rising Seniors, Research Classes: June 18

Rising Juniors: June 25

Rising 10/9: August 21

Rising Middle School: First week of School


Please visit us in Tech support if you have questions about this process... but do so before the last couple days of school.