It's too bad to hear this. I am very satisfied with our computer labs. We're having 7 labs with about 10 PCs each, all of them equipped with recent Intel CPUs

It's too bad to hear this. I am very satisfied with our computer labs. We're having 7 labs with about 10 PCs each, all of them equipped with recent Intel CPUs and quite a lot of RAM. Windows or Linux (Debian or SuSE I think) on all machines. Possibly all apps that you're ever gonna need installed (ranging from python+IDEs to MS Visual Studio, Qt, Gimp, MS Office, Open Office, ...). No hard disk quotas are enforced, instead there's a fair use policy. Admins are very friendly and talkable to about anything... And if you don't like the machines in the lab, grab an ethernet cable or use the WiFi available all over the campus. The labs are used by many students, even though I'm not aware of anyone without a laptop or a machine at home. It's just too comfortable... sit down, have all the apps, all compilers you need for your studies ready for use. In my opinion, this is how you should run a computer lab - user friendly policies that encourage the use of the public machines. After all that helps the students to get to know each other better and help each other. For the record, I study at Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam, Germany.