Source: have done similar hobby projects for fun, which turned out to be illegal.

> I hope this is intentional

I mean, it's not unintentional..

It's firmly in "not a laptop" scale, and for anything that fit it was much faster than all the modern cloud garbage.

The other lab I was in around that time just collected machines indefinitely and allocated subsets of them for a few months at a time (the usual amount of time a heavily optimized program would take to finish in that field) to any Ph.D. with a reasonable project. They all used the same in-house software for job management and whatnot, with nice abstractions (as nice as you can get in C) for distributed half-sparse half-dense half-whatever linear algebra. You again only had to share between a few people, and a few hundred decent machines per person was solidly better than whatever you could do in the cloud for the same grant money.

In my recent physics experience, this is basically what it was unless you had to rely on some proprietary software only on the lab machines like shudders LabView

Computers were also ubiquitous in places like the coffeehouse, the library, practically every classroom, etc. And, of course, there were ubiquitous WiFi and USB charging ports, so that students with BYOD could get by (although WiFi was often overloaded and contentious.)

Within the main computer lab I was using, there was also a networking hardware lab, with genuine Cisco equipment such as routers and switches. The Cisco certification prep classes would go in there and do experiments on the hardware, so that students could get accustomed to seeing it in action, however outdated it may be.

The lab itself was chock-a-block with both Apples and Windows PCs, as well as scanners and printers available, and even headphones you could borrow from the desk attendant. You'd need to sign in and sign out. There were strict rules about silence and not leaving your station unattended. There was always space for more users and a generally relaxed atmosphere, where people could feel comfortable studying or doing homework.

I believe that there was also an A/V lab where students could get access to cameras and recording equipment, as well as software for that kind of thing.

The library, in addition to allocating lots of space for Windows PCs and Apples, would also loan out Chromebooks to any student, and I believe they had other things for loan, such as WiFi hotspots, for kids who couldn't afford to carry around their own Internet.

There were also Tutoring Centers, such as the Math one, where most of the desks featured a computer where you could log in to your collegiate account, and access your online course materials.

And the Testing Center was essentially a big computer lab, with cameras and in-person proctors monitoring it. It was partnered with Pearson and CompTIA, so I took more than one certification exam in there.

There is a fully-staffed IT Help Center on campus, so during office hours, you could count on a 1:1 in-person interaction to help you get logged in, debug your device's WiFi, or whatever.

Despite having a great computer setup in the comfort of my own home, and plenty of online courses on my schedule, I still appreciated the immersion of collegiate computer labs, and especially the relaxed coffeehouse access, where I could use Apple systems to work on my English homework and essays.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, all this went topsy-turvy, and a lot of these labs closed down, or took extreme health precautions, and of course, a lot more classes went online-only. But I was done with classes by that time.

A better method would try to correlate not random MAC addresses (headphones, BLE trackers, wearebles, etc) that are frequently together and mark as a single person.