Cheery smile
When I worked as an IT manager in the mid-1990's at large suburban high school, we had 13 x 486 computers and a small Novell network.
At the time we used login names derived from the characters in the television series Cheers. Each name was pasted onto a laminated card next to each 486 computers. At the very least it put a smile on our faces when students reported that Frasier was sulking (not booting up) or that Norm was stuck in a rutt (refusing to release floppy disk).
We did something similar for the teachers computers and file server, using names from Lord of the Rings. I still have the motherboard from Aragorn, the computer that powered our first BBS system, the 'mail point'.
The generic logins worked ok although it probably says something for the limited number of computers to be shared amongst a class of 26 IT students. Things have changed with now calls for one computer for every student. I would hate to think as we scale up our IT resources, that we do not loose this personal face to our school technology.
In our enthusiasm to build an integrated system with codes for all students and systematic conventions for system names, it would be nice to think that there is still enough scope for the social banter and good spirited humour to retain this practice of naming machines. Not only does this idle naming help to personalise and socialise the technology, it puts a human face on what can be a very impersonal productivity tool.
Why does this matters a lot? It is because the focus for the technology should be engaging the end user, not propogating an obscrue system code.