20 years of Projekt Neptun

This is an important year for Projekt Neptun: we are celebrating our 20th birthday! That's 20 years of discounted laptops, 20 years of support from students for students, 20 years of expertise and advice. So, it is high time to take a little look back and reminisce!

From the founding to the present

The project originated as part of "ETH World", a strategic digitization initiative of ETH Zurich. In the course of this initiative, it soon became clear that a thorough implementation of online lecture notes, streams and webmail would require that students have laptops. This is the most logical thing in the world for us today, but the prices from our second Neptun Wave in 2001 show that a laptop back then was much more a professional tool than a mass product: For a ThinkPad T22 with 800 MHz Pentium III, 13.3" screen, 10 GB hard disk and 128 MB RAM you had to pay a whole 2'900 CHF, for the big brother even 4'300 CHF - and these were the massively discounted Neptun prices!

It was clear that not all of ETH Zurich could be supplied with laptops immediately, so the pilot project was limited to parts of computer science, architecture, applied biology and mechanical engineering. However, it quickly became apparent that the laptops were more than simply practical - they were the future. Accordingly, after the evaluation in 2002, Projekt Neptun was expanded to ten departments of ETH. After the completion of this second phase, it became possible for all ETH members to purchase discounted and carefully selected laptops starting in 2003.

The ETH World program was completed in 2005. A total of 40 projects were carried out, many of which have become an integral part of daily ETH life. Projekt Neptun, for example, was also transferred to ETH's IT services and gradually opened up to all universities in Switzerland over the course of the next few years. The project also met with interest in nearby foreign countries, so that eventually, with the help of the Neptun team at the University of Vienna, the sister project u:book was created, which to this day supplies all universities in Austria with laptops.

In 2011 the spin-off in the form of "Stonepine Labs GmbH" took place and in 2016 the integration into the non-profit foundation Studenten-Discount (SSD), to which Projekt Neptun still belongs today. 

And today?

Today, Projekt Neptun is stronger than ever. After all, we have now accumulated 20 years of experience in evaluation, configuration, price negotiation, purchasing advice and support. Support has been built up over the last ten years, with today five Neptun Help Points at the universities of Basel, Bern, Lucerne and of course ETHZ. In the last year we have focused on expanding our online services:  You can get advice via chat or video call in addition to email. NILA, our AI tool, is available to you 24/7 during the Sales Waves. Demo Days - our tour de Suisse at Swiss universities to show the current laptop range - are still part of the program, or will be again as soon as the current pandemic situation allows it. Additionally, our showroom at the ETHZ Campus Hönggerberg is open.

In essence, we have always remained true to ourselves during these years: Projekt Neptun is non-profit, but must be self-supporting (no subsidies from public funds) and remains a student employer. We still exchange information with IT departments and study secretariats / delegates of the universities to know the hardware requirements and thus be able to offer you the appropriate laptops for all fields of study. 

In the summer of 2021, for the first time, we have set up an additional Sales Wave specifically for high school and vocational school students, so that they can also benefit from our conditions and our knowledge. And while we naturally also support the devices of students, we would like to offer further services for schools: Additional support services from Projekt Neptun can be arranged flexibly, while we are also available to help with the selection, configuration and procurement of computers and tablets.

All this would not have been possible without you, dear students. We would like to thank you not only for your laptop purchase, but also for your questions, suggestions and criticism, without which we would never have been successful for so long. The last 20 years have been great. Let's go for the next 20!