Where will it all end I ask myself; will future FT's be seen struggling with blackboards and retroprojectors at Beijing airport?

Now you are just being absurd, no self respecting FT would lug that lot about.

Reasons FT's may prefer to use their own laptops, off the top of my head, their own version of mac osx/windows/linux on it, and not dealing with an older or slower school provided pc. And how can that school provided pc be taken into the classroom anyway. I haven't seen one public school in China that provides laptops to their ft's, but then everyones experiences will be different and vive la difference. All I can say is the story about the laser printer, but then NO TONER is true from my one experience, and being nice and polite didn't work, nor did getting irate about it. Printer with no toner. But then one school did give all us FT's brand new pc's, but still no printer. Personally I just copied my ppts and videos to a usb flash and used that on the in classroom computer.

Good luck.