Starting in September, students at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School will no longer be permitted to use their personal laptops and tablets, which school officials say are too easily misused for cheating, virtual truancy and evading the district’s internet controls.

For the Vineyard Gazette, the change to a new production computer system this spring has been as profound as the transition, two decades ago, from hot metal type to offset printing.

Just in time for Christmas shopping, a letter arrived this week from the Harris Corporation, makers of the typesetting equipment we use at the Gazette to produce the words you’re reading now.

An introductory note explained that the Composition and Controls Division at Harris has cut prices on a number of spare parts -- “items which exceed our forecasted requirements.” We think that means nobody’s buying them.

Almost in time for last week’s printing deadlines, the Vineyard Gazette dragged its typesetting technology, kicking and scratching, into the age of high-speed computers. Except for a few pieces of the almanac listings, all the news in the April 16 edition was typeset on a microprocessor-based system manufac­tured by the Harris Corporation.