I have been asked to provide 20 laptops to loan to students the idea is they keep them and are able to take them home. They will run Windows XP and Office 2003 . Any suggestions as to a suitably tough but cheap models/makes from you experience of this sort of use.
eeepc's might be an idea.
The laptop for students scheme in my area use Toshiba Stalittet Pro A200’s. They seem to do the job.
No dont do it! But i like HP and Lenova, and dare i say it, dell. Ive found acer to be abit fragile.
Dell Latitude 620ATG ... or rather the 630/631 now.
Semi-ruggedised and save us a lot of work so far this year (the royal 'we' that is ...)
We've just got 5 Ergo Hardcase Pro 311's for just his use. They can even put your own design on the lid - looks very nice.
We're also looking at Eee-PC, and we have a few old laptops from where we have upgraded teachers.
I've just brought a 630 for amember of staff. I'm very impressed. Not as much as the Toshiba R500 though. Small, very, very light and fast to. Not too tough though.Originally Posted by GrumbleDook
It is the ATG variant that is the toughened version.
I'd agree about Acer - some of the recent ones we've had seem to break if you look at them in the wrong way! I don't know what they're making them of these days, but it ain't very strong!
Avoid ACER at all costs
I've spent the best part of the year supergluing the heatsink joints back onto countless motherboards
Talk about sh!t build quality - im told the newer ones aren'tmuch better
Just wondering, those of you who have bought ruggedized laptops, do they prove cheaper overall TCO wise compared to buying cheaper laptop and either allowing a budget for repair/replacement or buying with accidental damage cover?
Our head now refuses point blank to buy laptops for students to use after a class set were destroyed in under 12 months!
I think I'm with Teejay here. Even if you can trust the kids involved, their siblings are going to sell them down the pub to fund their smack habit. Buy the cheapest shonky rubbish you can find. You won't own it for long!
Might be a bit longer if you paint them pink, and scrawl the school's name all over it, but I wouldn't hold your breath.
If only all Heads thought like that
I can agree with you there,
Acer have very cheap build quality and are really not built for mobility more of a cheap desktop replacement!
IBM R series and T series are super for mobility with there lightwight but strong build quality and 5-6 hour 6 cell lithium batteries they really do the job and do it well,
Toshiba A200 my veiw is that Toshiba's build quality has gone down hill over the last few years so much so that we dont even stock tosh anymore our Tosh replacement is really HP if only they can sort out the weight and battery life,
Hope that helps
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions Actually after reading the replies I am starting to think that the proposal from SMT is not a good idea.
Thanks anyway.
We actually have 24 Acer Extensa 5220 laptops what our primary school kids take home everyday, they seem fine and only broke when one of the kid dropped the thing. Luckily we took out the Acer 3 year Platinum warranty including accidental damage for about 70 quid.
Acer are easy to talk to, the Extensa seems fairly reliable, casing structure is a bit bulky but it adds to the padding, we also brought some Swissgear rucksacks for them to go home in so it adds padding on the way home.
We are so impressed with these one that we will probably buy more in the future. Many here will probably disagree with my response but i have used them, our kids use them and they do work.
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