Which laptops for classroom use

[pinemarten]

We are looking to buy another trolley load of wireless laptops- first 2 trolleys had Dell Lat 100L with 96WHr battery, heavy but life was (& is) good 3 yrs on.
Next was HP NX6110 - not so good - batteries now stuffed after <2 yrs, running on mains :-(
Any recommendations for laptops with realistic 4hr runtime?
(looked at Dells , but don't want widescreens..)

cheers.

[Ric_]

@pinemartin: If the Dell Latitude 100L works well for you and is of a good enough spec still, why not buy some second user ones the same? This will save you some money and you will be able to share the spares. Admittedly, some batteries may be dodgy in second user ones but for the price difference you can afford to replace a few ICT Direct will probably be able to help you out.

Personally, I'm not a fan of Dells... HPs are built much more solidly IMHO. I have 30 nx6110 laptopts of a similar age to yours and have had no battery problems (touch wood!). Maybe ou need to look into a way of keeping your batteries in better condition.

[tosca925]

We have some Dell L 500 which are now in their 4th year. The batteries are still excellent so we went for 70 new Dell's in the summer just gone.

I'd stick with Dell's for us if i were in your position.

[GrumbleDook]

If you are going with Dell i would go for the Latitude D series. You always have the option of dumping the optical drive for a second battery, and the docking station is fantastic for keeping alive those with bust poer ports (D505s had a problem with this when put into certain laptop trolleys or when heavily used by kids, but we have kept most of them running now!)

[pinemarten]

Thanks for replies & recommendations so far- I must admit I do like Dells.
Re: broken AC jacks, I've had to mend about 15 so far on HP's due to kids using them roughly with power lead plugged in (due to knackered batteries).

Incidentally, I had the batteries on the HP's replaced last July, just inside warranty, but they went down again rapidly.
They were stored in a trolley with chargers(bit too hot maybe), on charge whenever not in use(not ideal) and never got fully cycled so I think you have a point about condition, Ric.

[Ric_]

@pinemartin: I tell the trolley users to only charge during the day - it's easy enough to switch the power off

The LapSafe trolley doesn't get too hot easy thanks to those little fans in the back.

[VGeek]

Well gotta say your schools must have gr8 students at my school no way the students will get laptops unless u want a graveyard of laptops.
We currently have both Dell Latitude d520's and d510's for our school but these are never ever given to students, only staff get our laptops. I dont think students can be trusted with computers let alone laptops which some of them refer to a mobile movable computer. That's what the students believe laptops are.

[kerrymoralee9280]

Although we're a vanilla network we bought 16 RM Mobile One laptops at a reasonable price. The spec wasn't overwhelming but good enough (1.5 Ghz Celeron M's, 512Mb RAM) and the battery life is pretty good even after 2 years down the line (about 3 hours I believe). They didn't have any drives in them (our choice as the kids wreck them) but easily could.

The main beauty about them is they have hard screens (glass I think) so the kids can't push on them and ruin them. They can basically hit them as hard as they want (we don't encourage them to do that though!) and they survive.

[Alis_Klar]

Optimal storage of Litium Batteries is to store them at 30% charge. A good way to do this is to charge them in between lessons every 2 or three lessons. Also keep them stored between -20° to 25° C

[FN-GM]

I have just been looking on the web its hard to find a laptop that isn’t widescreen...

[Alis_Klar]

Tell me about it! Try this link for using a widescreen laptop on most projectors

http://blogs.msdn.com/noahc/archive/...-shortcut.aspx

[kestrel1]

We had exactly the same problem with a trolley of ten HP NX6110. Got some more batteries for half of them after about 18 months. Not happy with HP. Recently had one die, got it repaired & it died again. Kept it for spares.
Had another one that they had managed to snap the central post out of the power connector. Desoldered the power connector from the first dead machine to replace it, worked a treat. Just been told today that they have done the exact same thing to another one now though. Ham fisted Sixth Formers
I am liking Lenovo laptops at present, they seem robust & work real good. I think most laptops have wide screens these days. You would be lucky to get one without I expect.

[Quackers]

Our COWS (Computers on wheels) are all Acer, and we've had them for 1.5 years now. They seem to have dropped by about 15 minutes in life, so we only get 3 and a bit lessons out of them instead of the full 4 now. But its rare they are needed for all morning without a break to graze on electricity before being milked by the students. Battery life is my biggest concern but so far all is good, was expecting to have to replace 120 laptop batterys after a year, but i've been proven wrong. Biggest pain is looking after the heard, moving them from room to room.

[gwendes]

@ Quackers - I think that's the first, and probably last time I'll hear a laptop compared to a cow... very... strange

We have 30 laptops that 'graze' on the LapSafe when they can - used all the time and nearly two years old with a battery life of about 2 hours. I've dropped screen brightness and CPU speed though...

They're a basic model from Novatech - still doing some 15" 4:3 screens. Ours have even survived a few drops.

The main school has started buying HP laptops as we got a really bad batch of laptops a little while ago (8/10 not working!) The HP seem robust but I hate the trackpad keys! SQUIDGE