Will teachers notice the difference?

[jmak]

Hi

 

Looking at two systems for teachers. Both laptops, same spec except:

 

1st: i3 -3110M with a 5400rpm HDD

2nd: i3-3120M with a 7200rpm HDD

 

We're infant, so essentially Office, Web and basic educational software. Do you reckon anyone will notice a performance difference?

 

Thanks

[pantscat]

I very much doubt it!

[jamesfed]

Who are you buying the PCs from? You would get more of a step up from a SSD than anything else (would add to the long life of the PC as well) although again it might not be necessary anyway.

[jmak]

Who are you buying the PCs from? You would get more of a step up from a SSD than anything else (would add to the long life of the PC as well) although again it might not be necessary anyway.

SSD takes me above budget with everyone I've looked at - reckoning on that as a potential straightforward upgrade in a couple of years especially as price on SSDs should come down. I think they'll be wowed anyway - they're coming from Celeron machines and at a minimum the new laptops will have double the memory.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

If you're just running office and basic education apps then you'll have no trouble with either spec. Hell you could give them a core 2 duo powered machine and it would run those with no trouble.

[FishCustard]

Absolutely not - they'd be unlikely to notice the difference between i3/i5/i7!

[broc]

The 5400rpm drives should consume less power, so they might see a difference in battery life but I doubt they would see any performance difference.

[seawolf]

If you plan on upgrading them in a couple of years anyway, don't waste the money now on the small performance improvement you're likely to see.

[bwestlake]

hardrives you will notice a difference and also over time aswell

[strawberry]

Buy the cheaper one and give them a usb stick with the price difference, they'll be happier to have a shiny shiny!.

[hardtailstar]

Hi

 

Looking at two systems for teachers. Both laptops, same spec except:

 

1st: i3 -3110M with a 5400rpm HDD

2nd: i3-3120M with a 7200rpm HDD

 

We're infant, so essentially Office, Web and basic educational software. Do you reckon anyone will notice a performance difference?

 

Thanks

 

Nope, youre more likely to get a teacher complain about something silly like a virus message coming up that they have ignored for months and then the whole thing crashes.

[dhicks]

1st: i3 -3110M with a 5400rpm HDD

2nd: i3-3120M with a 7200rpm HDD

 

It might be worth going for the faster harddrive - quite a few complaints here regarding "the computers are slow" resolve down to the amount of time it takes for a teacher to log on to a machine and start something like Word. The machines in our staffroom have 5,200RPM disks and they do take a little while to get going. Once running they are fine, but if people are logging on and off all day the faster harddrive machines might be more suitible.

Edited July 2, 2013 by dhicks

[broc]

harddrive performance is not only about rotational speed; There are a whole range of other factors affecting performance; things like cache size, areal density, & number of platters have a bearing too. A slower spinning higher density disk with more platters can outperform a much faster spinning disk , especially for sequential I/O while generating less noise, less heat and lower power consumption. Edited July 2, 2013 by broc

[jmak]

Ok, so the crowd sourced opinion (from this very select audience) pretty much matches my instinct: Hdd likely to slow it down more, teachers unlikely to notice - they'll log on in the morning and then stay logged in all day (or possibly all year which is why I'm looking at Impero - different story). Seems odd to have the faster processor with the slower HDD, price difference is £3 - faster disk, slower processor is the more expensive. If the price difference was greater, it'd be an easier decision.

 

I'll try one of each and report back. Funny, I find big decisions much easier than these real nitty gritty trivial issues. Not sure what it says about me, but I'm sure it's something deep and meaningful...

[seawolf]

jmak - if you plan to upgrade them with SSDs in the next 1-2 years I wouldn't waste the money on a 7200 vs 5400 HDD. Any SSD will blow either away.