netbook trolley replacement

[petben]

school wants to buy a trolley of 30 x something to allow students to log on wirelessly, web browse, word processing, print maybe.

 

I suppose a few years ago it would be netbooks but these are now EOL.

Laptops are too big, short battery life etc.

windows tablets are £££ for the pro version to allow domain logon.

iPads aren't really multi-user devices, but we can get wired keyboards now...

 

so what's the solution?

thanks for any ideas.

[kaphc]

We're just looking at the same issue as a primary school with about 150 pupils. We have 3 trolleys of netbooks but know we won't be able to replace these once they go. They are brilliant though and have done exactly what we needed them too.

 

Windows tablets are more costly, but if you have an EES agreement which covers the school then that might alleviate the cost as Windows 8 Professional licenses will be included in that.

 

Laptops are still great in my opinion, including the way that the battery life has improved.

 

I think the main question is - what do you want to do with the devices? The objectives you have mentioned all point to the need for some kind of Windows device with a keyboard at this stage.

[3s-gtech]

As soon as you include word processing and printing, you're skewing towards laptops. Of course, you can do these things with iPads or similar, but it means setting up the necessary printing system (not too hard IIRC, not done it here) and getting keyboards. You've then go the issue of saving work to the correct place on the network - too often this is forgotten with tablets despite our continuous reminders that iPads are single-user and cloud-storage centric.

 

We went with Lenovo B590 laptops for this job. Cheap, surprisingly decent build, quick with SSDs and i3s, and no faffing. Battery life will be an issue with cheaper laptops unless you get huge great batteries for them or go for ultra-low voltage CPUs.

[Bev]

We've gone with Chrome Books, but it does help that we use already Google Docs across school, and our LEA has all our students setup with google accounts as a matter of course.

 

The chrome books are net book sized, pretty instant on, very quick to connect to the net etc, and work on flash-based websites that won't work on ipads, such as mymaths and education city.

They also have a good battery life.

 

The only downside we have is that you have to log onto a google account to use them, and we have some issues with forgotten passwords. There is a 'guest' mode which would be ideal when just needed as a web-browser but it doesn't work with a proxy.

[jmak]

What about something like this:

Lenovo think pad edge 11.6"

 

When we have to replace our net books, one of the criteria will be whether we can fit 6 on a group table in our infant school and I don't reckon we could go much bigger than this.

 

Around £280 after cash back, so not a million miles from net book money.

Edited November 22, 2013 by jmak