Lifespan of your teacher laptops?

[pete]

We've got a bunch of laptops coming up for replacement. They've been here for 3 1/2 years and they're slowly dying mainly due to age, but helped along by poorly designed NIC housings and using too much plastic in support structures.

 

(no, I didn't order them - before my time)

 

Which made me wonder how often other schools replace their teacher laptops (leaving aside accidents and "it was like that when I found it" incidents).

[TechMonkey]

We have about a dozen surviving Laptops for Teachers & when they die, thats it. Most are on their last legs, although we have considered withdrawing the worst and using the memory to update the others. we just don't really like laptops here so never bothered with them, more trouble than they're worth most of the time.

[plexer]

Every member of teaching staff here have a laptop and nqts are bought one when they start with us.

 

We generally replace a teachers laptop when it's too old to be of any further use.

 

The school also has a policy of allowing any teacher that has had their laptop for 3 years or more and then leaves to keep it.

 

This prevents us from having loads of 3 year old laptops kicking around.

 

Ben

[Vegas]

We replace them when they die as most just use them for Office apps which still run OK.

[Geoff]

2 years generally. Can sometimes stretch certain makes/models of laptops (it depends really) if we can expand the ram in them. The Dell 505/510's we got through the Laptop for Teachers scheme have been good for this.

[pete]

To put my poll in perspective, we have about 60 teacher laptops and we are going to be be replacing them ourselves now LFT is done.

[Vegas]

Geoff

What do you do with the old ones?

[GrumbleDook]

we have a 20% annual replacement policy on staff laptops. Some are still going after 5-6 years and we give those to LSAs ... but no member of staff has the same laptop for more than 2 years where possible ... we give the best ones to the staff that seriously use them, and then cascade their old ones to the next level.

 

It may take a term to do the moving around but it means that people are used to getting something that is a little bit better than what they had before.

 

At the moment we are able to give some reasonable machines to LSAs purely due to the fact that they are damaged Dell Latitude D505s ... the power socket is broken ... but we have docking stations to go with them and a few staff have the extra battery in the Multi-bay.

[Geoff]

Geoff. What do you do with the old ones?

 

Broken down for spare parts. Screens, HDDs and keyboards mostly.

[Quackers]

Until they break, which so far seems to be a long time. Got our 10 orginal Acer's from 2001 still going strong and every laptop since.

 

If it is not broke, and still runs Windows XP, Office etc fine, why change it?

[Vegas]

Until they break, which so far seems to be a long time. Got our 10 orginal Acer's from 2001 still going strong and every laptop since.

 

If it is not broke, and still runs Windows XP, Office etc fine, why change it?

Same here

[Pottsey]

3 to 4 years for the most part. The key is to keep away from cheap laptops

[pete]

@Quackers

 

I'm after how long they generally last before needing replacement (due to hardware failure / unreliability / damage). Not just because $teacher feels the need for $new_shiny.

 

So, I'm after average mileage before they break and can't be frankenlaptopped into a working state again.

[zag]

Replace 25% each year

[GrumbleDook]

The 20% a year from my post is also to cover damage too ... each year we lose through accidental damage 2 teacher laptops and 3 chargers.

 

We lose 4 more due to hardware failure of machines out of warranty ... and some we have to retire because they will not even run W2K and Office 2003 SP2 ... never mind SIMS.

 

Hopefully the introduction of Sun's Secure Global Desktop as a web front end to our terminal servers will help with this.

[Psymon]

We purchase the laptops with a 3 year warantee /w accidental cover. This allows the NIC's to be replaced if damaged, and most laptops last 3+ years, and are usually replaced when they can no longer perform the tasks the teacher needs within a reasonable amount of time.

 

The only oens replaced this year were 4 stolen / misplaced ones which 2 of were claimed partly back on the insurance, however the other 2 did not contact the Bursar and arrange a new one, and have cost us full price.

[mullet_man]

around 3 to 4 years here, I would like to get rid of all the old laptops but SMT like the idea of putting them in classrooms e.g. music.

[maniac]

We replaced around 60% of our teacher laptops with new ones this year (Toshiba L30's) a futher 20% or so have laptops around 1-2 years old (Toshiba A10 and A100's) and the rest have laptops around 3-4 years old (Acer 4150's, 4060's and the like) There's a few Acer 280's still in use, but we'll root these out over the next few weeks as we still have a few L30 laptops that havn't been allocated yet.

 

The oldest laptops we have in the school will be coming up to 5yrs old this year, (Toshiba 1.2GHz and) but they're generally only used by cover supervisors and staff like pastoral staff and mentors now. We also use these as 'exam' laptops for students that are allowed to use a computer to type exam answers. As new laptops come in, the rest all move down a notch. If it still works, then it gets used!

 

Mike.

[localzuk]

We replace every 3 years - as warranties are of that length. The old ones are then used for things like:

 

1. SEN students who need one (eg. dyslexic kids who work best with one, poor of sight kids who need things visible close up).

2. General classroom laptops, with the proviso that when they break, thats it.

3. Sell them on to staff

 

We still have some from 2001 floating around, but they are slowly but surely giving up the goat now.