Need new staff laptops - not sure of which direction to take though

[Koocha]

Hi all

 

Currently we have about 20 teachers all with a Dell laptop. They're all about 3 years old now and are suffering battery/charging issues. It's time to replace. The question is, which direction do we go in?

 

Currently it's a £450ish laptop (or was back then - probably a £300 laptop these days). We're using Google Apps a lot more than we did, but I don't think they're ready for Chromebooks. The other end of the scale is a Surface Pro 3 - only thing being with that is that all the teachers have a Nexus 7 for tablet-duties, so another tablet like device might be a bit of a waste. Another option is a laptop that can be docked easily - this would avoid the plugging in of power, projector, whiteboard and audio cables.

 

Another way would be to have a NUC attached to the projector at all times, and get them a cheap computer they maybe wouldn't need to carry back and forth from home.

 

Does anyone have any experience with anything that works really well?

 

Thanks

 

Tim

[Meldrew]

If it were me, I'd just replace the batteries on these laptops and inform staff proper use so that they don't (hopefully) destroy the batteries by improper use next time, ie don't leave them charging all day every day.

 

Meldrew.

[Boredguy]

Heck I give our staff 7 year old laptops and they are lucky if the battery lasts more than 10 minutes.

 

We can not afford to replace them with new models these days, and since the primary use for them is accessing SIMS and lesson prep, then they can easily run it on the mains. I know it's not ideal, but it's something. Had it not been for the Laptops for Teachers scheme many moons ago, I doubt our staff would have them in the first place.

 

Replace the battery if the rest of the laptop is still suitable for their day to day requirements. Much cheaper.

[edutech4schools]

Dell laptops are known for having poor batteries after 3 years. I always get Samsung laptops and the battery's last at least 5 years.

 

Last round of staff laptops I got them some Samsung series 5 ultrbooks with touch screen. They came with 5 year next day onsite warranty and cost about £570.

 

The staff love them.

[forkies]

We used to give out good Dell laptops with 3yr NBD. But staff never look after them. We have decided to buy cheaper HP laptops (I3, 4gb) and then buy 120GB SSD with some of the savings. This makes the laptops faster and the money we save we can replace them either sooner or buy spares.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Get some of my nice Thinkpad refurbs, i5, 4gb, 120gb ssd 1 year rtb < £300. They're indestructible, and will do everything the staff need.

[Koocha]

Thanks for all the replies. The staff constantly use the laptops so they need to be able to use them.

 

We've got a mixture of battery and charger issues. Some laptops turn themselves off without warning, some batteries don't charge (even with replacement batteries), some will only charge with certain chargers...I've replaced batteries and chargers. It's doing my head in!

 

I'm thinking the way to go is getting a cheaper laptop and a dock. That way everything could be plugged into the rooms that need it and staff could just come along with their laptops and dock them to have everything working.

[witch]

Get some of my nice Thinkpad refurbs, i5, 4gb, 120gb ssd 1 year rtb < £300. They're indestructible, and will do everything the staff need.

^What he said

[ICTDirect_Dave]

I'm thinking the way to go is getting a cheaper laptop and a dock. That way everything could be plugged into the rooms that need it and staff could just come along with their laptops and dock them to have everything working.

 

Pretty sure I could help you out with that too

 

All our refurbs are business class machines that have the port replicator on the bottom for docks.

[hardtailstar]

We got some Samsung 300e's about 2 years ago. They have not had any issues at all. They may have been super seeded by another model but id say take a look at Samsung.