AMD processors any good in a pupil or staff laptop? Does it work with Sims?

[edutech4schools]

I am struggling to find a laptop that ticks all the boxes the school has given me. We do not have an ESS agreement so must buy the pro licence with the laptop. It must have 5 years warranty. It must have a 13 or 14 inch screen and it must look the bees knees. The last time this school purchased any laptops they got Samsung series 5 ultrabooks with touch screen and how the looked was a big part of the decision as they must be light for the primary kids to walk around with and not look like a brick.

 

So far I can only find 2 laptops that might hit the spot for them, one is a Dell Latitude 3440 14inch with windows 8.1pro and the other is a Samsung Ativ book 9 lite. I have not used either but noticed the Ativ book has an AMD processor and wondered if this would cause any issues with general curric software or Sims etc.

 

Any advice would be very helpful.

[LosOjos]

Whether the processor is AMD/Intel will have absolutely no effect on which software will run on it*

 

* apart from some very specialist software, which if you were using you would already know about!

[fairm010]

We have a fair bit of AMD kit here and there are absolutely no problems at all with any software, including SIMS.

[tmcd35]

If you're not on EES then you really should be buying licences on a Select agreement as this give you imaging rights and would make preparation and setup a whole lot easier. If you buy licenses on such an agreement then the laptop can be supplied with any version of Windows, it really doesn't matter, so long as it is supplied with a version. The cost of licences are less than £10 each (totally from memory, been a long time, could be wrong) so won't add a great deal to the price of any laptop you find. That should open the market up a bit for you.

 

As for AMD processors, very much doubt you'd see a problem. Especially for general day to day office/internet/sims use. Are they doing any processor intensive work such as playing games, rendering 3D or editing videos? Yes SIMS works perfectly on AMD processors!

[FN-GM]

Yes SIMS works perfectly on AMD processors!

 

I find that hard to believe! It has never worked perfectly on anything!!

[VeryPC_Colin_M]

I am struggling to find a laptop that ticks all the boxes the school has given me. We do not have an ESS agreement so must buy the pro licence with the laptop. It must have 5 years warranty. It must have a 13 or 14 inch screen and it must look the bees knees. The last time this school purchased any laptops they got Samsung series 5 ultrabooks with touch screen and how the looked was a big part of the decision as they must be light for the primary kids to walk around with and not look like a brick.

 

So far I can only find 2 laptops that might hit the spot for them, one is a Dell Latitude 3440 14inch with windows 8.1pro and the other is a Samsung Ativ book 9 lite. I have not used either but noticed the Ativ book has an AMD processor and wondered if this would cause any issues with general curric software or Sims etc.

 

Any advice would be very helpful.

 

Morning @edutech4schools,

 

Colin here from VeryPC. Could I interest you in a 3rd option? How about our new Intel Bay-trail M powered Thinbook? https://shop.very-pc.co.uk/laptop/thinbook/thinbook-bt-15 Here's why I think it'd fit the bill for you;

 

- You get a bigger 15.6" HD screen with built in webcam

- Weight is only a touch over 2kg so light enough for primary kids to walk around with

- Battery life is up to 9.5 hours as it uses the energy efficient bay-trail m platform with a 4 cell battery so will last the school day

- It's a very neat and attractive design which can also be skinned to match the school branding for added wow factor

- The quad core option should be more than powerful enough to accommodate the requirement

- We can offer a 5 year warranty

- You can customise the specification so if you want more RAM, an SSD, a better Wi-Fi card, no optical drive, you can have it.

- You get full size inputs and outputs including VGA and HDMI, 9 in 1 card reader, 1 x USB3.0, 3 x USB2.0

- It won't break the bank financially

 

Now I won't deny, I think the Samsung is a real looker, but it's alot of money. If touch screen functionality is required we do offer a 14" Ultrabook Touch, which is also a bit of a stunner and would work out less expensive than the Samsung.

 

If you want to know more and get some pricing and availability, please feel free to email me (my sig has my details) and I'll be delighted to help.

 

Best,

Col

[edutech4schools]

Colin can you give me some info on how your warranty works, do you do 3 and 5 years warranty's?

 

Thanks

[VeryPC_Colin_M]

Hi there, yes, not a problem. Excellent write up here by our marketing chaps on a service I'm very proud of; https://www.very-pc.co.uk/verypc-warranty

 

I'd offer a 3 year Standard Fix Me Quick warranty as standard with an option to upgrade to either 3 year Extended, 5 year Standard or 5 year Extended. In addition there are options to customise your warranty cover.

 

Do you know what Dell and Samsung are offering?

 

Ta,

Col

[JRowley]

I don't think the AMD/Intel compatibility thing has been a real issue for the best part of 20 years.

[tmcd35]

I don't think the AMD/Intel compatibility thing has been a real issue for the best part of 20 years.

 

There are differences, but outside of virtualisation I doubt many people would come across them. Maybe some high end video/3D production apps might be compiled against a specific SSE instruction set for added performance, but it would be high end professional industry specific stuff.

[JRowley]

There are differences, but outside of virtualisation I doubt many people would come across them. Maybe some high end video/3D production apps might be compiled against a specific SSE instruction set for added performance, but it would be high end professional industry specific stuff.

 

Indeed that's what I meant by real issues, there are still difference, and will continue to be difference but unless your doing something extremely specific you would never know. It's not like you could tell using a blind test if a CPU was AMD or Intel provided the chips produced the same performance.

[stevenlong1985]

All AMD here, everything works and so much more cheaper! Edited September 30, 2014 by stevenlong1985

[Norphy]

As already said, for the vast majority of use cases using AMD or Intel makes no difference. The thing I would be more concerned about is the fact that Samsung are pulling out of the laptop market in Europe. That would make me wary about buying any of their laptops at the moment.