m25man Posted July 20, 2015 Posted July 20, 2015 Having debated all of the pro and cons of Laptops and Tablets we had decided that for our needs we were going to renew our fleet of ageing Toshibas with Lenovo 11e's Just as we were about to seal the deal the commercial director stepped in with 30 of these..... Acer Aspire R7 review | The Verge I've spent the whole day trying to find something nice about it, but I can't. I will give these about 3 months in our classrooms - the Toshiba's managed 4 years. I've no idea what the designer was on, clearly a combination of Heroin and Alcohol! Truly a waste of a good CPU AND RAM. OK, they are i5's and they were free but you know what they FAST, CHEAP, GOOD pick any two. Now I'm saddled with trying to manage 30 George Forman Grills in a class full of delinquents. Happy days! 1
synaesthesia Posted July 20, 2015 Posted July 20, 2015 For students? I'm sure it's your commercial director on the drugs rather than the designer! For your sake put any reservations you have in writing to SLT making it clear you don't believe they're suitable for use in a classroom. Don't think I'd trust staff with them let alone students! 1
davethetekkie Posted July 20, 2015 Posted July 20, 2015 Would I give one to students? No. Would I give one to teaching staff? No. Would I give this to a particularly tech-savvy member of staff? No. Would I use this for work? No. Would I use this at home? Nope. There's a pattern emerging here... Apart from my deeply ingrained allergy to anything but displays with an Acer logo on it that just has to be the stupidest design I've seen in recent history. 1
jallsop Posted July 21, 2015 Posted July 21, 2015 I've never seen the like before. How totally odd. It will take ages to retrain the brain to go above the keyboard for the track pad. Its as bad as the old mouse 'nipples' in the middle of the keyboard. Why would you think that the laptop design, that has been pretty much nailed for the last 5 years, needed such a radical rebuild? I just don't get it. You double the hinges, and you double the weak points in the design. The whole thing stinks of an April fools day joke gone real. 1
m25man Posted July 21, 2015 Author Posted July 21, 2015 Although not technically a school the academy provides full and part time education facilities to over 90 students on a part time basis. Laptops are stored charged in a trolley, must be able to playback web based video content of sports activity and perform basic office tasks Excel,Word etc. Most user data/content is cloud stored, some kids have access to their own schools VLE. Almost any laptop would have been suitable. This is what happens when people that do not have to deliver or manage network services, get involved with selecting hardware! RRP is about £750 So it has a sponsorship value of around £22.5k which would have paid for about 46 x 11e Yogas.... Expanding the existing laptop fleet by at least 50% As far as the commercial team see it they have saved the academy £50k by getting them showered with 50 free laptops (All Windows 8.1 Home). All I see is a blackhole in the IT budget for the next 3 years, so it's not just schools that struggle to make things work on ever decreasing budgets! I'm now going to try and think of alternative uses for these contraptions and hope I can swap them as I go for something more useful. I have a couple of really old Atom Revos in a reception and a few Terminals that only RDP every now and then, I can put the R7's there and use the replacement budgets to get the Academy something they can really use. The trouble is nowadays everyone is an "IT Expert" and they all think they know much more than those whom have chosen to make it a profession and have years of experience. These things are definitely on a fastrack to landfill.
Tall_Paul Posted July 21, 2015 Posted July 21, 2015 They are, erm, yes. I don't even know if I'd use one if I got given it for free!
CyberNerd Posted July 21, 2015 Posted July 21, 2015 We have a few 11e Yoga's and I must say they are absolutely bulletproof. About the best touchscreen tablet with a keyboard I've ever come across. The chromebook version is about half the price of the W8 one.
computer_expert Posted July 21, 2015 Posted July 21, 2015 Think I'd rather use a battered 8 year old single core laptop running XP than that hideous contraption.
Duranis Posted July 21, 2015 Posted July 21, 2015 There must be something wrong with me but I actually really like it. Would I purchase them for use in school, hell no, way to many moving parts and possible fault points. However I would get one for myself if I had a need. I personally hate having the trackpad in front of the keyboard. The vast majority of the time I'm on a laptop I'm writing. Maybe its just the position I hold my hands in but I'm forever hitting the trackpad on most laptops which results in the cursor jumping to other places or things being opened/closed unexpectedly. Not to mention on a lot of laptops the keyboard is all the way at the back so your arms are not in a comfortable position. I like that the screen can be angled in multiple positions as well, as a home device I can think of more than one situation were that would be useful.
m25man Posted July 21, 2015 Author Posted July 21, 2015 It comes with a compact wireless mouse in the box so they must have had an after thought.. even at home I'm struggling to find somewhere to use it! 15.6" is too small to make it a useful media PC I now realise why they gave them away bet they were glad to get rid of them.
Dos_Box Posted July 21, 2015 Posted July 21, 2015 I also note that the date on the Verge review shows that this model is two years old!! And they want to install these as 'new'?
m25man Posted July 21, 2015 Author Posted July 21, 2015 Go on rub it in why don't you!That's men in suits for you,.. Whilst they are all slapping each other on the back juggling figures and claiming what a great job they did, I'm still waiting for my 1st toastie to pop out.
m25man Posted August 4, 2015 Author Posted August 4, 2015 Update.... Prepped one of these up removed all of the bloatware and set it up so the SLT could test drive it themselves. Popped it into a nice case and sent them off to their meeting armed with their new toy. They had their meeting but never used the laptop. They managed to forget it and left it behind in the meeting room. It's now vanished without trace [emoji23] One down 29 to go.
Arthur Posted August 4, 2015 Posted August 4, 2015 I've no idea what the designer was on, clearly a combination of heroin and alcohol! Probably the same thing as the Sony designer who designed the VAIO Duo 11 & 13. http://vgy.me/3AzfyQ.jpg http://vgy.me/cYBJFc.jpg At least Sony had the sense to place the trackpad in front of the keyboard!
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