Recommend me some Chromebooks...

[smurfomatic]

We currently have four trolleys of Chromebooks around school, they are all Samsung XE303s and have been great for the last three or four years. However, we're looking at getting some more to expand the use of them around the site.

 

As we have trolleys that started out with 20 but have lost a few to damage/breakdowns along the way, my intention is to split up those in one of our trolleys to replace those and purchase two sets of 20 new ones.

 

We're looking at 11" units, and I'm torn between buying something like the Lenovo N22 which we can get on Amazon for £110 each (and possibly cheaper from our usual suppliers) or the more expensive options like the Acer C730E. Does anyone have any recommendations? Obviously if we can pick up 40 units at £100 a time it'll mean more budget for other things, but no sense spending £4,000 and finding they're rubbish!

 

We are an independent prep school, these Chromebooks would be being used by kids in Years 3 to 8.

[angrycomputingteacher]

One of our staff here has their own laptop. He has the windows version although there is also a Chromebook one which works quite well. I forgot what it's called though. Instead of buying new equipment we put Chromium OS on those older laptops and they also work well for our special needs department.

[smurfomatic]

One of our staff here has their own laptop. He has the windows version although there is also a Chromebook one which works quite well. I forgot what it's called though. Instead of buying new equipment we put Chromium OS on those older laptops and they also work well for our special needs department.

 

Unfortunately all the "old" equipment we have has generally been run into the ground and won't be of much use. Plans have shifted slightly and we may only be getting one batch of twenty now, so there's a 50% saving already

[j224]

I would recommend the Toshiba Chromebook 2. Bit more expensive than what you're looking at but they're serving us well. We have the 1080p ones with 4GB RAM.

[smurfomatic]

Thanks j224, but I don't think I'll be able to justify spending that much when the vast majority of the time it's kids using Google Docs to write a poem or researching stuff for a KS2 History lesson!

[ITBadger]

We have a large number of Viglen Chromebook 11's which we bought from XMA. I've recently been told about the new model which has an improved screen, touch capability, is ready for the android apps that are coming to chromebooks and have a three year warranty as standard. I've been really impressed with how the original models have held up to being used on a daily basis, so would definitely consider checking them out as they may give you a solution that you hadn't considered.

[smurfomatic]

Thanks Dave, I'll take a look.

[dhicks]

We are an independent prep school, these Chromebooks would be being used by kids in Years 3 to 8.

 

We've just bought around 100 Asus Chromebook Flips (C100P). Around £250-ish per device (that price includes VAT, check suppliers for discounts on larger orders), and they've proven excellent so far. They work both as laptops and as proper 10-point multi-touch tablets (you just open the screen right round until it rests against the back of the keyboard), so they cover the whole "iPad" area for around half the price. I'm just waiting for the first complaint from a parent that a child has gone home and tried to bend their laptop in half...

[smurfomatic]

That's a good compromise David, we're constantly battling the "we want iPads" teachers who can't really explain why they want them...