Teacher Laptops

[Stormborn15]

Hi All,

 

Not bought a Windows laptop in over 3 years as moved to a school that uses macbooks.

 

Just been asked to look into pricing - how much roughly would I expect to spend on a decent ( i5, SSD, 8GB ram) machine for a teacher? Looking for the best value pricing and probably Dell's as feel they would be more reliable than Toshiba's or Acers....

 

Thanks in advance

[FN-GM]

With a 5 year warranty & 15" screen. For Dell I would say about £600 each brand new.

[Blue_Cookeh]

You get what you pay for... we found Lenovo X/T/Yoga series are built like tanks, warranty support is amazing, and they're dead easy to manage. Depending on the model we would expect to pay 7-800 for a laptop with 5 year warranty, i5 or better, 8GB RAM, 250GB+ SSD and 13 or 14" screen (possibly touch). Parts are incredibly easy to source out of warranty too. Edited April 23, 2018 by Blue_Cookeh

[Meldrew]

You need a TPM module too?

[MartinT]

Lenovo here too, they are built to last. About £600 compared with about £1300 for the Surface Pro for SLT.

[witch]

Always gone with refurbs -Lenovo are the longest lasting computers I have ever had. Also Dell are pretty good

[Oaktech]

@ICTDirect_Dave - You're up...

[CalmBlueOcean]

Agreed on Lenovo longevity and reliability - still got some student laptops going strong that are over 10 years old (R61). Due mainly to the build quality which is SOLID. Don't think they're built as stoutly these days (saves on weight), but I've just bought some V110 units (lower spec than OP suggested). Sufficient for our teacher needs. Around £350.

[robjduk]

We just gave our staff some HP 430 G5 laptops with the specs you said (13.3" screen) and loving them. HP support are a great asset. Got them for little over £500 each from Galtec.

 

4 months in and trouble free.

[Zourous]

We tend to buy staff laptops with just the standard warranty and then just buy a few more than we need. This way you can save a lot more money. As they break we use the broken ones for spares to fix others. In almost 2 years we've only lost about 6 laptops out of 100+ which most were liquid spillages that wouldn't have been covered anyway. I know someone will say that wouldn't work for us because of this or that but worth thinking about if you can make it work. The last laptops we brought were all HP450 G3's at a price of £200 each.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

How about some of these?

 

They're fantastic, well built, fast and a much nicer build than the budget ranges.

Min 2 years warranty, SSD & RAM upgrades available.

 

Give me a shout?

[AlanD]

You get what you pay for...

 

Sorry, but that phrase is one which makes me boil....becuase I think its really misleading. It may be true (but not always of course) that in order to get something good you will need to pay more for it....but there is no logic which says that just becuase you are paying more you will get something better.

 

Our oldest laptops are coming up to being 10 years old. They are Core 2 - duo processors - and have 2GB of RAM. Some had SSDs fitted a while ago. They cost £150 more than the budget "celeron" ones we were being urged to buy....as longevity wasn't consdered important as we were told they would be replaced every 5 years.

 

Yes, today they are slow - well certainly sluggish booting up (now windows 7)...but they are then useable - and indeed used every day. For the first 5 years of their life everyone praised them for being lighteningly fast....and that alone encouraged teachers to make better use of ICT. Was that worth an extra £15 for each year - absolutely.

 

But just paying more doesn't necessarily get you a physically more robust computer - with keys that don't drop off the keyboard - or power sockets that come unsoldered from the the motherboard....and its really difficult to know in advance and just by looking whether laptops will last the course.

 

Although I have difficulty selling this vsision - I think the chrome books - which can still run Office 365 apps - represent excellent value for money and "do the job" that most staff require....and are much easier to manage than PC laptops.

 

If you are going down the PC laptop route - you will need to think about how you will manage them. Yes you will want encryption...but argueably you will want something like "inTune" so that they can be remotely wiped if lost - or taken away by a colleague who leaves. And InTune wll allow you to deploy the apps you require - and to restrict the users from installing malware and stuff that you will end up sorting out later.

[FN-GM]

Our oldest laptops are coming up to being 10 years old. They are Core 2 - duo processors - and have 2GB of RAM. Some had SSDs fitted a while ago. They cost £150 more than the budget "celeron" ones we were being urged to buy....as longevity wasn't consdered important as we were told they would be replaced every 5 years.

 

Kind of defeated your own argument there - SSD are expensive compared to a normal hard drive. You paid the extra because they are better

Edited April 25, 2018 by FN-GM

[Sonic007]

Im about to buy Dell: i5, 8GB DDR4, 128GB SSD Laptops for around £600