iPad Leasing

[Stormborn15]

Good day!

 

Do you any of you lease iPads? If so , which company do you use? Pro's and con's? ( of leasing )

 

Thank you in advance

[Shadow_Walker]

Good day!

 

Do you any of you lease iPads? If so , which company do you use? Pro's and con's? ( of leasing )

 

Thank you in advance

 

I looked at my last place and Insight were very good. They use a company called Bluestone i think. Call Insight and they will come in and show you all the pros and cons etc.

[Katy]

We got 24 ipad minis on a 2 year lease to trial, expecting them to be trashed by the end of it. Turns out nobody in the seniors really wanted to touch them but the junior school loved them, so we will be buying them out at the end of the lease and keeping them.

Staff ipads for the junior school we just bought outright as we expect them to last longer than 2 years.

 

We get our ipads from Albion and our leasing from CHG.

 

Advantage in our situation was it's slightly cheaper to do a 2 year lease then give them back than it is to buy them, split the cost over two years whilst still giving us the option to pay some extra and keep them if we wanted to. Disadvantage being it's more expensive than buying outright if you want to keep them at the end of the lease (and expect to get a much longer life out of them).

[edmokeski]

Check out the list of "Apple Solutions Experts" for education -- it's quite short, really. They are able to connect you with some Apple extras, like a 1/2 day of free CPD for every 25 iPads purchased/leased. From my looking, Trams and Academia both seemed quite good. Insight aren't an ASE any more, but I think they can still offer the CPD through a tie-up with someone else. If it's a longer-term thing you're planning, then I'd suggest wandering around the next BETT and having a chat with each of the ASEs to see who you "click" with. When I've had quotes, they were all quite competitive and nearly identical (and all leased via TechData, Bluestone or CHG), so it's the relationship and services that really differentiate. Also, many ASEs are Apple-only, but others (like Insight) do the whole range of kit (and will therefore want to try to get you to switch all your buying to them).

Re: pro's and con's of leasing, I think cashflow is a big one (pro). One class set you may be able to put in next year's budget, but leasing lets you spread the cost over time and thus get in more than you might have otherwise been able to. Some leases might give you a very reasonable purchase option at the end of the lease, as well, and some resellers offer lease schemes with a parental contribution element if that's useful for you.

We're a secondary w/ 1:1 iPads, so happy to chat in a little more detail about our acquisition/deployment if you want to PM.

If you want to talk to someone at a reseller, I've had good conversations with Tom Able-Green at Academia, Jo Dowd at Trams, and Joel Nanton at Insight -- wouldn't hesitate to do business with any of the three of them.