LGfL offer discounted Chromebook, Winbook, iPad - recommendations or not...

[Koldov]

Our Head has forwarded an email to our Bursar (who has then forwarded it to me) asking about the LGfL (Covid-19) offer of cheap (?) devices.

 

The details in the email are a bit sparse, but it looks like the hardware in the title will be offered at discount prices.

 

I don't think I should post the details, but I am looking for advice (just the facts - not opinion) on the actual viability of doing this.

 

I am guessing my Head & Bursar are looking for a way to support children who do not have tech at home to help them access online learning.

 

We have never done anything like this before, so I'm dreading it and I have seen various threads on the pitfalls of supporting/managing school owned devices given to families (who is responsible for damage, filtering, updates, software installation etc).

 

We don't use either ~Winbooks or ~Chromebooks, so I have no experience with this type of hardware...

 

But things like "Chromebooks need additional licenses", "Chromebooks can't run this (or that)", "Chromebooks need a new management solution".

 

Or "Winbooks are not usually powerful enough or with a big enough hard drive", "Winbooks cannot be upgraded", "Winbooks don't have any peripheral support"...

 

Don't know, just guessing...

Edited June 17, 2020 by Koldov

[TIOAOA]

Details here

 

https://national.lgfl.net/smartbuy/devices

 

Pricing is excellent in my opinion

[Norphy]

This is what I said to my boss about the Windows laptops:

 

1) AMD 3015e CPU - I've not heard of this CPU and there is nothing on Google about it. Googling the "pollock" codename found in the PDF turns up very little and nothing on AMD's web page. I don't know what the performance of these things will be like but historically, low end AMD CPUs have been pretty poor. I expect it will perform similarly to modern day Pentium and Celeron CPUs based on Atom architectures.

 

2) 4GB RAM is fine - a lot of our workstations at HAFT still have 4GB and Windows 10 would otherwise cope

 

3) 64GB is on the small side but doable as long as we're not expected to put anything other than Windows and Office on there. That would have to be it, no exceptions. That would take around 1/3 of the storage. Windows would need a slice for a restore partition, need a slice for things like hibernate and swap files, some free space for general operational stuff and adequate space to install updates so Office and Windows would have to be it. The other concern with the storage is that it's eMMC, effectively a soldered on SD card. Performance and endurance is not going to be great for a laptop.

 

I'm somewhat suspicious of these things. The specsheets are clearly word documents typed up by someone outside of Lenovo. When you google Lenovo 100e and 300e, you get a link to a discontinued product powered by Intel Celeron CPUs. I find it hard to recommend getting them because as far as the internet is concerned they don't exist. If LGFL can get one in my hands for me to look at, I might have a different opinion

[paulkerton]

@JohnJackson is the person to ask!

[victory2015]

This is what I said to my boss about the Windows laptops:

 

The LGFL offer doesnt come with the chrome management licence which ive just picked up on, so doesn't feel a "great" deal for us

[jmak]

Pricing looks stunning. As per my post in the "recommend a laptop for students to buy" thread, these might not be up to being full domain machines and might struggle with heavier software, but if the point is to give access to online learning to kids who are currently missing out, these would hit the mark and could be transformational.

 

My learnt/inbuilt prejudice puts me off cheap Windows devices, because they seem like they've wrangled something designed for a different purpose down to meet a price point, whereas the Chromebooks have been designed from the ground up to use a lightweight computing platform for access to mostly web based services.

 

If you already have GSuite set up, you'll know it's a whole lot easier to learn than managing Windows. If you don't, there's currently funding available to sort out the bits that'll be new to you. I assume that at the price quoted, the management licence isn't included, so you need to budget £20ish per device, which is for the life of the device. If you're sending the device or into the wild (home with the pupils) and can't guarantee how often they'll come back, I'd be much more confident of not having problems with updates or software with a Chromebook than anything Windows.

 

Just my thoughts. Looks like a great effort by @JohnJackson and his team.

[paulkerton]

The LGFL offer doesnt come with the chrome management licence which ive just picked up on, so doesn't feel a "great" deal for us

 

£184.99 for a Lenovo 300e including the Management License at RRP of £19.00

£144.99 for the 100e inc. the License at RRP of £19.00

 

As long as they're the 2nd Generation model with the 2026 Auto Update Policy date, I'm trying to figure out where you can get a better price for a comparable device at the moment!

[synaesthesia]

As those processors don't exist, and Lenovo don't list the 100e with anything other than Intel processors I would be questioning the specs of those!

 

** Edit - found an updated list. Processor itself isn't yet named but found in a lot of chinese no-names and these are brand new models. Passmark performance ranks them as about equal with the OLD dual core Pentiums.

Edited June 17, 2020 by synaesthesia

[Brimstone]

Despite the mention in all the adverts, videos and web headers I see no iPads listed here, looks like just an excuse to try and get iPad schools to their page. Edited June 17, 2020 by Brimstone

[Brimstone]

Our Head has forwarded an email to our Bursar (who has then forwarded it to me) asking about the LGfL (Covid-19) offer of cheap (?) devices.

 

The details in the email are a bit sparse, but it looks like the hardware in the title will be offered at discount prices.

 

I don't think I should post the details, but I am looking for advice (just the facts - not opinion) on the actual viability of doing this.

 

I am guessing my Head & Bursar are looking for a way to support children who do not have tech at home to help them access online learning.

 

We have never done anything like this before, so I'm dreading it and I have seen various threads on the pitfalls of supporting/managing school owned devices given to families (who is responsible for damage, filtering, updates, software installation etc).

 

We don't use either ~Winbooks or ~Chromebooks, so I have no experience with this type of hardware...

 

But things like "Chromebooks need additional licenses", "Chromebooks can't run this (or that)", "Chromebooks need a new management solution".

 

Or "Winbooks are not usually powerful enough or with a big enough hard drive", "Winbooks cannot be upgraded", "Winbooks don't have any peripheral support"...

 

Don't know, just guessing...

Let me tell you a short story...

 

I support a 2 form primary school, who went 1:1 with iPads in 1 year group Yr 3 last September. When it was obvious schools were going to have to close and start remote learning the school were inundated with requests from parents prepared to contribute towards the cost of an iPad. By the time the scheme was set up the school was actually closed (only keyworker children allowed) The school ordered another 60 x iPads and ran a very staggered collection process where a parent would collect a boxed iPad and case at a specfic time slot. Each iPad was then taken home and activated from there.

 

Every iPad was enrolled and remotely managed via the DEP/MDM, filtering was also applied and managed to protect each iPad.

 

Both teachers and parents have been ecstatic at how easily this has worked, suffice to say apart from spending a hour or two applying the restriction policies, filtering and apps required I didn't touch a single iPad.

[DGardiner]

Both teachers and parents have been ecstatic at how easily this has worked, suffice to say apart from spending a hour or two applying the restriction policies, filtering and apps required I didn't touch a single iPad.

 

thats one thing i do wish google would do, DEP is amazing

[paulkerton]

thats one thing i do wish google would do, DEP is amazing

If you go through a Google Partner, you should be able to have the devices shipped pre-enrolled, I believe.

I know it was something they were actively working on. At one point I was told they were looking at you being able to add the serial number to your G Suite and that being the process that kicked it off, but I don't know if that has progressed.

[psydii]

Intune can do similar to DEP. Both are awesome. Google people will tell similar tales around the ChromeBook management.

 

LGfL have a massively good deal with Meraki - I expect this offer will be extended to non-LGfL schools to support this scheme.

 

When I was looking into the CPU listed in the 300e I thought I found they were under-cached ZEN with a few vega cores, but I can't find the reference now, so this could be wrong.

 

If they have the performance of Celeron N4120 they might be viable. 4 cores would be better. @synaesthesia can you give a link to benchmarks?

 

I have played with a 64Gb Celeron N4120 based machine with 4Gb ram. Things get unpleasant as soon as the device needs to start to swap. That spec of device is what UWP (and Apple's and Googles more successful equivalents) were designed to support, unfortunately even Microsoft abandoned the UWP build of its mobile office suite. A 128Gb SATA/SSD takes the edge off the performance hit when swapping. I'm still playing with the hardware (not LGfL's, but a N4120 based device) and report back when I have a better feel of it.

 

EDIT: Hmm the lgfl devices have emmc 5.1 which offer equivalent performance to SATA (apparently) so that does make me pause, perhaps they wont collapse as soon as you open a browser window.

 

EDIT2: Ok so continuous read performance is interesting - It would take 2-3 seconds to page out an app, and 4-6 seconds to page something back in. The paging in time is about the same on a sata ssd.

Edited June 17, 2020 by psydii

[gh5000]

CDW are the real reseller here. If you have questions about the device you could express interest with LGfL and then run any queries by CDW.

 

I did notice the Lenovo Chromebook is now coming with an AMD processor rather than intel. So that might be causing the confusion.

[DGardiner]

If you go through a Google Partner, you should be able to have the devices shipped pre-enrolled, I believe.

I know it was something they were actively working on. At one point I was told they were looking at you being able to add the serial number to your G Suite and that being the process that kicked it off, but I don't know if that has progressed.

 

Ill have to ask some questions about that then at our next order! not that theyre a pain to setup but would be handy to just unbox and go!

[Robyems]

Despite the mention in all the adverts, videos and web headers I see no iPads listed here, looks like just an excuse to try and get iPad schools to their page.

 

 

Hi Brimestone, I'm the procurement manager here at LGfL I ran the procurements for the devices, just wanted to confirm we have also gone to market for Ipad's we are working hard to get the result to you. thanks again!

[Brimstone]

Intune can do similar to DEP. Both are awesome.

 

You are confused..

 

Intune is NOT DEP. Intune is a frankly woeful attempt by MS at an MDM I wouldn't touch it ever to manage iPads.

 

DEP is NOT an MDM.

 

Jamf is a proper MDM.

[snagrat]

You are confused..

 

Intune is NOT DEP. Intune is a frankly woeful attempt by MS at an MDM I wouldn't touch it ever to manage iPads.

 

DEP is NOT an MDM.

 

Jamf is a proper MDM.

 

He didn’t say Intune was DEP - he said it was similar!

 

From a Microsoft point of view Intune is kind of DEP, actually AutoPilot is more the feature of Intune that will auto provision a device exactly like DEP does for iPads.

 

I agree Intune is horrible for iPads, but it does work. And it can be very cheap to manage 1000s of devices

[caffrey]

Takes 2 mins to enrol a chromebook, even easier now there is a dropdown - if you wanted you could get end users to do it.

Quickest way for me is to invest in a usb lan adapter, takes longer to get out of the box than to enrol, once your policies are set up etc. it's a doddle

[DavidYoung]

I am very happy about the pricing on this. I have been aware of this coming for quite some time and the pricing is acutally better than was previously hinted (and I thought it would be amazing at the previous figure!). I have put our trust down for 100 Chromebooks in the first instance but I think that number will go up before the ordering opens.

 

Last time LGfL did a Chromebook deal the management licenses were fairly cheaper than MRSP so I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case here too. They also offered the white-glove service for a small fee, so, again I would hope. The only issue might be the sheer volume that CDW would have to process as I believe it is still pretty much a manual process for the reseller!

 

I would 100% go for Chromebooks rather than Windows devices at this level. The performance and management will be 1000x better with Chrome. They are the AMD gen 2 which I belive means AUE is June 2026.

[synaesthesia]

 

If they have the performance of Celeron N4120 they might be viable. 4 cores would be better. @synaesthesia can you give a link to benchmarks?

 

 

Think I might have got myself confused - that bench was from the 300e chromebooks. I know there's less overhead on those but I bet 90% of schools have thrown away better hardware that would have been far quicker with a £15 SSD thrown in.

Asked a couple of friends in the channel and info the Pollock architecture hardware seems few and far between - I question it's existence still based entirely on the fact that SOMEONE must have used one on the internet and therefore performance metrics, processor IDs etc would have been made available to the wider internet almost instantly (loads of services do this, but any gaming service like Origin, Steam do this automatically, some browser plugins, most OEM preinstall software from Dell, Lenovo etc).

Tis a strange one and I'll keep digging.

[synaesthesia]

OK, so a little more digging shows it's a refreshed Dali architecture chip which, if anything would make it suprisingly *overpowered* - geared more towards basic mobile gaming than education workhorse. Certainly way beyond those Celerons and puts them into refurbished Core i3/mobile i5 levels (better than an i5 5300u, plus being an APU able to do decent mobile gaming).

Think I'm even more confused now!

[Zoom7000]

We have the Lenovo 300e across our entire fleet of Chromebooks, barring 2 trolleys which is the previous model, the N23 Yoga. We brought most of these devices under the previous LGfL offers at £189 per device. So, ~£165 per device is a very good offer indeed! These are a pretty robust device for student usage. I wouldn't recommend them for staff, although we do use them for meetings. However, they are perfectly fine, capable and robust enough to use with students.

 

These also come with a very reasonable Chrome Auto Update policy end date of June 2025/2026 depending on the model.

[psydii]

Think I might have got myself confused - that bench was from the 300e chromebooks. I know there's less overhead on those but I bet 90% of schools have thrown away better hardware that would have been far quicker with a £15 SSD thrown in.

Asked a couple of friends in the channel and info the Pollock architecture hardware seems few and far between - I question it's existence still based entirely on the fact that SOMEONE must have used one on the internet and therefore performance metrics, processor IDs etc would have been made available to the wider internet almost instantly (loads of services do this, but any gaming service like Origin, Steam do this automatically, some browser plugins, most OEM preinstall software from Dell, Lenovo etc).

Tis a strange one and I'll keep digging.

 

Yeah, my leads were all through notes on linux kernel patch. But it's not a perfect match. So little info. I *think* it might be related to the R1000 but then there is the R3000 series whose *numbering* scheme seems a much closer match.. but that is marketed under the Epyc (!) brand. The 3101 is four core, and the 3201 is eight core, and the 3301 is 12 core and the 3401 is 16 core..... so if you squint at it, perhaps the 3015 is a two core Epyc variant?

 

It is not beyond the realm of possiblity that a custom build has been made. I mean I know that LGfL have made seeming odd purchasing choices and limited the offered capabilities of services based on what thy have discovered in testing the big name products that claimed to be able to deliver the features. (its why I have had sympathy for SB *some* of their problems were vendors over promising performance claims), Maybe this is desktop class in a netbook!

 

We are proceeding with our Year 10 programme immediately, with what is available today, which sucks slightly. I expect that we'll expand the programme across all years with the LGfL offer over the summer.

[Brimstone]

He didn’t say Intune was DEP - he said it was similar!

 

From a Microsoft point of view Intune is kind of DEP, actually AutoPilot is more the feature of Intune that will auto provision a device exactly like DEP does for iPads.

 

I agree Intune is horrible for iPads, but it does work. And it can be very cheap to manage 1000s of devices

They are not in the least bit similiar.... whatsoever.

 

DEP and Autopilot auto provision devices before activation, neither of them manage devices.End Of.

 

It's these types of utter misconceptions that people read about here and then wonder why things are not working...