Who has a laptop trolley?

[button_ripple]

We are planning a major upgrade to our network, including purchasing a laptop trolley and replacing the existing WAPS. The plan is to start with 30 laptops and then increase this to 60 and then 90.

 

Can anyone tell me which laptops they have, what trolley they have, what WAPS and switches they have and where the WAPS are placed.

 

I know laptops are a pain, but our HT is very pro "mobile learning"!

 

Thanks!

[Singist]

If your school is interested, I have a school that has a laptop trolley (holds 20) for sale at half price (£500) never used and it still has its locking plate, lock and 2 sets of keys.

[jcollings]

We have 5 sets of 15 here. 3 sets of Stone and 2 sets of RM Mobile1. They had an access point in each trolley which they plugged into a classroom wired point each time. This didn't work because staff plugged them in with no power, gave the laptops out 1st etc. so we took them out and blanket covered the site with Netgear el cheapo points which work reasonably well.

 

In terms of usage etc the departments who own them are totally responsible for moving them around and charging them etc. We do maintain them on a regular basis (1 per half term). The RM Mobile 1 are much better than the Stone ones although to be fair any issues we have had are ones of vandalism rather than kit failure, the favourite one being to pick the keys off!

 

The other nice thing about the RM Mobile 1 is you can lock the wireless to always on in the BIOS which is helpful.

 

The other thing we go through is keys - staff leave 'em in - move trolley - hit door frame etc.

 

We also have 15 MacBooks which dual boot for Media. Not a jot of trouble from them.

Edited June 5, 2008 by jcollings

[Gerry]

We have a trolley holding 15 Dell D505's, a Linksys WAP and a HP 1320n on top. Staff who want to use it must first undergo a short induction and we have a "manual" stored in the trolley also (a bit pointless though - staff reading IT instruction manuals? In our dreams!) We make staff responsible for the unit so if anything gets damaged/lost/stolen etc. they will not be allowed to use the trolley again for a long time. We also use combination padlocks (keys too easy to lose).

The usual problems we have is that some staff forget to plug in the WAP or they turn the laptops on before the WAP, or they forget to turn off the power strips in the trolley before plugging it into a wall socket (trips the electrics in the area and causes havoc!). They usually only forget just the once though...

[Spitfire]

We are running about 150 laptops, going up to 400 soon.

 

We use "Lapsafe" storage and charging trolleys, we have 6 in use at the moment and more to come as "laptops" are the in thing here this week, depending on the model they can hold upto 30 laptops, get the ones with the charging units included then you don't have to use the individual laptop chargers, as that's a real pain.

 

3Com OfficeConnect wap, easy to setup and use.

 

All our printing is networked , so no problems there.

[SteveB_NI]

We have 4 full laptop trolleys for sale here... includes 20 laptops (on average - depending how quickly I can get them fixed & returned to trolley).

 

Best offer wins

 

[sippo]

We use the HP Wireless management module, with HP laptops. We have about 60 at the moment and touch wood the only problems we have is the pesky kids that turn off the wireless buttons!!

 

I did put my foot down and say that we would not be responsible for unloading/checking/charging laptops at the end or beginning of every lesson.

[sparkeh]

2 Trolleys of 15 RM nBook 4150s running off two Buffalo access points.

 

The WLAN has originally introduced for teacher laptops, though not ideal it was decided by SMT to add the 30 pupil laptops to this. Plus, the way the APs are placed, to cover the school for the teachers, means that quite often, all 30 are connected to just one point.

 

Runs surprising well, the only problem I have seen is when a teacher told all the pupils to print some large files, to the same network printer, all at once and the thing just fell over. They don't do that anymore.

[dhicks]

Can anyone tell me which laptops they have

 

We don't have whole-class laptop trollies here, but we did at my last school. There we used first-model RM One laptops, as they were "designed" to be suitable for that exact task. The hard-glass screens were good, but the keys tended to come off the keyboard too easily (like, if you opened the lid too fast...). I'd say go for the cheapest laptops you can find and just accept that, say, 10% will be damaged per year. We currently have several of the Dell Vostro 1000 laptops - cheap (£186 each?), but perfectly capable.

 

Avoid laptop trollies that are basically wooden cabinets with castor wheels on the bottom, they can't take any serious use. Castor wheels, especially, vibrate and wobble and fall off on anything but the smoothest of ground.

 

--

David Hicks

[reggiep]

We use "Lapsafe" storage and charging trolleys, we have 6 in use at the moment and more to come as "laptops" are the in thing here this week, depending on the model they can hold upto 30 laptops, get the ones with the charging units included then you don't have to use the individual laptop chargers, as that's a real pain.

 

I have to take a stand against lapsafes for a couple of points.

The 30 laptop trolley is a nightmare to move around the corridors even when it doesn't have hundreds of excited children running around the corridors, it's just so heavy and unresponsive to steering requests!

 

Also the built in charger might seem like a good idea at the time but if you replace the laptops at a later date you are stuck with the wrong chargers in the trolley, and yes I do speak from bitter experiece.

 

To change tack completely has anyone used asus eee notebooks in a trolley, that would be easy to move around?

[jamin100]

I have 4 laptop trolleys with 15 laptops in each. Each trolley has 3 Dlink WAP's. These are all connected to a switch and then into the network.

 

We then have 60 Toshiba A200's.

 

Not really had any problems with them here. We use Loxit trolleys that can hold 18 in each.

[sippo]

we use Loxit Lapbank 30-4 Laptop Storage Trolley's. Very sterdy. Heavy yes. If kids get in the way they will get run over- simple as. They need to be heavy as that's their main purpose- so they don't get nicked?! They also can be bolted to the wall/floor.

[dhoward_westexetc]

We have 19 laptop trolleys at our Establishment with 15 laptops in each, shortly to go up to 20 trolleys.

 

Our laptops are a mix of older Fujitsu and HP laptops, and newer Dell Latitude D520 model laptops.

 

Every trolley has a Nortel 2330A WAP on the trolley that is placed into a dedicated wall point clearly marked with a large 'W'. Every room has a dedicated wall point. Teachers are told that they need to plug the trolley WAP into the wall point two minutes before starting to use the trolley. The WAP connects to a Nortel security switch.

 

Laptops currently run Windows XP SP2 with the wireless client V3 update. They will have XP SP3 from September.

 

We have WSUS set to only notify for updates and not download them. Each half term we then download the updates to each laptop and install them. This reduces wireless usage to only the necessary traffic. At the same time they are checked and necessary repairs done.

 

Having had several problems getting them working correctly (incompatible wireless cards, the infamous svchost.exe problem caused by WSUS on XP SP2!) they now work very reliably.

 

The only problems are the occasional 'domain not available problem' when Windows seems to lose the wireless settings and you need to do a 'gpupdate' to refresh them. That and occasional vandalism of keyboards.

 

If maintained to a strict maintenance regime laptop trolleys can be nearly as reliable as computer suites (but I still prefer cable connections!!!)

[Elemtech]

There are many laptop trolleys out there, they fall into 3 categories:

 

1. Storage only (Bretford, Sahara)

2. Storage & Charging

3. Rolls Royce! Lapsafe

 

Take a look at Keep it secure Trollies.

 

We sell a range by several manufacturers but they are by far the best Value for Money.

 

PM me if you want details.

[Hacksawbob]

We use two Keep it secure trolleys here. Had them "road tested" by the local crims. Trolley was totalled by crow bars but no laptops were damaged. Brian the guy who works there is a little awkward with off the wall sense of humour if your not used to it, but they are a good company get stuff done. The product is good and they replaced our break in damaged trolley for less than the full price as they could re-use some bits off the old one.

 

Wireless I use Airport extremes with a mix of XP and mac clients, they need continual re-boots and don't believe what it says on the tin of extending networks. I tried a cloud across the school with them and they couldn't seem to handle it. I now have several separate bridged wireless networks now and it works after a fashion, but the AP needs to follow the batch of PC/MAcs that are assigned to it. I have heard 3rd party that the Cisco version isn't up to much either but I haven't tried this myself.

[whiplash2006]

We have 3 trolley's here, 2 holding 16 ACER Travelmate 220's (getting on a bit now but a 1.4 centrino should be good enough for playing web games, because lets face it thats all they ever do) and the other trolley has 6 Acer 220's and 6 new Fujitsu Siemens 1.7 celerons in. All have built in wireless and we went down the d-link WAP route. MISTAKE!

[robknowles]

Hello,

 

I've just brought a new laptop trolley to hold 30 laptops - very nice (Top Tec Security & Industrial Products - UK). For our old laptop trolleys we use to have a wireless point and connect a lead up as neccessary. However, since we now have a site-wide wireless network we are going to be using that, along with a wireless printer to keep it simple.

 

Rob

[level42]

So how long do these laptops and trolleys last? We are looking at this as a possible solution, but it would entail the pupils coming to collect the laptops from a central location (such is the nature of our building, which has lots of stairs). How long do you guys see one lasting, and how long do the laptops last when used by the pupils?

[Pete10141748]

From my experience, a laptop used by pupils, and charged & stored in a lapsafe every night might make it to the 18 month mark. MIGHT.

 

Far more likely that the battery will be dead at around 12 months.

 

Of course, there are exceptions, and no doubt someone will soon post that they've got laptops that are 3 years old and still going. Fair enough, but thats just not been my experience.

[alena]

We have a trolley with 30 laptops (weighs an absolute ton) If you are going to buy 30 make sure you consider the weight when pushing it between lessons and also the bigger trolley's are harder to move around and kids dont hold doors or move out of the way for you!

[richard.thomas]

We have two lapsafes (with Samsung R20s in) in Science which they are responsible for. And two lapsafes with MacBooks in which the Media Technician/Music Teacher looks after. Not *too* much trouble now that we've found an imaging solution that works with the Samsung laptops!

[SteveB_NI]

We have a trolley with 30 laptops (weighs an absolute ton) If you are going to buy 30 make sure you consider the weight when pushing it between lessons and also the bigger trolley's are harder to move around and kids dont hold doors or move out of the way for you!

 

I get round the kids not moving out of the way by just ploughing through bags / whatever they leave in my way, and informing crowds of people that the trolley doesn't stop. That's usually enough to scatter them when a 30 laptop capacity lapsafe is heading their way.

 

doors are a complete pain though

[farmerste]

you poor bar-stewards i feel really sorry for you guys

 

all that worthless, oops sorry, wireless technology , hope you get some proper computers sometime soon -lol

 

[bossman]

@alena:

your absolutely right on the mark there with your comment, there is a serious health and safety issue which needs to be addressed by anyone who endeavours to go down this route.

I would not even dream of pushing a lapsafe around with 10 laptops in never mind 30 and i would not expect my technicians to do it either.

All it takes is for a technician to hurt his/her back whilst pushing one around and who is liable?

"Where there's blame there's a claim" can see the serious injuries board giving compensation out left right and centre.