Laptop spec for primary pupils

[tmoon-mint]

Hi all,

 

Looking at refreshing some laptops for a primary and was wondering what sort of spec you guys were going for these days? I need them to run full Windows 10/11 so I was looking at the Surface Go 2 but concerned about the low storage as this was a nightmare with the DFE provided devices. I trialed a Surface Laptop SE a while ago but wasnt blown away by the performance and the lack of app support will be an issue.

 

I really liked the Lenovo laptops provided from the DFE but I cant for the life of me find them online.

 

Help me please

[DrBeaker]

Please please PLEASE do NOT buy any Celeron crap without Ethernet ports.

 

We had so many of those sort of sort of spec devices..

 

Underwhelming

Underpowered

Barely able to watch a YouTube video

But they expected to be able to do video editing on them etc.

 

Such a waste of support time

[XiJ]

Absolutely minimum would be In or r3, 8gb ram and ssd.

[DrBeaker]

Absolutely minimum would be In or r3, 8gb ram and ssd.

 

My personal minimum is i5, 8GB RAM, SSD.

[chaplic]

We have about 7 year old ex corporate laptops, so Core I5s of that vintage but withn 120GB SSDs (and replacement batteries). Don’t think they are that heavily used but no complaints. Wont take Windows 11 though.

 

Unscientifically the couple of new DFE freebies we got (with MMC storage and a crappy processor) felt a lot slower.

Edited September 11, 2022 by chaplic

[DrBeaker]

We have about 7 year old ex corporate laptops, so Core I5s of that vintage but withn 120GB SSDs (and replacement batteries). Don’t think they are that heavily used but no complaints. Wont take Windows 11 though.

 

Unscientifically the couple of new DFE freebies we got (with MMC storage and a crappy processor) felt a lot slower.

 

Most of the DFe stuff was eWaste fresh out of the box due to being so underpowered. A lot have non-replaceable parts too.

[FN-GM]

My personal minimum is i5, 8GB RAM, SSD.

 

Agree. This is my absolute bare minimum. The processor should be a minimum of 8th generation to support Windows 11. Plus a TPM 2.0 chip.

[jmak]

Prices seem to be going up a lot at the minute. We mostly buy Dell latitude 5000 series (not a school) and I always recommend i5 and 16GB RAM. In the last 6 months these seem to have gone up from £600 and a bit too almost £900. We're going to have to look at alternatives as while I think they're good for future proofing and surviving a hard life, it's difficult to justify that spend for normal office work. Maybe we'll downgrade to the Vostro series.

 

Having worked in a primary school previously, I can't imagine getting a budget that would let me anywhere near that kind of spec.

 

I'd test some machines with i3, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD (with a strategy that stores everything in the cloud) and a chassis that will allow memory and hard drive upgrades in the future.

 

Either that or look at Chromebooks or Windows SE (I know that isn't what the OP asked for) and a complete change of IT hardware strategy and look at having all of the curriculum delivered with cloud based services.

 

Budgets are going to make hardware refreshes really hard.

[DrBeaker]

Agree. This is my absolute bare minimum. The processor should be a minimum of 8th generation to support Windows 11. Plus a TPM 2.0 chip.

 

Prices seem to be going up a lot at the minute. We mostly buy Dell latitude 5000 series (not a school) and I always recommend i5 and 16GB RAM. In the last 6 months these seem to have gone up from £600 and a bit too almost £900. We're going to have to look at alternatives as while I think they're good for future proofing and surviving a hard life, it's difficult to justify that spend for normal office work. Maybe we'll downgrade to the Vostro series.

 

Having worked in a primary school previously, I can't imagine getting a budget that would let me anywhere near that kind of spec.

 

I'd test some machines with i3, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD (with a strategy that stores everything in the cloud) and a chassis that will allow memory and hard drive upgrades in the future.

 

Either that or look at Chromebooks or Windows SE (I know that isn't what the OP asked for) and a complete change of IT hardware strategy and look at having all of the curriculum delivered with cloud based services.

 

Budgets are going to make hardware refreshes really hard.

 

 

Think is with buying some lower devices, you're literally wasting support time by having techs, staff etc literally WAITING for things to load, boot etc. We've had exactly that with repurposing some of the DFe devices - we've had to compromise as they literally can't run some of the apps because of the low-end spec.

 

All that time spent faffing around by IT trying to get low-end stuff working like high-end stuff is wasted time. Instead of going with the spec IT recommend in the first place.

 

I mean has anyone tried Windows 10 with a HDD these days? Had to wait 20x mins + for one to boot last week. I could have gone for a walk, had a coffee etc in that time.

[jmak]

Think is with buying some lower devices, you're literally wasting support time by having techs, staff etc literally WAITING for things to load, boot etc. We've had exactly that with repurposing some of the DFe devices - we've had to compromise as they literally can't run some of the apps because of the low-end spec.

 

All that time spent faffing around by IT trying to get low-end stuff working like high-end stuff is wasted time. Instead of going with the spec IT recommend in the first place.

 

I mean has anyone tried Windows 10 with a HDD these days? Had to wait 20x mins + for one to boot last week. I could have gone for a walk, had a coffee etc in that time.

I was trying to give some options given the state of school budgets. I'm not suggesting Celerons with spinning rust and I'm not suggesting buying a full set of lower spec machines, just getting hold of something to test. I know with the budget I used to have, insisting on i5 with 8GB would be at least double my budget per machine. That's why I was putting together a strategy towards no servers and making everything cloud based so that there was less demand on local processing. Quick boot times and reliability rather than ultimate performance was my goal.

[rogerdnixon]

100% Chromebook or ChromeOS Flex across our Trust with QR code login for primary pupils + a few ChromeOS tablets. Work great. Generally nothing fancy - some have touch flip devices - but most basic clamshell.

[DrBeaker]

I was trying to give some options given the state of school budgets. I'm not suggesting Celerons with spinning rust and I'm not suggesting buying a full set of lower spec machines, just getting hold of something to test. I know with the budget I used to have, insisting on i5 with 8GB would be at least double my budget per machine. That's why I was putting together a strategy towards no servers and making everything cloud based so that there was less demand on local processing. Quick boot times and reliability rather than ultimate performance was my goal.

 

That's fair enough.

 

But buy cheap, buy twice and you know which department is gonna get the blame regardless

[tmoon-mint]

I was trying to give some options given the state of school budgets. I'm not suggesting Celerons with spinning rust and I'm not suggesting buying a full set of lower spec machines, just getting hold of something to test. I know with the budget I used to have, insisting on i5 with 8GB would be at least double my budget per machine. That's why I was putting together a strategy towards no servers and making everything cloud based so that there was less demand on local processing. Quick boot times and reliability rather than ultimate performance was my goal.

 

Could not agree more. No idea what sort of budgets you guys are working with but Core i5 is almost certainly out of reach for me. In primaries scratch and Purple Mash are probably the most these devices will do so massively overkill.

 

I am not suggesting Geobooks or those god awful Dynabook things by any means, more looking for a good balance between performance and value for money.

[XiJ]

If you can’t afford new i/r5’s then I would certainly look at what you can get refurbed - we have some specialist sponsors on here that could help.

[Mr.Ben]

Minimum now for us is 10th gen i3, 8GB, 256GB.

 

No point in getting refurbs unless they are 8th gen or above due to Windows 11 requirements

 

Dollar exchange rate is significantly worse than 2 years ago, so expect to pay a minimum of £450 per unit.

 

We are using some of the DfE ones for cashback offers already. They are awful - so glad we chose iPads and Chromebooks.

[Mr.Ben]

Minimum now for us is 10th gen i3, 8GB, 256GB.

 

No point in getting refurbs unless they are 8th gen or above due to Windows 11 requirements

 

Dollar exchange rate is significantly worse than 2 years ago, so expect to pay a minimum of £450 per unit.

 

We are using some of the DfE ones for cashback offers already. They are awful - so glad we chose iPads and Chromebooks.

Another point - our evaluation process for best value assumes that each processor gen will cost a little more but be functional for a longer period

 

So we would choose a 12th gen at £507 over a 10th at £450.

[FN-GM]

I was trying to give some options given the state of school budgets. I'm not suggesting Celerons with spinning rust and I'm not suggesting buying a full set of lower spec machines, just getting hold of something to test. I know with the budget I used to have, insisting on i5 with 8GB would be at least double my budget per machine. That's why I was putting together a strategy towards no servers and making everything cloud based so that there was less demand on local processing. Quick boot times and reliability rather than ultimate performance was my goal.

 

If things are so bad maybe look at a new architecture? Maybe Chromebooks are the way forward.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

If you can’t afford new i/r5’s then I would certainly look at what you can get refurbed - we have some specialist sponsors on here that could help.

And those specialist sponsors can definitely help!

I'd suggest our 13" HP Elitebook 830 G5's are the perfect device here. Take a look at the price spec in the following link

 

HP EliteBook 830 G5 Refurbished Core i5 Laptop - ICT Direct

[FN-GM]

And those specialist sponsors can definitely help!

I'd suggest our 13" HP Elitebook 830 G5's are the perfect device here. Take a look at the price spec in the following link

 

HP EliteBook 830 G5 Refurbished Core i5 Laptop - ICT Direct

 

I used one of these for a number of years in my old job. It's a great device!

[psydii]

If it is a new device, the CPU generation shouldn't be a problem and be as 'future proof' as an i5.

 

The key things are:

• To ensure you are buying at least quad-core cpus. Dual Cores are unusable.
  
• To use InTune Shared Device profile.
  
• To only install Office 365 (or ideally leave configured as webbased apps).
  
• To remove *all* 3rd party software particularly anti-malware.
  
• If they are going to be shared, use the shared PC profile from Intune. OneDrive Client is then disabled. Do not install Teams, but instead used the web app.
  

 

The other thing to look out for is the eMMC, there is a variant of eMMC5.1 which is as fast as SATA (theoretically 400Mb/s) and good enough. There is a more common variant that, to put it charitably, is not.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/219803-64gb-storage-enough.html#post1882223

[Aprice]

i5 8GB SSD (NVMe ideally) is our general customer base spec now.

We've pretty much stopped recommending refurb to customers as an option now, largely down to Windows 11 and it's difficult on one hand pushing 5 year replacement cycles and the other replacing it with kit that's already 3-4+.

 

We trialled some Lenovo AMD units and wasn't really that impressed with them so Intel is our go to unless there's a really good reason otherwise at the time of purchasing.