Teacher laptops

[jamoritch]

Been given some prices for a laptop for a Teacher. We usually use Stone but they’ve come in more expensive this time. The two with the most competitive price are.

 

Lenovo v15

ASUS vivobook 15 x1500ea

 

Both with 5 year warranty. Does anyone have any experience with either (or both would be amazing) to be able to recommend one over the other? Spec is the same. Not sure on what it’s like claiming on the warranty for either though!

 

Cheers

[Aprice]

We've got a lot of the Lenovo V14 laptops, mostly they are OK, but the trackpads aren't great. Not sure if the V15 has the same touchpad.

[mrbios]

Considered refurbs? The HP Elitebook 840 G5's from ICT-Direct are fantastic. 8th gen, 256gb ssd, 16gb ram.

 

Out of the two you've listed though i'd discount the Asus one straight off the bat. Consumer laptops are atrocious to repair and not as sturdy. I wouldn't go back from business grade laptops now.

[ITGuyNW]

Considered refurbs? The HP Elitebook 840 G5's from ICT-Direct are fantastic. 8th gen, 256gb ssd, 16gb ram.

 

Out of the two you've listed though i'd discount the Asus one straight off the bat. Consumer laptops are atrocious to repair and not as sturdy. I wouldn't go back from business grade laptops now.

 

Can vouch for the HP laptops.

[neb1355]

We've stopped purchasing refurb laptops for staff in the last couple years, doesn't seem economically viable any more.

 

Our current favorite has been the Acer TravelMate P2 with AMD Ryzen 5 Pro processor, 8GB RAM (can upgrade to 16GB), Full HD screen, WiFi6 and M.2 NVME Drives.

 

We managed to get them for as low as £300 Ex VAT. They have typical plastic consumer build quality but so far they've been rock solid and spare parts are easy and cheap to get ahold of.

 

Out of approximately 50 of them, we've only had to fix 2-3, all were from staff dropping them on to hard floors while walking around school (of course not using their provided laptop bags!).

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Considered refurbs? The HP Elitebook 840 G5's from ICT-Direct are fantastic. 8th gen, 256gb ssd, 16gb ram.

 

Out of the two you've listed though i'd discount the Asus one straight off the bat. Consumer laptops are atrocious to repair and not as sturdy. I wouldn't go back from business grade laptops now.

 

Can vouch for the HP laptops.

 

They really are cracking laptops! Just £295 each, look like new, far better build quality than those lenovos and the same spec we use in our own work devices, so you know they'll do the trick!

[Ditto]

If there is a 17" equivalent, it would be worth updating in http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/232638-recommend-me-cheap-17-laptop.html

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Sadly not. 15.6 is about the biggest on offer these days. Dinner plate laptops are reserved for the really expensive professional devices and gaming wotsits these days.

[jamoritch]

They really are cracking laptops! Just £295 each, look like new, far better build quality than those lenovos and the same spec we use in our own work devices, so you know they'll do the trick!

 

Send you a DM Dave.

[FN-GM]

Considered refurbs? The HP Elitebook 840 G5's from ICT-Direct are fantastic. 8th gen, 256gb ssd, 16gb ram.

 

The issue is that CPU is already 5-6 years old. By the time they leave service they will be approaching 10!

[mrbios]

The issue is that CPU is already 5-6 years old. By the time they leave service they will be approaching 10!

 

Except for Microsoft putting limitations on Windows 11's minimum CPU requirements, i've never had an issue with a CPU that's 8-9 years old. Not for the kind of things students and teachers do anyway. Obviously it's a gamble on Microsoft not doing the same again with windows 12 and beyond, but i've found i get much better value for money out of them, especially being proper business grade devices, when compared to similarly priced brand new devices (which at that price point tend to be consumer grade)

 

90% of the devices out of my 600 or so windows desktops and laptops are refurbished, and performance isn't something i ever get complaints about. Obviously YMMV, but we're using adobe creative cloud, kids are playing with Unity etc. For the most part a teacher with a laptop is using office and web browser for the majority of their work, for that a 10 year old CPU will still cope absolutely fine.

 

We're only just getting rid of the last of our Dell E6430's, which used 3rd gen intel CPUs, 3rd gen is 12 years old tomorrow. Now those are quite slow now, but they still fulfil a job at a push.

[Ditto]

I was going to post similar. My main laptop for general use (using now) is a Lenovo x220 with an i7-2620M. I run a stupid amount of browser tabs, Office software and a few other things. It has 8GB memory and a fast SSD, and it rarely struggles - and when it does is because of my daft number of browser tabs. My kids have run fine for desktop i7-2600 for school work and light-ish gaming (Minecraft, Fortnite, Steam). Windows 11 is not an interest for me at the moment, but I know people have had it running on Dell Optiplex's 790's with the i7-2600 chip. That technology is 12 years old, but it still serves me well. Siblings have much more recent Celeron style processors and their laptops don't keep up with mine. So for me, age is not such a factor, overall performance is. I feel since series 2, performance improvements have been small increments.

 

My workstation beast I run is dual X5660's. Still does what I need.

 

What I would say with laptops, age really is a killer of batteries. I've yet to find a replacement for the Lenovo that is anywhere the original which ran well for about 7 years. Replacements so far barely last a year.

[sigma]

I’ve got some V15’s which I’m happy with. I have had issues with ASUS support in the past so don’t buy them. I tend not buy extended warranty any more. These core-i5 units were cheap relative to the cost of extended warranty.

[Tester2000]

Bit late to the post, so I do apologise, however for anyone else's reference, from experience of the Lenovo V series laptops (V110, V130, V155, and V15's) the build quality leaves something to be desired regarding the hinges. They may last for a consumer or a light business user, but for a teacher who's moving the laptop between rooms a couple of times a day, the hinges break at an alarming rate. Usually starts with the hinge nuts being ripped clean off the top case, or the top/bottom case snapping around the tiny hinge plates. We've had a few hundred devices of the aforementioned models, and a large percentage of these have all ended up the same way, used for parts as the hinge mounts/case plastic near the hinges have snapped.

[Richie99]

I use Optiplex 790 & stored my 3010, my 790 is using 32 gb ram & 3010 has 16 gb ram, I also re-arranged my files on my HDD, and seems like its new on my 790, I wish I could find 16 gbs x 4 ram, for my 790.. it's just a dream. On my dell latitude E6500 using 8 gb ram and my Toshiba Satellite L355- S7915 has 8 gb ram, I thought I'd mention this Edited January 15, 2024 by Richie99

[Olliedawg]

Again if you would consider refurbs, I can vouch for Thinkpad T480's. Bought a fair few of these recently for staff (I even use one myself for work, with 16GB of memory).

 

Slap a larger 56Wh battery in over the standard battery & they're great - easily lasts me half a day with constant use

 

*edit to remove typo*

Edited January 15, 2024 by Olliedawg

[PotNoodleTech]

Again if you would consider refurbs, I can vouch for Thinkpad T480's. Bought a fair few of these recently for staff (I even use one myself for work, with 16GB of memory).

 

Slap a larger 56KWh battery in over the standard battery & they're great - easily lasts me half a day with constant use

 

Should last more like 37 weeks - 56kwh is nearly the size of a Tesla Car battery!

[Olliedawg]

Should last more like 37 weeks - 56kwh is nearly the size of a Tesla Car battery!

 

Sorry I meant Wh lol! Would be nice to have a laptop battery which lasted that long

[ICTDirect_Dave]

And I can do T480's too! They're what we use for our staff devices and they're glorious.