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Recommend sturdy Windows laptop for class sets?


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Posted

Hi all,

 

Anyone have any recommendations for laptops for class trolleys?

 

Min i3/Ryzen 3/5

8GB RAM

256 disk preferably NVMe.

14" screen min.

NIC port preferable.

Needs to be tough.

 

 

These are going into a secondary... need to be robust and keyboards need to be replaceable for when the cherubs pull keys off.

 

Just setting up Google properly and not ready for Chromebooks yet... these need to Windows.

 

 

 

Cheers in advance.

Posted

We've been running 30 Dynabook C40 here for a year and a half in our laptop trolley.

 

i3, 8GB RAM, SSD

 

They've held up so far, being used by all year groups in a primary school. Not had one issue or any damage

 

I found them to be fairly good value for money when we purchased them.

 

My only gripe with them is their charging connector, although I believe it has been upgraded to USB-C on the newer models.

  • Thanks 1
Posted

Look at some Intel N100 based devices. With a 128Gb SSD and the Share User config set (can be done without requiring intune) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/set-up-shared-or-guest-pc?tabs=intune

 

They have roughly the performance of 2016 i5s by containing only the efficiently cores (and the cut down igpu) from the 12th gen i series. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/alder-lake-n-surprisingly-efficient-gaming

 

I believe Lenovo has some 14" edu models due in the country soonish.

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Posted (edited)
Don't buy acer, build quality is shocking and the support is a nightmare. We have 20 p214's and almost all of them have had either a hinge failure or a charging port failure. Repair timeframe has been roughly 3 weeks on average.

Agreed, unfortunately almost our entire fleet is Acer. Got stacks of them with broken hinges.

Desktops need their coin cell pulling out constantly, just will not power on otherwise. Support has been poor at best, logged a ticket with PXE boot issues on one particular model, waited for a bit then the response was PXE doesn't work on this model, despite that it will at least attempt to PXE.

 

Bit of a mixed bag with the newer Lenovo laptops we've bought. The V15 G4 AMN I believe is the last one we bought which seems OK so far.

Edited by Aprice
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Posted
Hi all,

 

Anyone have any recommendations for laptops for class trolleys?

 

Min i3/Ryzen 3/5

8GB RAM

256 disk preferably NVMe.

14" screen min.

NIC port preferable.

Needs to be tough.

 

 

These are going into a secondary... need to be robust and keyboards need to be replaceable for when the cherubs pull keys off.

 

Just setting up Google properly and not ready for Chromebooks yet... these need to Windows.

 

 

 

Cheers in advance.

 

 

EDIT: Budget is circa £350 max per unit.

Posted
Refurbs aye. But the best in the business and with 3-5 year warranties to boot :-)

If you try one out, you'll not be disappointed I'm sure .

 

I've purchased plenty of equipment through ICT Direct (laptops, desktops, Desktop AIO's). Very good service

  • Thanks 2
Posted
Anyone got any of these???

 

ASUS BR1402C

 

They look sturdy and spec is OK. Coming in at about £340 ex VAT

 

We bought a class set of these over the summer. Excellent laptops, well built and easy to repair (not that we've need to... yet).

 

Only issue we had was when imaging them through PXE. Had some weird driver issues, but I'm hoping this was because they are pretty new devices.

 

There has already been one set of new drivers since we did it, so it might not be a problem now.

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