Laptops and Trolleys recommendations

[zoohead]

Morning All,

 

I have been asked to get quotes for two classroom sets of Windows laptops and two trolleys, as we are losing an IT suite this summer. Does anyone have any recommendations for reliable, competitive companies who could supply these? Initially, they will be domain joined, but eventually I am looking at rolling out Intune. They will only be used for M365 and browsing, so there is no need for high performance. I have had one quote so far from Mesh Computers which is promising, but it would be interesting to know who other schools use.

 

Cheers

[DrCheese]

I would strongly recommend Chromebooks for laptop trollies - Whenever we've had Windows ones, the updating has been a headache as they will halt user login until finished.

Also unless you spend £600/700 per device, the performance is terrible.

 

 

You can butcher Chromebooks to basically be 365 books (Entra ID login & so on) also

 

[TheHyperTechie]

What is your budget for the laptops?

 

As @DrCheese mentioned, in my experience Windows laptops for students never tend to be the best option. I remember at my last school we had 2 trollies of Lenovo's, and every day I was down at that trolley troubleshooting them. They were domain joined as well. 

 

If you insist on windows laptops, I would look at Stones range maybe the Edge-R. Trolley wise, I have always used Zioxi and have never had any issues.

 

If you are open to chromebooks (imo far superior for student use) I would look at a 14" model, funnily enough - one of my suppliers sent me through a deal the other day. ASUS CXI4 14" chromebook, with AUE until 2035 for £110 a unit!

[Rob_D]

You can get descent HP Elitebooks from ICT Direct for about £300.

 

Either way, you still have the problems of them not getting plugged half the time, getting trashed/sticker-bombed because there's on-one that has any ownership of them, half of them going missing, half the chargers going missing. In the end you wind up removing the chargers from the trolley or having to buy additional chargers because staff don't trust the battery life to last all through their lesson, which is probably more to do with the laptop only having been on charge for about 10 minutes over the last 3 days than battery degradation, but they'll still assume it's due to poor battery life and never trust them on battery again.

 

If you're buying general use laptop trolleys, budget for the devices to be replaced every 1-2 years.

 

I've always rated the lapsafe trolleys.

[hailst0rm]

Whatever you get I would go for integrated USB-C charging. Every trolley we have done has always ended up looking trashed no matter how carefully you zip tie everything in.

 

My favourite trolleys so far have to be the ones from Ergotron. Same company that has made Dell branded ones.

[JazzFlute]

Just bought a couple of Asus Expertbooks which are marketed for students but cannot get them to build successfully using Win PE as they have  UFS storage I've just found out. clever marketing as i thought they had a NVME slot!  So id steer clear of these unless you intend to build devices manually.  There's a workaround bit you have to redo the .wim and insert some files/driver but only works with some versions of PE

[JazzFlute]

3 hours ago, HyperTech said:

What is your budget for the laptops?

 

As @DrCheese mentioned, in my experience Windows laptops for students never tend to be the best option. I remember at my last school we had 2 trollies of Lenovo's, and every day I was down at that trolley troubleshooting them. They were domain joined as well. 

 

If you insist on windows laptops, I would look at Stones range maybe the Edge-R. Trolley wise, I have always used Zioxi and have never had any issues.

 

If you are open to chromebooks (imo far superior for student use) I would look at a 14" model, funnily enough - one of my suppliers sent me through a deal the other day. ASUS CXI4 14" chromebook, with AUE until 2035 for £110 a unit!

thumbs up for Zioxi trolleys 👍

[Rob_D]

25 minutes ago, hailst0rm said:

Whatever you get I would go for integrated USB-C charging.

I wonder how long the USB-C ports would hold up to all the unplugging and replugging, especially when they're yanked around to reach a laptop put in backwards in the adjacent bay.

The yanking is also why I'd really want replaceable cables (but not too easily removeable otherwise they'll disappear).

[JazzFlute]

3 minutes ago, Rob_D said:

I wonder how long the USB-C ports would hold up to all the unplugging and replugging, especially when they're yanked around to reach a laptop put in backwards in the adjacent bay.

The yanking is also why I'd really want replaceable cables (but not too easily removeable otherwise they'll disappear).

 

In theory USB-C ports for charging universal devices is good and still be my first choice but over a year of student use I've had a couple that have become "loose" or stopped plugging all the way in to make a connection.  Maybe just wear and tear on the device side but I've had to repair 2 devices because of it and noticed a couple more have issues out of 60 devices.

[Andrew_C]

Lapsafe trollies are bomb proof, and heavy to match.  The charging is built in, but I don't know if they do USB-C (surprised if not).  Any supplied chargers become spare for the future.

[BKGarry]

USB-C is not a good laptop charging connection, the amount of dead ports we have on staff laptops, the thin HP barrel connector or even better Magsafe, is where it is at for chargers

[Roberto]

57 minutes ago, Rob_D said:

I wonder how long the USB-C ports would hold up to all the unplugging and replugging, especially when they're yanked around to reach a laptop put in backwards in the adjacent bay.

The yanking is also why I'd really want replaceable cables (but not too easily removeable otherwise they'll disappear).

I've got no problem with USB-C as a charging cable for my personal devices - or anyone's really, as we tend to take care of our own stuff. Even stuff that's issued to you 1:1 you might take more care of. But yeah I'd hesitate over its use for shared devices in a charging dock, people will use the cable to pull on the laptop, shear is going to happen because its unrealistic to expect people to pull perfectly straight at all times... Not a good combo.

[dhicks]

6 hours ago, zoohead said:

I have been asked to get quotes for two classroom sets of Windows laptops and two trolleys, as we are losing an IT suite this summer.

 

To follow on from the comments about laptop charging ports, we use Chromebooks, most of which have two available USB-C charging ports, one each side. Very handy for if one does break for some reason, and does mean laptops can be stacked either way around, which makes putting them away a bit easier. I'm guessing similar hardware should be available for Windows devices.

 

We use Lock-n-Charge cabinets, which have proven pretty robust. These are the ones whith the 5-device carry buckets inside. We find, with primary-age children, 5 devices is actually quite heavy and difficult to carry, so we've tended to swap them out for dividers. They provide standard dividers, but we've found metal lever-arch file stands work well, allowing us to fit more devices in per cabinet.

 

We've swapped most of our individual USB-C chargers out for multi-way USB chargers, to which we plug in standard USB-A-to-C cables that are cheaper to replace than a whole charger. They also draw less power / ground leakage(?) than multiple laptop power bricks, making it less likely to trip the ring main out.

[zoohead]

Thanks for all the comments so far. Helpful information and a lot to think about!

[aydee]

43 minutes ago, dhicks said:

 

We use Lock-n-Charge cabinets, which have proven pretty robust. These are the ones whith the 5-device carry buckets inside. We find, with primary-age children, 5 devices is actually quite heavy and difficult to carry, so we've tended to swap them out for dividers. They provide standard dividers, but we've found metal lever-arch file stands work well, allowing us to fit more devices in per cabinet.

We also use Lock-nCharge cabinets (we have around 20 around our trust schools). They work well, but the baskets that come with them get beaten up/broken quite a lot with day to day use and are VERY expensive to replace. but cant really be beaten for carrying devices around the school, but as above, more suited to secondary schools.