which brand of laptops do you have

[projector1]

just looking to find out what make of laptops are used in the education enviroment. Is there a dominant brand out there?

We tend to go for TOSHIBA ranging from A30 SP2100 L10 & L20s Although the elonexs we have are right work horses.

[Guest]

DELL / HP here.

[Geoff]

We have Dell D505's and D510's. They've mainly been purchased through our LEA's 'Laptops for Teachers' scheme.

[Andie]

We have a mixture of laptops that have been bought through Laptops for Teachers. Some of the old RMs are still going strong. The newest ones (last 18 months approximately) have been purchased from Ergo and have been fine so far.

[Ric_]

I have a mixture of Dell and HP... the HP one's are of a far higher build quality.

[Midget]

Dell

[Lee_K_81]

toshiba here. All the ones we buy come with 3yr warranty which is useful as it also covers the power supplies as teachers are incapable of looking after them it seems..... *runs to hide*

[maniac]

We have a right old mixture, mainly ACER laptops of varying ages and specs, but we are mainly buying Toshiba at the moment and are looking to convert the main bulk of our staff laptops to Toshiba ones this year as we find them more reliable.

 

We also have some HP ones which are quite good, but I find the wireless networking on them un-reliable. Few odd DELL ones, and some ancient RM ones as well (but these were freebies I seem to recall.)

 

Mike.

[CyberNerd]

Mostly IBM-R50e (70), Some IBM-R60, a few toshes and older acers (21) are to be replaced with R60's in April. The IBM's are sturdy.

[ninjabeaver]

We have a mix of Acers, RM, HP, and the last 2 lots of the Laptops for Teachers have been Ergos, but I think the batch from 3 years ago has a faulty HDD run in them. Third one of the same lot has now failed.

 

We've now moved onto the NovaTech Laptops. They offer an extended warranty for about £40 which is a bargain.

[limbo]

Tosh

[broc]

Dell Latitude D series notebooks, because you can replace the optical drives with media bay batteries. This means they will work all day without top up charges. Spares are relatively cheap too.

 

Personally I prefer high-end Thinkpads (X & T series) but they are too expensive for curriculum use.

[gwendes]

Novatech which are Uniwill chassis. Cheap and I used to work for them so know the tech and aftersales.

[pinemarten]

staff :Dell Lat D505, HP NX6310, Acer aspire 3100

students: Dell Lat 100L, HP nx6110

[localzuk]

We have a selection of Toshibas, Fujitsu-Siemens and HP's. We also have 1 dell. I am only buying HP now though, in order to try and standardise things - it is irritating having so many different people to call when things go wrong.

[tosca925]

90 Dell, 30 RM, 20 Acer, 5 HP, 5 Maxdata and a few odds and sods.

[molesm]

20 Old Dells

55 Ergo Enisi/211

5 Sony that Teachers have bought with departmental budgets

1 old RM

1 New RM

 

15 old (terrible) IBM Thinkpads for students whoch keep breaking

About 12 SEN laptops that have come from The LEA

 

Plus a few others here and there

[localzuk]

15 old (terrible) IBM Thinkpads for students whoch keep breaking

 

What model? In my personal experience of IBM's (ie. fixing them as a job) I found them to be incredibly sturdy and well put together.

[Sylv3r]

We have the best experience with Toshiba, had some bad Viglens and Dells in the past so have ditched them.

[kxv2020]

Again, Dell here too!

[RoyG]

The vast majority of ours have come from Ergo. They got the contract to supply the Laptops for Teachers for Essex for the last few years and have impressed us with their warranty and service performance - 3 year warranty and excellent Tech. Support - no bloody call centre!!

 

The kit has been generally good, though one particular model was flawed, resulting in almost all of the 30 machines of that type we bought having to be repaired - faulty k/b & graphics controllers.

 

We did buy a few Acer tablets about a year ago and almost all of them have been returned under warranty, after seriously slow and frustrating phone calls to their call centre - typically half an hour to talk to a knowledgeable human.

 

We're sticking with Ergo.

 

RoyG

[steve]

140 HP and 6 Toshiba

 

HP support is a call centre in india, but is usually ok.

Build quality is pretty good.

 

Not had any trouble with the toshibas.

[sidewinder]

Most of ours are NS Optimum ones, they use Clevo chassis which I have to say are not the best - random reboots & lots of reimaging required. Lots of HD failures as well. Having said that they stand up fairly well to pupil abuse

 

We have about 70 Acer 4150's which have been generally OK

 

And teachers laptops are exclusivly Ergo. Im not impressed by the build quality of the older ones we still have, the hinges dont seem durable at all. The newer ones are very nice though

[kylewilliamson]

We've standardised (recentley) on HP laptops for staff. We've used Acer's in the past, which havent been too reliabile.

 

We've got a few various IBM's, some Dell Latitudes, and a huge pile of broken Acer Travelmates.

 

As for Thinkpad's, I expect the quality to drop as the prices fall under Levono.

 

Kyle

[CyberNerd]

As for Thinkpad's, I expect the quality to drop as the prices fall under Levono.

our most recent batch of Lenovo Thinkpads seem to be of good quality - at least compared to the actual lenovo's - they cost £480

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=264571&CatId=610

not sure how that price compares to similar spec laptops - but being able to interchange parts and use same images is invaluable