laptops for trolley

[chrbb]

Been asked to price up eight laptops for a trolley, anyone bought any good sturdy laptops recently, approx £400 including 3 yr warranty?

[Dom_]

Dell Vostro 3550's are decent, I've got loads in my schools and not had any problems yet

[Millgate]

Toshibas are really good and fit the budget. They usually come with 1 year warranty but the 3 year upgrade costs very little to EDU so should be fine

[chrbb]

Thanks, just wondering though are laptops 'old hat' should we be looking at i pads or similar?

[witch]

Just bought 10 Tosh C660s. They are robust and not too expensive.

As for what you should get - what are they for?

[old_n07]

Toshibas are really good and fit the budget. They usually come with 1 year warranty but the 3 year upgrade costs very little to EDU so should be fine

 

If you can buy through the NDNA (I know HE can but not sure about schools) you get three years warranty as standard with Toshiba, there are only a few suppliers who do the NDNA though - XMA, Getech and Viglen. It might be worth a call to see and get pricing

 

Toshiba Education Community

[pcstru]

We picked up some Lenovo T410's via Misco for a touch more than £400 with a 3 year warranty (lurrvley bit's of kit). They were ordered by someone who then didn't want them hence the price. They have probably all gone but for trolly laptops it's always worth looking at their refurbs depending on what will be asked of the laptop (they are find for office/browsing - arguably they are fine for video/3d cad but they will be a little slower than a current processor/chipset). You could pick up their T500 refurb and replace the HD with an SSD for that budget.

[ben604]

I'd find some for which you know you can get replacement keys/keyboards cheap! We've learned the hard way...

[chrbb]

They are for use in classrooms, research, numeracy flash type software and word, joined to the domain. Am wondering if laptops 15.6" are going to be to most suitable, but has anyone bought any netbooks for similar use?

[witch]

Yes, we have 37 in one school and 47 in the other. Samsung netbooks (dont know the model number as they seem to bring a new one out every 5 minutes!)

The schools use them for everything they use the IT suite for and they seem to be happy

[sted]

how about a compromise something about 13" screen and no cd/dvd. Personally i dont like netbooks as the screens are too small and possibly not an issue but worth considering windows 8 metro apps are supposed to require a minimum of 1024x768 to run properly im led to believe which most netbooks cant do (and there are other programs that require a higher res than a netbook can provide)

[glennda]

Thanks, just wondering though are laptops 'old hat' should we be looking at i pads or similar?

 

no - only worth that is if there is a use for iPads. If its just becuase they are "the new thing" then its pointless IMHO