Laptops For Preschool

[DaveWorkshopLC]

Hello,

Shot an email over to you through your site, but thought I would post the question here too and maybe get a community opinion of the problem. Love the channel and would really appreciate any advice you could give on this.

 

My wife and I own a small learning center. We provide preschool, daycare, tutoring and even string instrument & piano lessons. With all the new Covid pandemic rules, we had to cut our classrooms in half to keep social distancing standards. The teachers still need to make learning materials for the kids, and we do not want multiple classrooms sharing a computer. So we need to buy some laptops. We have a budget of $2,000 ($400 each) to buy 5 laptops. Might not sound like a lot, but for a small business like ours in times like this, it can be a big decision we want to get right.

 

We could do Chromebooks, but I think we should have something Windows based for ease of use (Teachers are used to Windows) and compatibility with our learning software suites. Looking for something good for Office like productivity and video streaming mostly. Maybe some light image editing.

 

I keep going back to a refurbished 3rd or 4th gen i5 Thinkpad with a SSD? Mostly due to the toughness of the Thinkpads and easy to work on but really open to any opinions you all might have. I know you all are great of finding the best performance for the dollar and would love to see what you would buy.

 

Anyway, mostly this is an excuse to let you all know we love the channel here and thanks for making the videos!

 

Thanks again!

[PorkishPig]

I personally recommend looking at older Dell Latitude E7250/E7450/E5470 laptops. I have deployed six E7250s as part of a COVID response and they have proven to be incredibly reliable. They also have the E-Port for use with a low-cost docking system.

 

You can usually find an E7250 for around $250 with an i7-5600U, 8GB of memory, 256GB SSD, and a 1080p screen.

 

I've also deployed 3rd and 4th gen Lenovo X1 Carbons, but have encountered hardware failures on all three devices I distributed.

[DaveWorkshopLC]

1 hour ago, PorkishPig said:

I personally recommend looking at older Dell Latitude E7250/E7450/E5470 laptops. I have deployed six E7250s as part of a COVID response and they have proven to be incredibly reliable. They also have the E-Port for use with a low-cost docking system.

 

You can usually find an E7250 for around $250 with an i7-5600U, 8GB of memory, 256GB SSD, and a 1080p screen.

 

I've also deployed 3rd and 4th gen Lenovo X1 Carbons, but have encountered hardware failures on all three devices I distributed.

Thanks PorkishPig! I will think about the Latitudes. I have always had the opposite problem where every Dell Latitude I have had I had some problems with, but maybe it is time to give one a shot again? Mainly want something that is easy to work on, or easy by laptop standards.

 

We have one i5 Lenovo Carbon in the school. It has been good to us so far, but could have just got a good one there. 

[PorkishPig]

21 minutes ago, DaveWorkshopLC said:

We have one i5 Lenovo Carbon in the school. It has been good to us so far, but could have just got a good one there. 

I like Lenovo X1 Carbons quite a bit, but I've stayed away from buying them used. The main point of failure for the 3rd and 4th gen X1 Carbons were the screens. The touchscreen would fail and then start inputting seemingly random touch inputs until the touch screen was disabled. This happened to all three models from two different sellers. It's possible I just had a bad batch, but it feels like this was a hardware defect. I doubt this still exists in 5th and 6th gen revisions.

21 minutes ago, DaveWorkshopLC said:

Mainly want something that is easy to work on, or easy by laptop standards.

E-Series Latitudes tend to be geared towards cooperate environments, which is why there are so many on eBay. They are fairly easy to get into if something goes wrong.

[Darkseth]

6 hours ago, DaveWorkshopLC said:

I keep going back to a refurbished 3rd or 4th gen i5 Thinkpad with a SSD? Mostly due to the toughness of the Thinkpads and easy to work on but really open to any opinions you all might have. I know you all are great of finding the best performance for the dollar and would love to see what you would buy.

If a Dual Core is enough for your needs, get an older Thinkpad T-series device, second Hand.
IPS, and if possible, 1080p Screen (or at least 900p. I would avoid the 768p screens). They are still going well, and have an almost unbeatable toughness and longetivity.