School Laptops - Afterthoughts

[Ekstrabartek]

Hi everbody, 

Two months of school already passed, and most people that got a laptop for school noted most ups and downs of his/her device. I thought that it was a good idea to share your opinion/mini review, about your computer.

 

I, for example, got a Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 14, and I was supriesed by its power, and very nice screen. 

 

Prons:

• Very good keyboard, and a amazing addition of the joystic (red botton in the middle of the kedboard)
• Ability to transform into a tablet (note that it is 14-inch device)
• Very nice color of the display, and prefect resolution, 1920x1080 (I don't think that you would need more than that with this size)
• Surprisingly good gaming expirence for a ultrabook (GT 940m is close to power of a Xbox One)
• Quiet, even under heavy load (both CPU and GPU were alawys below 80 degrees celsius)  

​Cons:

• Screen is not very bright (it is good for indoors, but outside it is hard to use)
• Batery life is only average (5-6 hours of web, or 1-1.5 hours of gaiming)
• Touchpad is not very good (I quit using it after 10 min, and I use the joystick insted)
• I has only a HDD (it is espacily annoying during turing it on from entirly turing off)

In colclusion, if your buget is around $850-$900 and want something that is very similar, in my opinnion, to a MacBook Pro, you can buy this one, without worry about the quality of the product. 

[ThatOneRussian]

Fapple

[asapansh]

Rocking a refurb lenovo u430 touch here

[Guest]

laptops in schools are a joke - they do little to benefit students in about 95% of scenarios. Interesting thoughts on the device though..

[Dabombinable]

Asus as I've gone back to using my Grandmother's old Asus A3H (which I have fully upgraded of course) which she no longer needs as she has the Compaq CQ60 that I've fully upgraded (excluding the CPU-the 2GHz dual core 45nm Pentium is fast enough).

[Ekstrabartek]

laptops in schools are a joke - they do little to benefit students in about 95% of scenarios. Interesting thoughts on the device though..

They aren't a joke, but many time they are used in a not very efficient way.

[arnavvr]

laptops in schools are a joke - they do little to benefit students in about 95% of scenarios. Interesting thoughts on the device though..

[Grrizz]

I love ThinkPad Yogas myself, the folding hinges, excellent keyboard and TrackPoint mouse are real selling points for me. Personally I'm really looking forward to trying a ThinkPad Yoga 260 or 460 albeit that's a bit above your price range (especially for me targeting an i7 model ).

[GSTARR]

Windows Surface Pro 2 for the win

I play bf4 (on low settings doe ) perfectly along with my command and conquer.

And the internet is great with the minissd (hdd hybrid maybe? not sure) performing amazing!

[Dabombinable]

laptops in schools are a joke - they do little to benefit students in about 95% of scenarios. Interesting thoughts on the device though..

Ever had a School XP computer that has 512MB-1GB of RAM and was upgraded to Windows 7 from Windows XP? Yeah student laptops can be really useful due to the lengths schools need to go to to avoid replacing what they currently have. Oh and teachers have it almost as bad-though despite their very bad durability and reliability (my Mum is a high school teacher, she ended up getting me to try and fix her work laptop) they actually meet the recommended requirements for Windows 7.

[pinksnowmanshandle]

Well since I personally haven't quite yet had the need to bring my own laptop the ones the school (HS) has are HP Chromebooks and for most things.

Though I guess if I were to buy a laptop to also be for school it would be a Dell XPS 15 (FHD though because I'm fairly sure that the 960m would have a hard time running pretty much anything graphically intensive at 4K)

[SansVarnic]

laptops in schools are a joke - they do little to benefit students in about 95% of scenarios. Interesting thoughts on the device though..

 

^^^^^^^^What he said I'll repeat a thousand times.

 

Students (children) that use a pc in the class room at a young age decrease their cognitive understanding of proper handwriting and reading skills and will hinder their ability to improve those skills and can in some seldom instances retard their ability to develop proper handwriting skills at all. 

Also a pc (in the instance of younger students) becomes a major distraction and will hinder the learning skill in other subjects as well. Creating a solid foundation of proper skills e.g. reading, writing &  arithmetic prior to introduction to technological tools such as pc, laptop etc. will greatly add to the skills already known. With the foundation set the opposite can occur.

(I will have to find a link to this research, it may take a while as I don't know if it is available on the internet,)

I read about this when I was in junior high, so far the the results have been shown to occur more often than was originally thought to occur.

[Mujteba]

laptops in schools are a joke - they do little to benefit students in about 95% of scenarios. Interesting thoughts on the device though..

Paper and pen master race.

[Mujteba]

^^^^^^^^What he said I'll repeat a thousand times.

 

Students (children) that use a pc in the class room at a young age decrease their cognitive understanding of proper handwriting and reading skills and will hinder their ability to improve those skills and can in some seldom instances retard their ability to develop proper handwriting skills at all.

Reminds me of the cringe moment I saw my little sister writing the number 2 starting from the bottom up.

[SansVarnic]

Reminds me of the cringe moment I saw my little sister writing the number 2 starting from the bottom up.

 

My children are learning how to read and write with this;  American Spelling Book (aka Webster Blue Back Speller). It worked as the standard for over a 100 years why not today?  Not only are they learning to read correctly but but how to speak properly as well.

[Whorax]

laptops in schools are a joke - they do little to benefit students in about 95% of scenarios. Interesting thoughts on the device though..

They aren't a joke when half of your assignments are done online and walking across the city to the school library to access a computer isn't quite practical.

[Dabombinable]

They aren't a joke when half of your assignments are done online and walking across the city to the school library to access a computer isn't quite practical.

That to.

[Guest]

So here is why laptops in schools/BYOD policy is a joke. Before I begin, When I was at school I caught the tail end of the eEducation policy bought in by the state government and was issued a Netbook for approximately 2 years. In my current sales role I now sell mass rollout of these devices to schools as well as the tools available to administer them; this is something I will touch on later.There are four major issues with these electronic education programs: distraction and the effects on classroom behaviour, lifecycle of the devices, content available and managing the devices.

 

The biggest thing I noticed when the Dell netbooks were rolled out into the classroom was the distractions they caused. For a Windows environment, any kid who is half tech savy can navigate to a web based proxy and be on Facebook, Youtube or any manner of other things within minutes. Couple this with the barrier caused by the student facing the teacher while the screen faces the student means that they have their own little world in which to do quite a lot other than school work. For sure you could say that the student should have the self direction to know that school time is for school work but even those in senior years have difficulty making this decision, let alone 12 and 13 year olds.

 

Secondly, the lifecycle of the device is a joke. I had a Dell netbook for 2 years complete with extended 9 cell battery. At the beginning of the period I was getting about 10 hours out of them but at the end, I was lucky to see 3 or 4 hours. This may not have been a huge issue on a netbook where I can replace the device but what happens if it’s an Ultrabook or tablet whereby I can’t remove the battery? What happens if I need to add more RAM? More storage? You’re very limited in this regard. As for those schools that go the mobile route with iPad’s or Android tablets? Most of these have a designed lifespan of approximately 24 months. Hell, Samsung and HTC are known to stop supporting their device after 12-18 months. Toward the end of school I’d taken to using an iPad plus written work. Even my iPad after 2 years was really struggling – Skype was a lost cause as was Chrome.  However with that being said, I think the iPad was a much better option, bringing me to the third and fourth points.

Most of the work I was doing at the time was based on textbook’s that had PDF’s available plus typing of documents in Word and note in OneNote (If you haven’t used this software, you’re missing out). Trying to navigate a PDF of a maths or physics book is a pain in the ass on an 8” screen with a trackpad. iPad’s touch functionality was much much simpler.

 

The last big issue with these devices is management of them and who retains ownership. With struggling funds, most schools are opting for a BYOD policy instead of devices being provided. What this means is that you’ve got kids rocking up to school with devices where they may retain admin rights over what is installed including VPN’s to bypass standard filters. In a legal sense, it is very difficult to enforce a group policy on a device that is BYOD as the school doesn’t own the device. The alternative to this is an MDM or mobile device manager designed for things like iOS or Android. These can limit installation of apps and functionality but again, who retains ownership and admin rights of the device if it’s BYOD?

So when people say BYOD or eEducation is a top idea, keep in mind that there are many holes in it. They fail to realise that they may have to replace a childs iPad two or three times over a 5-7 year senior school career. They fail to mention the issues with who has admin rights on the device. They fail to mention the distraction they can cause in class and they fail to mention the repair bills when Timmy drops it and cracks a screen.

[Guest]

They aren't a joke when half of your assignments are done online and walking across the city to the school library to access a computer isn't quite practical.

See above..

[Whorax]

See above..

I don't necessarily disagree with anything you've said. I was just saying how my education (in terms of passing classes) at college would be nay impossible if I didn't have a laptop to turn in and complete assignments with.

 

I absolutely think you learn everything much more efficiently if you're taking notes, doing work, etc. on a piece of paper as opposed to typing down notes in Word and clicking on multiple choice answers until you get the problem correct for homework.

[WolfeLa]

I had a yoga (im not sure about the model but it was the best thinkpad one) and I hated every moment of it. I gave it to my girlfriend after about 2 months trying to use it.

 

About laptops in schools: I think Lenovo is a very good choice of company (they are very standardised, work, you can pick parts for what you need), but they are a bit expensive.

 

Fapple would be good because everyone would be guarnateed to have the same software and mointoring would be easy. But I hate fapple so f fapple.

 

My personal opinion is linux based weak dells, but hey, Im a linux fangirl

[TechGod]

I need a laptop for my learning disabilities so I pretty much disagree with everyone that says laptops are bad. Of course, there are issues but I think in specific situations such as mine, they are more of a benefit than a deterrent to my education.