Tag Archives: laptops

Lenovo ThinkPad X130e first glance

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The new Lenovo ThinkPad X130e laptop just arrived in my office today. I’ve been hearing great things from Lenovo about this unit, and how it’s 100% built around school environments. So far it appears to be built like a tank. I have hit the screen fairly hard with my fist, but the Corning Gorilla Glass deflected the blows. The rubber bumpers protected it from a 4-foot fall onto the floor. I think this can take all of the rigors of a school environment. Stay tuned.

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/x130e-intel/

BYOT for Adult Education?

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We have started looking into BYOT (bring your own technology) for our Adult Education students. During the last orientation session, we asked for a show of hands who would prefer to use their own computer rather than one we provide and charge them for. About 3/4 of the students would prefer to use their own device. That was far more students than we had anticipated, and feel that we should start looking into BYOT for them.

It’s interesting hearing other schools planning for BYOT who don’t have a 1 to 1 program already, and all of the things they are needing to consider. It’s been 7 years since we were at that point, and I’ve forgotten how much there is to plan for. Simply adding a BYOT option to a 1 to 1 program feels like picking a paint color rather than building a house.

Good luck to all schools planning a BYOT project, there is a ton of planning to do!

Start of the 2009-2010 school year

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Well we are 6 weeks into the 2009-2010 school year, and our first year of 1 to 1 with Apple MacBook laptops. That’s right, we switched our program to Apple this year. Last school year we surveyed the students, as well as potential students, and decided to conduct a trial year with Apple. So far, so good. We’ve had no virus issues on Mac, and Apple’s management tools are great! I think that Apple’s Remote Desktop program is quite possibly the greatest management program ever written, especially for the cost.

We have installed Windows XP on the MacBooks inside Sun’s VirtualBox software. Academic institutions qualify for their Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL). We considered using BootCamp, but by using virtualization the students don’t have to reboot their computer in order to change operating systems.

The hardware is not as great as we expected it to be. We had more out of the box problems than we had with HP or Toshiba laptops. Once the initial problems have been fixed, they have been very reliable — so far.

Students and staff have been asking what we are going to do for next year. It’s a little early to say with 100% certainty, but we aren’t ruling out anything. We have to look at the economy, our budget, and the fact that we can purchase netbooks for a fraction of the price we spent on previous notebooks. Ubuntu Linux on netbooks looks like a great solution. We’ll see what the future brings.

Laptop purchasing

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AIt’s the time of year when we start shopping for laptops for the next school year. For the 2008-2009 school year we selected the Toshiba Tecra A8 laptop. However, the students haven’t been very happy with it because of the weight. The 15.4” WXGA screen makes for a large, heavy laptop – can’t say I blame them. Apparently many of the laptop companies have decided that 15.4” wide screens are the way to go, and are making them the most affordable units in their line. A few years ago a 14” screen was the de facto standard, now it’s a premium product that companies like to sell as an “upgrade” to their now standard 15.4” wide screen. We decided that Toshiba’s brand new Satellite Pro U400 which has a 13.3” wide screen (just like a MacBook) was the unit to buy this year. Unfortunately by the time we added a 3-year warranty the cost was $1150+ per unit. That’s pretty hard to swallow since we bought a Tecra A8 last year with a 3-year warranty for $800 each. We have been told we got the “buy of the century” on the Tecras. I have a sneaking suspicion that Toshiba doesn’t manufacture these new Satellite Pro U400 units, they have someone else OEM them. The reason I say this is because they wouldn’t deal at all on price. If we selected a Tecra, they were willing to negotiate on price.

So we started shopping for a new vendor, I hate doing this. I hate the fact that we have to shop for a new unit each year, but since we only have our students (and laptops) for 2 years, it doesn’t make sense to spend $1100+ per laptop. We gave some very serious consideration to Apple, but we just couldn’t make it happen. With all of the software we use in our labs, we need to run Windows. Most of the programs have a Mac equivelant, but the big one that doesn’t is AutoCAD. We have over 100 students taking classes that use AutoCAD, and that means running BootCamp and purchasing a $140 OEM copy of Windows XP or Vista for them. Financially it doesn’t make sense for us. We would have to transition the entire network over to Mac, but that would take a few years.

We looked at the Acer TravelMate series of notebooks. These laptops appear to be built very well. The only problem is that we can’t find many schools using Acer laptops, and the service kind of scares me. There are no Acer service centers, everything is depot.

We ended up purchasing a HP nc4400 laptop that has a 12” screen, and an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz processor. This has been a very speedy unit in our testing, and the students love the fact that it is only 4 pounds. Furthermore, it boasts a 5.5 hour battery. The students should be able to use the laptop most of the school day.

Our next major decision, what laptop bags to buy.