Tela Laptops - Base or Upgrade models?

[Yvette Ireton]

Hi everyone

In the past we have always gone for the 'upgrade laptop' to get better performance and longer life, and often we would purchase the laptops at the end of lease for use in our Library.  

I would like to know what other schools do:  

1. Do you go for the base model or the performance upgrade laptop and do you think it is worth it these day to get the better model?  
   
   
2. Do your teachers personally have to pay for the lease of the laptops or does it come out of their budget, or does the school pay from the ICT funds?  
   
   
3. If a teacher wants a more expensive model eg the MacBookPro or the HP Elite Tablet do you think they should personally have to pay the extra cost?
   

We have preferred the HP models in the past although some of our staff use Macs - we are soon to have 12 leases coming up for renewal and as funds are tight cost is being discussed.

Many thanks

Yvette

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Network Manager
Golden Bay High School
12 Waitapu Road, Takaka 7110
Ph:  03 525 9914
http://www.gbh.school.nz

[Craig Knights]

1. Base model, except for a couple of senior management, and the Music teacher because he uses the extra grunt.

2. Funded by our board, but we're an state integrated school, so funds are not so tight I guess.

3.  No, the problem would be, what if they leave?  The school is going to be paying for the rest of the lease.

A different question, 2 fulltime staff could become 3 60% staff and then you have an extra staff member who is "eligible" but does the entitlement from the MOE change?  I always figured it doesn't.

Craig

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[Andrew Godfrey]

1. Base model Tosh Z40 and we can get some extra speed of the next model for less money by arranging for the HDD to be replaced by a Hybrid drive. (More RAM would also be nice but expensive)

2. The school pays for the laptop and so retains ownership and control over it.

3. If it is a "want" and you allow it then yes. You will get more headaches down the track though as Craig has mentioned. We are quite hard nosed about it and the teacher just gets what they are given.

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[Jude Elliot]

We are the same at Darfield but no change of hard drive. Is any one else concerned now TELA is going to discontinue providing external dvds? I've  found teachers complaining about it not being internal but at least they have an option. After May none provided. Facing an uproar if my 2 schools are anythibg to go buy

Jude

[Stephen Moran]

Jude, is that for both Mac’s and PC’s they are discontinuing the external optical drives?  They’ve only just changed to MacBook Air’s being the default option so in most of our school’s staff are still on the MacBook Pro's.  I agree they will probably face an uproar if there is no optical drive at all.

Stephen

[Jude Elliot]

According to the TELA website it is all. Shows in colour above the photos and details of all the models. I will lodge a complaint though.

Jude

[Patrick Dunford]

If your staffing changes you can ask for extra entitlement, we have done this a few times.

We always buy the base model except in one case where they wanted a bigger screen and were prepared to pay for it. There have been a few comments from staff when the screens changed to 1366x768 a few years ago as the screen is physically smaller.

Same comment about oddballs, it is for this reason one of our schools has repeatedly looked hard at Macbooks and each time decided not to lease any.

[Patrick Dunford]

Can buy a DVD drive for $50

[Rachel Watson]

Base model as a general rule. We have had HPs for the last several rounds now. We supply larger screens/graphics capabilities for Art, Graphics and Film Production teachers. We also budgeted this year to upgrade some teachers to the Z10 tablets, and asked teachers to put a case as to why their laptop should cost the school almost 3 times as much in lease costs. Two teachers for different reasons have elected to give up the tablet after less than a term, but I had a couple who had asked for a tablet if one became available.

Laptops are part of the IT budget overall (which is part of the overall curriculum budget however that gets divided) and teachers pay nothing. We also have a number of school-owned laptops that are used for non-eligible teachers – age of laptop varies a bit.

I have never issued the DVD drives as a matter of course, but have given them to people who say they can’t live without one. There are also some available for shared use within Learning Areas where occasional DVD drive use happens.

 

 

Rachel

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[trevor storr]

Base model HP's for all except those that request it.  I had a toshiba z50 this time as it seemed better value than the HP upgrade. BOT pays all the lease.  DVD's - I can see the logic.  It will inconvenience some but we'll get round it.

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cheers

Trevor

Trevor Storr
Director of eLearning, CantaNET http://educo.vln.school.nz
Waimate High School
Waimate
New Zealand

[Matthew Strickland]

All staff base model except by prior arrangement or special purpose (ie Mac's for Visual Media / Art)

Generally stuck with HP for on-site support, other machines are send away for repair.

Funded from ICT budget. Staff do not pay, and generally get what they are given.

Only thing i'd like to see is (256GB?) SSD option for base models, or possibly hybrid. Traditional drives just seems so much slower.

I do deploy custom 8.1 x64 image, will likely switch to Windows 10 as soon as its available and deployment tools support it.

Regards,

Matthew Strickland | Network Administrator
Karamu High School, Hastings, New Zealand

M: +64 (027) 6965669
E: mstri...@karamu.school.nz
W: www.karamu.school.nz

[Patrick Dunford]

Yes correct, on site support for HP and they also encourage us to replace parts ourselves. The HPs are very easy to open – I saw someone opening one of the new Toshibas the other day and they had to pull off some sticky feet to get at the screws. Well, the HP has a sliding catch you just push across to pop the cover off the back of it. And the body is mostly metal as well as the top lid – Toshibas are still made of plastic.

 

I saw some claim Toshiba was more reliable but this has not been proven in my experience – we have had a pretty good run with the HPs. People used to break the plastic network socket clips on the Toshibas all the time – no one has ever broken the metal ones on the HP laptops.

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[J B]

Agreed, in my opinion the hps are much nicer, the accessibility of the drivers alone make them easier and hp has always been good at keeping drivers available for new os's even if the machine is old.  The last Toshiba we got was by accident (someone clicked the wrong button) and they would not let us send it back.  That thing was junk, bendy flexy plastic, bios rather than efi adding to boot time, slowwww hard drive and the cheapest chinabrand touchpad available with terrible drivers that failed at typing lockout so the user was forever moving the mouse with their palm by accident.  The last two base level hps 8460 and 8470 were quite slow before they switched to the slim line ones too but at least they were not built like an ice-cream container.  The other time a Toshiba was tried on purpose at another school it took forever to image as it shipped with a network card that did not have driver support for winPE in the latest drivers so it took going back through at least five revisions of driver to get it to see the NIC.

I also wish there was an ssd option as base level, teachers are horrifyingly rough on laptops and while they usually survive, after the n'th fall to the ground or drop onto desk the hard drives do eventually go.

Sent from my Windows Phone

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From: Patrick Dunford
Sent: ‎21/‎02/‎2015 9:56 a.m.
To: techies-f...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [techies-for-schools] Re: Tela Laptops - Base or Upgrade models?

[Yvette Ireton]

Thanks everyone for all the comments and feedback..

Very much appreciated.

Cheers

Yvette

[Nathan S]

In general HP's are better I agree. Also you should be using multiple winPE's not just one, eg one compiled with bartpe, using the XP base, one using the windows 7 base and one using the windows 8 base, as well as integrating the drivers from driverspacks, and then if you still dont get the driver, once installing it on the machine pulling it back and integrating it again. 

omo!

[Simon - OBHS]

We do performance models for all. When these things are in use for 3 years, its pays to have something that should stay perfoming for that length of time. Plus it means less moaning from teachers complaining how slow their computer is. The performance with the 850 G1 is very good with the SSD in Windows 7, will start testing Windows 10 when it hits RTM.