[HSL] Proposal: Buy 10 new or refurbished laptops for the lab for no more than $9,000

[Cprossu]

The proposal I set forth this 07/02/2020 is to purchase 10 new or refurbished (industry standard "Grade B" or better) laptops for the lab. Budget for all 10 units is not to exceed $9,000 US

I put up a discussion thread before this proposal to determine what and where we should get these, or where we should compromise, however I did not get much in terms of concrete feedback, interaction on specifics, or guidance on the matter. That google groups thread is here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/heatsynclabs/STThMhSpeFI/d_EIiqxbBgAJ

The purpose of the community laptops within HeatSync Labs is to provide computers for the use of anyone frequenting the lab as well as those who host or take classes. These computers should all have a similar if not identical loadout of software and operating systems, should be at least somewhat rugged in terms of build quality, should be fast and reliable enough that they do not hinder learning, and should be tailored specifically towards software development. I would like them to be useful in terms of specifications up to 3-4 years from now as our old fleet of laptops has been, and be upgradable in terms of memory (RAM) and storage space (SSD). We shall put 8 into circulation with 2 purchased as spares.

The minimum requirements I have researched, modified, and decided upon for these are as follows:

Base: Lenovo Thinkpad, HP Elitebook, or Dell Latitude (Or equivalent 'rugged business laptop')

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5/7 mobile or better / Intel 6th Generation Core i5/i7 mobile or better (DDR4)

Display: 14" or bigger

Built-in display resolution: 1440x900 or better (Not 1366x768)

Storage: 128GB or bigger upgradable Solid State Drive (If the machine also has a spinning platter hard drive it shall be supplemental)

Memory: 8GB of ram or better, upgradable to at least 16GB

Given that concrete laptop pricing seems nearly impossible to obtain and commit to within a 2 week proposal period, exact models and pricing are very fluid in this market, I am instead attempting to do it in a general way:

"We need 10 laptops, the laptops need to have these specs, the price needs to not exceed $9,000"

Let me know if this is out of line with our procedures. I do not have concrete pricing back from Lenovo just yet, as their TechSoup site only lets you purchase up to 5 units, and even that does not seem to guarantee the correct pricing, so I am trying to contact them by phone to find out what we're looking at, as they have different teams of people who work with nonprofit, and apparently different teams of people that work with techsoup, and even more confusingly different teams of people that deal with organizations needing more than 5 computers. I do not know who I would contact to get an outright donation, however if you have any idea please post here!

Example laptops that would fit the specs and fall underneath the price:

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-series/T495/p/20NJ0002US ~$740 each

ThinkPad T495 Part Number: 20NJ0002US

CPU: AMD® Ryzen™ 5 Pro 3500U Processor

Display Type: 14.0" FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS, anti-glare, 250 nits
Memory: 8 GB DDR4 2400MHz
Hard Drive: 512 GB PCIe SSD

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-series/T490/p/20N2S3DQ00 ~$800 each

ThinkPad T490 Part Number:  20N2S3DQ00

CPU: 8th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-8365U Processor with vPro™

Display Type: 14.0" FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS, anti-glare, 250 nits

Memory: 8 GB DDR4 2400MHz

Hard Drive: 256 GB PCIe SSD

I have not yet found a source of refurbished laptops that can give us 10 of the same unit with the specifications we require. If you are able to do this, please post your results here so we have the option on saving some serious money!

[Mike Wolfson]

Of these two machines I like the second one with the faster processor and the smaller hard drive.

one question worth asking is how are we going to secure these nicer laptops to ensure that they don't get stolen

[Cprossu]

We are not limited to those two models, and it becomes a wash if you consider the integrated graphics of both. The processors are really close in speed, so just saying 'The faster processor' doesn't mean anything.

[ Mike Wolfson]

one question worth asking is how are we going to secure these nicer laptops to ensure that they don't get stolen

[/Mike Wolfson]

Well, we've had the previous laptops for quite a while (since I think 2014), and I still don't know how many were stolen, how many were misplaced, or how many were lent out for whatever reasons since it was never documented how many we even had in the first place. Inventory control would be a start, and that's something we need to work on, but no matter what we put into place if laptops walk out the door, they walk out the door if we have inventory control, alarms, and video equipment to record it all.

At some point the provisions for keeping them from being stolen makes them impossible to use or to be flexible with, or costs more than just replacing the laptops. Case in point, a company I worked for ended up locking their executives laptops to their desks and throwing away the keys. Laptops were still stolen by the same people who would have stolen them anyway, and the whole point for the laptops existing was tossed out the window and everyone was stuck with subpar machines when compared to the same desktop they could have had.

What are your thoughts exactly and do you have a solution?

[Tim M]

You guys can get laptops at techsoup.org

Regards,

Tim Moffat

---

From: heatsy...@googlegroups.com <heatsy...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cprossu <cpr...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 3, 2020 9:01:21 AM
To: HeatSync Labs <heatsy...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HSL] Proposal: Buy 10 new or refurbished laptops for the lab for no more than $9,000

 

Found another possible option:

https://www.newegg.com/lenovo-t460s/p/N82E16834845883?Item=N82E16834845883 ~ $490 each, refurbished, Grade B (not new)

Thinkpad T460S (Exact P/N not listed)

CPU: Intel Core i5 6th Gen 6200U

Display type: 1920 x 1080

Memory: 12 GB Memory

Hard Drive: 240 GB SSD
 

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[Cprossu]

Found other possible options today:

https://www.newegg.com/lenovo-t460s/p/N82E16834845883?Item=N82E16834845883 ~ $490 each, refurbished, Grade B (not new)

Thinkpad T460S Part number: Not listed

CPU: Intel Core i5 6th Gen 6200U

Display type: 1920 x 1080

Memory: 12 GB Memory

Hard Drive: 240 GB SSD

 

https://www.newegg.com/black-lenovo-thinkpad-e495-20ne0002us/p/2WC-000J-008F8?Item=2WC-000J-008F8 ~ $620 each, new

ThinkPad T495 Part Number: 20NE0002US

CPU: AMD® Ryzen™ 5 Pro 3500U Processor

Display Type: 14.0" FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS

[Cprossu]

Did you see the previous thread? Techsoup does not have laptops that meet our requirements or in the quantity we need. Please look before suggesting what has been done to death already!

I assure you I have combed the techsoup website and found nothing we can use. Many of the laptops they have a quantity of 10 of are very low resolution (1366x768), or have ancient processors.

On Friday, July 3, 2020 at 9:06:26 AM UTC-7, Tim M wrote:

You guys can get laptops at techsoup.org

Regards,

Tim Moffat

---

From: heatsy...@googlegroups.com <heatsy...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cprossu <cpr...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 3, 2020 9:01:21 AM
To: HeatSync Labs <heatsy...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [HSL] Proposal: Buy 10 new or refurbished laptops for the lab for no more than $9,000

 

Found another possible option:

https://www.newegg.com/lenovo-t460s/p/N82E16834845883?Item=N82E16834845883 ~ $490 each, refurbished, Grade B (not new)

Thinkpad T460S (Exact P/N not listed)

CPU: Intel Core i5 6th Gen 6200U

Display type: 1920 x 1080

Memory: 12 GB Memory

Hard Drive: 240 GB SSD
 

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[Cprossu]

Quick update, we were given a quote for just under $7,000 on 10 of the

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-series/T495/p/20NJ0002US

ThinkPad T495 Part Number: 20NJ0002US

CPU: AMD® Ryzen™ 5 Pro 3500U Processor

Display Type: 14.0" FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS, anti-glare, 250 nits
Memory: 8 GB DDR4 2400MHz
Hard Drive: 512 GB PCIe SSD

Machines. They could not provide pricing on the other ones due to stock issues at this moment. Will try again at some point. I am going to apply to Techsoup for Dell and HP discounts next, wish me luck.

[Robert Bell]

Robert has entered the game because y'all sound like consumers instead of hackers.

Other than basic Arduino / Inkscape projects + web browsing, what else?

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[Cprossu]

We sometimes run presentations from them, I'd like to see Visual Studio Code/PlatformIO on these suckers, I want Cura on every machine (Cura is really awful on slow computers), I'm not sure if it's viable to put the laser software on these machines but it would be a good idea, I'd probably put OpenSCAD, blender, libreoffice, and other apps on it, and we might even look into having adobe creative cloud loaded for those who have it. Unity/3d game development might be a plus to have as well. Other than that seems kids love playing Roblox or minecraft when at the lab.

My intention is to dual boot these (Linux Mint and Windows 10 Pro) with a common partition that both OS's can save to/read from, and have similar loadouts of software to make the most things possible.

Main things I'd like: 1) Not have to create a brand new image for different laptops every year 2) Not to have to cobble dead broken laptops into working laptops 3) Whatever we get to last as long as what we have been using up to now.

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[Jaime Glasser]

In the past there was a possibility of getting laptops and a trickle charging stand donated or lended year to year from ER2. If not free I am sure they could build to specs, so at least getting a quote is a good idea.

I have tried to contact my contact a couple of weeks ago I can reach out again on Monday. If I get an affirmative glad to turn it over to you CPro etc to determine the necessary/consensus  config. 

If I don’t get anywhere still may be a good idea to find our prices they make available to non profits and schools.

Cheers

Jaime

On Jul 3, 2020, at 3:12 PM, Cprossu <cpr...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Cprossu]

If you want to forward our needs to ER2, (I gave Dave a slightly more lax list of specs to be a little more in line with what they might have, however I am not sure if he's made contact yet)

"

Base: Lenovo Thinkpad, HP Elitebook, or Dell Latitude (Or equivalent 'rugged business laptop')

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5/7 mobile or better / Intel 6th Generation Core i5/i7 mobile or better (DDR4)

Display: 14" or bigger

Built-in display resolution: 1440x900 or better (Not 1366x768)

Storage: 128GB or bigger upgradable Solid State Drive (If the machine also has a spinning platter hard drive it shall be supplemental)

Memory: 8GB of ram or better, upgradable to at least 16GB

"

The only difference as for ER2 is that we have the ability to provide the SSD and the Memory (both are fairly cheap to procure and I am comfortable installing those bits) if they are comfortable selling or donating us 10 identical units that match our minimum specs. Hope this helps. This proposal's main goal is to cause action where there has been inaction, and get us where we need to be by any means necessary, even if it means buying them outright and new.

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[Jaime Glasser]

Yes!!!! Thanks Cpro will rattle the cage again and let you know. 

On Jul 4, 2020, at 9:13 PM, Cprossu <cpr...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Jaime Glasser]

Also they do build to spec and sell to schools etc....will see what I can do and if comes to naught May still be helpful to get a price from them.

On Jul 4, 2020, at 10:09 PM, Jaime Glasser <jmemer...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes!!!! Thanks Cpro will rattle the cage again and let you know. 

[Robert Bell]

$9000 for new laptops is absurd when current laptops can be reconfigured to satisfy basic criteria for HSL offerings.
As is, current laptops are useless. Last time I fired one up it was an appalling mess. I got to a browser faster by USB booting Ubuntu in trial mode.

The Asus laptops are far from fast, but they work. They're capable of near-satisfying 100% Arduino teaching projects and 95%+ of required vector and bitmap editing needs. If a project has larger resource demands, it's likely the project has/can afford a larger laptop. 

What you want to install on new laptops is managebly ambitious and doesn't parse what's needed from what might be needed.
$9000 is a lot of money to spend in the upslope of a pandemic.
With two machines dedicated as backup, that's like a month's rent depreciating on the shelf.

I'm not trying to be an a-hole or kill any motivation, I'm just not sold.

In the meantime I advise prototyping current laptops through a structure of policy and procedure representing a model of intention for desired laptops.

Make a new image. 

Keep it simple. 

Replace all Asus laptop hard drives w/ cheap 64GB-128 SSD ~$20 each.
Things will load faster and be more responsive w/ effective 2x ram via swap partition.

Make a live Linux image using XFCE or similar lightweight windowing desktop.
A desktop doesn't need a background image.

• Install notepad++
• Install base Arduino w/ libs for most devices and shields available at HSL
• Test USB: Load sketch (like blink) from USB stick and run on microcontroller. Modify code and save. 
• Install Brave browser
• Install base Inkscape
• Install base Gimp
• Blender 2.83 should be fine for most single object geometry projects.
• If a laptop is needed for a presentation, Brave is a Chrome-based browser.

If someone is going to use VS Code they should be the one to install it. Cura on Linux is snap-contained and runs slow. It'd be nice to have on each machine, but if someone needs to use it there's already a purpose-dedicated box at HSL. If there was a 3D printer for each laptop I'd agree w/ installing Cura. Snap's are a neat idea but they'll make things feel like they're running under water.

These systems need to load fast and not have persistent processes that monitor file extensions as mandated by some gui handling thing. Does LibreOffice still do this?

If someone needs a particular app or tool they can install it each time the device reboots. If there's enough demand, add it to the image. Update image w/ a simple script. 

It's been years since I built something like this - I'm sure there are kits/frameworks to help build/manage live systems. 
From a management perspective I'd consider this a 15 hour project with no more than $350 for ten SSD from Newegg or wherever.

This gets you functional laptops that deliver HSL basics. The mouse, icons, file menus, it all works the same. Visual Linux is more intuitive than it is hard.
The Asus laptops can barely run the version of Windows they were shipped with.

... something like that.

I interpret the laptop proposal as having a management strategy similar to the current laptops.

Just wanted to get that out of my mind. Despite being wrong most of the time, it's what I'd do.

-Robert

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[Cprossu]

$9000 for new laptops is absurd when current laptops can be reconfigured to satisfy basic criteria for HSL offerings.

Well I am not saying we should spend $9,000 on it. That's just an upper limit, hence "no more than $9,000".

Although I am looking for cheap options, I am also looking for options that aren't going to be broken from a simple fall or a kid prying on the screen.

My initial thought was we should pick up some off lease, refurbished, or otherwise thinkpad T series or dell latttudes for like $200 each, and I quickly discovered the machines we would get would actually be slower and older than what we have now for that price. I could potentially get the processor or display resolution I thought we needed, but not the ram configuration or an SSD and the price remain reasonable. Time and money add up very quick and by the time I came up with my final results, our refurbished 'upgraded' machines were costing as much as getting new things with what we already wanted and a much newer processor.

The current offer we have is $7,000 for 10 brand new Thinkpad T495 machines, and I am way open to alternatives! I really wanted people to post in the previous thread prior to me actually making an official proposal so I could get a idea of what the needs were and if we could get gear donated or if someone had a connection to more realistic alternatives.

This did not happen really, people just gave me links to websites like techsoup without actually going there themselves and discovering that there were either quantity problems (can't get more than 1-4) of any of the machines that they could have carried that would still be useful down the line were out of stock.

As far as I know Eric provides his own personal laptops for things like teaching Inkscape because our lab laptops are not up to the task, we don't have enough of them, and the ones we do have are in a complete state of randomness software wise, operating system wise, even desktop configuration wise and are thus unusable.

The Asus laptops are far from fast, but they work. They're capable of near-satisfying 100% Arduino teaching projects and 95%+ of required vector and bitmap editing needs. If a project has larger resource demands, it's likely the project has/can afford a larger laptop.

We only have 2 of the Asus laptops (I was told we only got 2 in the first place) and I can tell you internally at least one of them is held together by mostly tape on the inside and I've had to manually put the hard drive back into place after it wiggles out (done that 3 times now, You have to pull these machines apart pretty far to get at the hard drive, and it's very freaking annoying as it's beneath the keyboard), and the other has a failing battery and is useless unless it's plugged in. Pretty sure I've got the one with the hard drive issue fixed permanently after tapping a hole that never existed in the case and putting a screw in there to hold it into place. The rest of our 'fleet' is three 3rd gen core i5 dell latitudes that were 4 years our of date when we got them donated in 2016. 5 laptops is not enough machines to hold a good class once this pandemic is over. If we still had 10 or 12 laptops, you BET YOUR BUTT I would be working to improve what we have and build images for them, and work hard to get good bulk deals on the parts we would need to update them, but alas we only have 5, 2 of one kind, 3 of another and that's it.

As far as upgrades go, I would not put a shitty SSD in the old machines, I would go with something we can at least depend on, so let's say a Samsung 860 Evo 250GB drive, that's $50 . I've had terrible luck with the $10-$20 sata ssd's you can find on ebay or other places, they are slow and just die quick deaths. I believe max ram on the Asus laptops is 8GB (4GBx2) due to old controller so another $40 there. So $90 per machine and I still have to waste my time reloading operating systems for just 2 units, one with a dead battery ($180 so far). As for the Dells, we'd put the 250GB drives in those too and max out the ram (16GB 8GBx2) at $68 per computer, so $354 there. Now we've spend like $534 on updating the machines to something still less useful than buying a new laptop for roughly the same price, and I still have to put in labor in I don't want to and we still only have 5 machines (one with a dying battery 4 unknown).

Part of this proposal is I myself am tired of spending my time at heatsync fixing laptops for people to use when I am there, or heaven forbid I want to use one of the machines myself. The experience seems to be the same, pull a laptop off the shelf, it not working, pull another one off, it having a different failure, finally getting one that works, and because I feel obligated I'll of course fix the other two laptops that have failures instead of doing more interesting things at the lab.

From a management perspective I'd consider this a 15 hour project with no more than $350 for ten SSD from Newegg or wherever.

We only have 5 machines, you have always been and are still totally welcome to take this task on! Myself I am lucky if under normal circumstances I get to spend that much time at the lab a month.

I would love for more people to take these tasks up and take care of them! My experience has been since I've found the place in 2016 is when it comes to these sorts of things people tend to put up a big talk and then do nothing instead.

Just so this is clear, part of the reason for taking this to the proposal level was I really want this to light a fire under someone's ass to take the problems on as none of my prodding or suggestion has done anything over the years.

This is just one way to solve the issue, there are many ways to offer the same result, this is just the one I put my own research and work into.

[Eric Ose]

Hey Cpro the 10 laptops I have all have Deepfreeze. Because I already have them and they always are exactly the same every reboot it makes it easier for my classes. The laptops we had donated to the lab were sufficient for my needs and very desirable, however it was a lot lot easier with the laptops which all rebooted to all be exactly the same as I had them.

I'm curious to know what you are hoping these machines are capable of running. I'd personally like to think that people in our community are more sophisticated than only requiring Arduino and Inkscape. We should be about enabling all kinds of projects, not just the ones running on the lowest functioning laptops.

I have to agree with Robert that "$9000 is a lot of money to spend in the upslope of a pandemic". Really the lab isn't having classes right now and I see no benefit to getting these before that's possible again.

Also agree with Robert "In the meantime I advise prototyping current laptops through a structure of policy and procedure representing a model of intention for desired laptops."

I haven't been to the lab since March 11 and I hate to speculate on how soon or not I'd be back for helping with this and other projects.

My 2 cents on the laptops going missing. Everything was great when we had exactly 10 laptops and 10 spots in the laptop holder that Brian Carlson made for them. It was visually obvious when something was missing. What happened was people dedicated some of those laptops to other things and then there were gaps. It became less obvious when a laptop was misplaced. Also I can help permanently affix "Property of HeatSync Labs" labels to the top of any future laptops we get.

-Eric Ose

Robot Ambassador

Southwest Maker Fest President

HeatSync Labs Volunteer

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[Cprossu]

I'm curious to know what you are hoping these machines are capable of running. I'd personally like to think that people in our community are more sophisticated than only requiring Arduino and Inkscape. We should be about enabling all kinds of projects, not just the ones running on the lowest functioning laptops.

Personally I really want to see 3D modeling done, perhaps for video game development or for use with making models you can 3D print, or other things that you can use the laser or CNC machines to create. So CAD and some level of 3D design were my goals and the stuff I want to see classes on. In addition to that I'd like to see us go into 32bit microcontrollers and FPGA's more now that they are affordable and readily available to play with. While the laptops I propose are no graphics workstations and are not compiling monsters, they are darn good for the price and would be able to do either. I don't even think it would be a far stretch to do things in the Unity 3D engine on these laptops either.

My 2 cents on the laptops going missing. Everything was great when we had exactly 10 laptops and 10 spots in the laptop holder that Brian Carlson made for them. It was visually obvious when something was missing. What happened was people dedicated some of those laptops to other things and then there were gaps. It became less obvious when a laptop was misplaced. Also I can help permanently affix "Property of HeatSync Labs" labels to the top of any future laptops we get.

I first want to say I really love that laptop holder, and it kicks butt! It would be nice to know what happened to the laptops that were dedicated to 'other things' and if they are still inside the lab. No one has gotten back to me on that yet, but we do know for sure we lost some in the theft. We may modify the current laptop holder, or build a new one, but I just love how easy it is and how accessible stuff is from it. I'd want to put blinkenlights on the existing one, possibly with red/green indicators to make it even more obvious and have a policy of not 'dedicating' these laptops to any specific use in the future.

Also agree with Robert "In the meantime I advise prototyping current laptops through a structure of policy and procedure representing a model of intention for desired laptops."

I'm just not in the mood to do the same work 3 times over when it comes to getting win 10 pro keys for everything, replacing hdd's, upgrading ram, and making 2 different models and spec of laptop load with the same os's and software only to possibly do it once more if we get new laptops.

Remember, my labor is worth something too. If I were to do this for a client the labor alone would likely be a couple thousand dollars! I try and make the time I put into the lab count, and for the most part have succeeded. The 5 laptops we currently have are dead to me and I've put too much effort keeping them going as it stands.

[Ryan Mcdermott]

Hey Crpo, sorry for sortof coming into the thread if I missed a lot of context here: would it be better/cheaper to get desktops instead of laptops, and dedicate an area of the lab as a computer lab?  Desktop machines are obviously much easier to upgrade and maintain, and I think for our purposes would have a lot more longevity than mobile devices.

Also it would just be kinda badass to have a computer lab in the space that was permanently set up!

-Ryan 

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[Cprossu]

A computer lab would be badass and totally appeals to myself, however I also think that having as many work surfaces available as possible for as many uses as possible is more inline with how I've seen the lab run up until now.

I remember my idea of putting small computers or thin clients in the coworking area to take advantage of those monitors when they weren't being used for co-working pretty much went down like a lead balloon.

Also to be fair to those who tend to follow directions from a computer to build something, the ability to move the computer to your project comes in handy!

I think for the room we have now laptops make the most sense, however if we had something like the building behind the lab, I would probably be more on the side of having a permanent computer lab for things like classes, and the absolute cheapest laptops we could find for mobile project stuff and community use.

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[Robert Bell]

The HSL laptop situation is a dragon that needs to be slayed instead of fed.

The billable life of a corporate laptop is 70% human time. That's why Chromebooks and similar thin solutions exist. The notion of $9K in free range laptops requiring $30K maintenance over 3yrs is far more correct than it isn't.

I recall eight to ten new (~2014 to 2016ish) ASUS laptops at HSL. If you want to do something inline with your proposal my recommendation is to track those down and implement a live/kiosk mode/deepfreeze image as mentioned in the previous post.

If there is no dragon, set ForwardX11 to YES

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[Robert Bell]

That kitchen could sorta be a nice coffee shop too ...

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[Cprossu]

The notion of $9K in free range laptops requiring $30K maintenance over 3yrs is far more correct than it isn't.

Can you stop with the $9K? I just put that there in case things got weird with the quotes.

Current quote should be $7,000 or less with everything (shipping, no tax, etc), I just like some headroom in case weird things happen! no more than $9k does not mean spending $9,000, just means for the love of all things that are holy don't go over that.

I recall eight to ten new (~2014 to 2016ish) ASUS laptops at HSL.

I asked Dave Flores about this, he said there were 2 Asus laptops purchased. There is no documentation of this in the Google Groups or the HeatSync Labs wiki anywhere. I have never seen more than two since joining HeatSync Labs in early 2016.

In 2016 we did get 10 DELL laptops, again there is no documentation of this in the Google Groups or HeatSync Labs wiki when it happened.

The only clue is the initial donation question posted. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/heatsynclabs/G8OCDT_q8Hc/_sqsEIbXAgAJ

Either way I am blind here and no one in our past bothered documenting or cataloging any of this stuff for public consumption.

[Ryan Mcdermott]

Cpro, again sorry for coming in late on this in case a lot of this was discussed already:

I would 100% support dedicating an area of the existing hall to a computer lab.  I think that would have at least as much broad appeal as some of the other exclusive-use areas that exist in the lab currently.  In fact to take it a step further: the computer lab could also be a dedicated “class” area with the projector set up in it.  I think as a goal that would be awesome!  (Just daydreaming).

To continue on Roberts suggestion also: laptops seem fickle and labor intensive to keep alive.  For the cases where mobility is required, maybe we would be better off rehabbing the ones we have?

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[LMB]

Would we not qualify for  exceptional pricing for new computers as an educational entity customer directly with the major computer makers?

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[Cprossu]

Would we not qualify for  exceptional pricing for new computers as an educational entity customer directly with the major computer makers?

The quote through Lenovo is with our nonprofit discount and tax status. (Believe it or not I've put quite a bit of work into this!)

With shipping and taxes we would otherwise be looking at closer to $1000 per unit.

Still have not gotten our info from Dell yet.

[Cprossu]

I have been on amazon today and found a couple more options we could look into:

Dell Latitude E5470 (Refurbished) $399 each

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Latitude-i5-6440HQ-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B01NB1CNBR

It doesn't have the graphics of the new Lenovo's but they seem otherwise to have decent specs. At least for the moment there is a proper quantity. Not sure how Amazon and taxes for nonprofits work, but we should be able to get them.

I also found these too, and it will let me order 10:

Lenovo ThinkPad E595 (New) $639 each

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07R72N8JH/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3MUHYPYV02A8E&psc=1

As far as I know the Thinkpad E series isn't as tough as the T series, but I do not think it will matter, they are $60 less each than the Thinkpad T495's from Lenovo.

Thoughts? Anyone have another machine we are able to order 10 of to add into the conversation?

(Oh and a quick update, I've gotten the direct info from Dell, but not been able to put together a quote online that uses our discount, will likely have to contact them by phone)

[Cprossu]

I don't know if this is possible, but to avoid confusion I would like to divide this into two parts to make sure the details don't get lost

1) Are we going to buy laptops for the space? (Yes/No)

If and only if we vote Yes:

2) Which laptops are we going to buy? (Options can be one of the proposed quotes, or something else obtainable and debated)

Okay, I now have three actual quotes that we can act on, and the main options I will be presenting are as follows:

Lenovo ThinkPad T495 (New) ~699 each

-AMD® Ryzen™ 5 Pro 3500U

-AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics

-8GB DDR4  (8GB Soldered + Empty slot)

-512 GB PCIe Solid State Drive

-14.0" FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS screen

-Windows 10 Pro

Dell Latitude 3510 (New) ~699 each

-Intel Core i5-10210U

-Intel UHD Graphics 620

-8GB DDR4 (8GB x 1)

-256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Class 35 Solid State Drive

-15.6" FHD WVA (1920 x 1080) screen

-Windows 10 Pro

Dell Latitude E7470 (Refurbished) ~365 each

-Intel Core i5-6200U

-Intel HD Graphics 520

-8GB DDR4 (4GB x 2)

-256GB M2 Solid State Drive

-14" Full HD 1920x1080 screen

-Windows 10 Pro

The quotes are all for 10 machines total, and this was before I knew how many we would want or need, or how many we had in the first place.

It has been suggested that I overlooked having a class of 10 and an instructor station, in which case we might need to go through this process again if enough people agree we need more than 10 total.

[Luis Montes]

I don't know which ones are the best to get (price, performance, etc), but I trust Cpro's judgement on this, especially considering he's been volunteering his time to take on maintenance of most of the lab's PCs.

Hopefully we get a good turnout to virtual HYH tonight to discuss what's reasonable.

[Cprossu]

!!Proposal has been amended!!

Buy 12 new or refurbished laptops for the lab for no more than $4,500

!!Proposal has been amended!!

[Cprossu]

The proposal passed with some modifications to better match our use case:

We are looking at:

QTY 12

Dell Latitude E7470 (Refurbished) ~365 each

-Intel Core i5-6200U

-Intel HD Graphics 520

-8GB DDR4 (4GB x 2)

-256GB M2 Solid State Drive

-14" Full HD 1920x1080 screen

-Windows 10 Pro

The idea being 10 units will be in general circulation, 1 for an instructor, 1 for a spare.

$4,380.00 is the cost.

[nathana...@gmail.com]

Thank you again for all the hard work. We were able to get answers to more questions than I would normally expect in a meeting. I think Louis brought up a great point about how beneficial it is to have someone with your drive taking this on. I'm looking forward to the post-covid madness and hopefully I can contribute something like this to the betterment of Heatsync.

[Jaime Glasser]

Thank you everyone!

What a great meeting everyone brought up so many good points! I did not think about the timing as far as Cpro your supreme always good natured effort for all things processing at HSL. Thank you Luis for bringing this up. Thank you all.

Thank you for your willingness and hard work Cpro.

Thank you all for the group mind it’s was so great and a real positive respectful and truly collective consideration. I appreciated the positive way we all expressed concerns so respectfully and thoughtfully.

Thank you for all the laser efforts Nate C and Austin.

Nate P. Thank you for your tenure and positive culture as Facilities Manager. I don’t know who could fill your shoes but I sure hope some bodies want to try. 

Jaime 

On Jul 23, 2020, at 9:01 PM, nathana...@gmail.com <nathana...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you again for all the hard work. We were able to get answers to more questions than I would normally expect in a meeting. I think Louis brought up a great point about how beneficial it is to have someone with your drive taking this on. I'm looking forward to the post-covid madness and hopefully I can contribute something like this to the betterment of Heatsync.

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[Cprossu]

I picked up a dock that these laptops should be able to use and left it at the lab last night. If it doesn't work I am out all of $4.50 (lol).

It's on top of the 3D printing computer's desktop tower until I get to it.

The vision for said dock (if it works) is so anyone instructing a class can plug their laptop in the dock and use the same software loadout and machine that their class is using, and also so if it is needed anyone can drop a lab laptop into the dock and use the sound system/projector. Yay!