Our staff all get laptops, students get desktops. Personally I hate laptops. Rarely use them though I have several great ones. Personally I prefer the comfort and power of a desktop. As a tech director for a district i especially hate them. Anything on a desktop can be generically and easily replaced for well under $100 and about 10 minutes labor. It took me about an hour and a half to replace an mboard on a latitude last year and I needed photos and screws taped to index cards with labels on them to get it back together.
Here are a few disasters unique to laptops we have had with staff over the years; smashed a car window and stole a LT, tripped on the power cord and LT went flying - cracked screen and head crashed HD. put a few papers in the LT and closed lid - staple cracked screen, many frayed power cords from wrapping cord around the power brick to tightly, blown power inverter trashed whole system because Dell does not keep old mboard any more, loose Cat5 Port trashed whole system because Dell does not keep old mboard any more and my soldering skill do not extend to the microsurgery level - this would have been a $10 part on a desktop. None of these things happen with dtop, only ltops. I would have no trouble keeping a system's HARDWARE running for 15 years or as long as there is an ATX standard in play. Laptops can only be kept repaired for 3 to 5 years while the OEM stocks that specific part that is unique only to that model. If it matters LTs are about twice the price for less specs. Please I say lets just give them a desktop for home and a desktop at school - it would be cheaper and better. Myth - computing anywhere. As if I am driving down the road and I pull over lay out a picnic blanket with random colleges and become productive our I meet staff in the hall or over lunch and we all pull out our laptops and produce results. Fact - usually I work at work. Sometimes I work at home. I never work anywhere else. Ever. I watch movies on the plane. I check email with my Droid [ !!amazing device!! though as great as the Driod is I actually spend more hours with my Kindle in a week than the amazing Driod ] I browse on an LTop whenever I eat lunch alone, some email then if urgent but that is the closest I get to actually using a ltop to work. I was only going to get gum with those two cents anyway. BK On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Kenny, David <[email protected]> wrote: > I disagree, too. What I personally see is that the vast majority of teachers > that get laptops, get them as the result of grant funding, and get them in > addition to a desktop PC designated for their use. So what happens is the > School District ends up subsidizing a home PC that never gets used in the > enterprise, and only shows up when it is in need of repair. > > Rollaround labs (laptop carts) are a different story, but are a different set > of headaches -- mostly related to old network wiring maxing out at 100 Mb/s, > and what passes for computer lab time being 30 laptops hitting streaming > media sites/flash sites, or all the same site, and people being grumpy about > slow network performance on brand new laptops. > > Laptops are significantly more expensive than desktops at initial purchase, > for replacement hardware, for batteries that invariably die every 1-2 years. > > In years when the money runs shorter (than usual), I think laptops are > fiscally irresponsible. > > David > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jesse > Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 7:52 AM > To: tech-geeks > Subject: [tech-geeks] Quick Poll - Laptops > > Just gathering fellow geek opinions on the following statement made by > a board member... > > "Most schools are buying laptops now instead of desktops" > > Agree? > Disagree? > Comments? > > > Thanks, > Jesse > | Subscription info at http://www.tech-geeks.org | > | Subscription info at http://www.tech-geeks.org | > | Subscription info at http://www.tech-geeks.org |
