BYOD for High School

Lberryhouse on 03/01/2014 - 09:43

I am looking for a BYOD for my son to take to High School.

The School has advised that the Wi-Fi installed in high schools operates on the 802.11n 5Ghz standard. They have also stated that devices marketed as 802.11bgn probably do not support the required standard.
Must have Windows 7 or above.
A minimum of 6hrs battery life to last the school day.
A minimum of 4gb RAM.
10.8 inch or larger screen.

The school has recommended Lenovo X131e, Dell Latitude 3330 and Acer B115 as basic models.

I would like a touch screen if possible.

I have been Googling and have been to the Harvey Norman, JB's etc but get stuck with the Wi-Fi thing.

I would really appreciate it anyone could help me with perhaps some other brands and models which would work on the schools Wi-Fi.

Thank you

Find Me A Bargain

Comments

    • MATTDAMON on 05/01/2014 - 13:11
      +1

      I think its crazy that families have to fork out serious money on an item that realistically isnt needed, and have made it mandatory. Feel pretty sorry for families that have 2-3 kids on a limited income.

      • Dotha on 06/01/2014 - 07:13

        Where has it been made mandatory?

      • kathmandu-jeff on 07/01/2014 - 21:11

        At my high school we have to pay $1600 for a laptop at the start of year 7 and then again at year 10.

      • pennae on 07/01/2014 - 21:22

        There are always alternatives provided - most schools will have loan machines (often managed by the school library) and public libraries also have computing facilities for students to use.

        And it is realistically needed these days :)

    • zulu8000 on 08/01/2014 - 15:11

      May I ask how you can get the E330 for $600 with a 128GB SSD?
      Was it through lenovo online?
      Maybe I'm mistaken but I think Lenovo allow you to add an SSD for only the X131e model.

      • Mokr on 09/01/2014 - 10:31

        he installed it in the mSata slot, which allows for the HD and a smaller SSD to be isntalled.

        bought the msata from a retalier i assume

  • nowlan on 05/01/2014 - 12:37

    5 ghz is oddball.
    b,g,n operate on 2.4.

    the (coming) new .AC standard is 5 ghz only.

    makes me think they dont have a decent wifi setup, which is why they are taking the 5 ghz spectrum to spread more access points around.

    im not familiar with schools laptops anymore.

  • ozbpro10 on 05/01/2014 - 13:20

    A school recommend us to buy from this website http://www.lwt.com.au/. I think the price is a bit on the nose, even though the site is supposed to do a bulk discount for schools and state government.

  • neonlight on 05/01/2014 - 13:27

    Surface pro should do the job.

  • asdassa on 05/01/2014 - 16:52

    skip all the devices until they are in y11/12

    only then will it become somewhat useful

    • pennae on 07/01/2014 - 21:20
      +1

      Actually, the opposite has been found - it's only in yr11 and yr12 that they need handwriting skills and the syllabus becomes very content driven. It's in the primary and middle school years where digital literacies are incredibly important both in terms of accessing information, and in terms of creating it.

  • chris_21 on 05/01/2014 - 19:06

    Sure it has a small screen (10.1 inch) but geez i wish i had my Asus T100 in school.
    grab a micro hdmi to hdmi adaptor ($2 delivered on ebay) and then you can use extended and/or bigger screen.
    USB 3.0 port, super long battery. Convertable (laptop\tablet).

    It has 5ghz wireless N, free office (that tipped me over the edge), its light and has enough grunt for most work.
    Also its $455 pricematched at officeworks

  • frinik on 05/01/2014 - 19:18
    -2

    Look for cheap gaming laptops. They have the grunt so they'll run whatever the school can throw at them
    http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2109974

    • scrimshaw on 05/01/2014 - 19:30
      +2

      Not a good choice. Gaming laptops are very heavy, tend to be on the thicker side, and discrete GPU requires more power.

      An Ultrabook laptop with Haswell or Ivy Bridge, preferably with an SSD is the best solution. It's thin and fast.
      The best compromise between mobility and price is one of those laptops the OP mentioned — e.g Lenovo Edge series, Lenovo X series.

      Remember schoolkids still need to carry their schoolbags in addition to their laptops, including the charger.

      • frinik on 05/01/2014 - 21:09
        +1

        consider the weight as part of his physical education :D

        • Windows7forever on 06/01/2014 - 15:24
          +1

          Seeing a Chiropractor later on is is very expensive.

  • erasimos on 05/01/2014 - 20:38
    +1

    Schools specify 5ghz or A band because a. they support it b. you can fit more radios in a smaller area without interference leading to point c. to support a lot of clients in a small area.
    Places like lwt sell corporate laptops to schools so they tend be be a bit stronger than standard. They also include three year warranties. Their prices vary state to state and by buyer.

    If you are looking for a cheap laptop for school try a latitude from dell outlet.

  • Hotpotcorn on 05/01/2014 - 20:39
    -1

    ipad? most common device used by schools…

    • scrimshaw on 05/01/2014 - 20:50
      +2

      Windows is a requirement. See OP.

  • hubertlam on 05/01/2014 - 22:02

    Ensure your wireless card is 802.11abgn, NOT 802.11bgn.

    The "a" is all important. It's OK if it's 802.11ac/abgn.

    • ProjectZero on 07/01/2014 - 09:07

      Err… not quite sure what you mean… having the a and not having the a just means you have or are missing a certain wifi group… from what i know

      802.11a <— Old, and rarely used…
      802.11b <— Old, and rarely used…
      802.11g <— slightly old but commonly used
      802.11n <— Kind of the norm now and widely used
      802.11ac <— new hell and rarely used by anywhere except for homes and possibly offices since it is new

      I don't see why not having 802.11a built into the card is any issue… if anything i doubt you can find a 802.11a wifi card now a days.

      • _Bruce_ on 07/01/2014 - 09:17

        Because a and ac runs on 5Ghz, and b/g run on 2.4, which is what this entire thread is about.

        If you have b/g/n, there is a good change that it only runs on 2.4. If you have a/b/g/n or b/g/n/ac then it must support 5Ghz.

        • ProjectZero on 07/01/2014 - 12:48

          That would explain it… cheers

        • jeanene on 15/01/2014 - 11:07

          Not correct, n also runs 5ghz

        • _Bruce_ on 15/01/2014 - 11:13

          Optionally. A device sold as 802.11n does not need to support 5GHz. b and g only run on 2.4.

          What I wrote is correct (except for the change/chance typo).

  • hubertlam on 05/01/2014 - 22:04

    What is your budget?

    Lenovo has a NSW DEC BYOD site. http://www.lenovo.com.au/byod/nsw/

    I'd go with the ThinkPad Yoga with stylus. If you think the i3 is a little underpowered, go to the student site and configure the machine to order: http://shopap.lenovo.com/students/au/en/laptops/thinkpad/yog…

  • Derekhuang24 on 05/01/2014 - 23:55
    -2

    Why not an ipad?, imo I think laptops are bulky and tend to start up slow, unless you get a macbook pro/air. I got all my textbooks on my ipad so pretty much I am all set to study hard for this year. By the way, I do not know about 5ghz thing since ipads support 802.11 b/g/n. Most schools have students adopt the use of ipads for education. Why you need windows 7? the ipad interface is good already.

    • scrimshaw on 06/01/2014 - 07:56

      The school provides the kids with free applications, like Microsoft Office, Adobe creative suite, et cetera which only run on Windows.

      Its not just as simple as 'bring in any device', since the school software must also work on it.

      • Derekhuang24 on 06/01/2014 - 09:24

        Oh, then you probably need a laptop to run the software.

    • lplau on 06/01/2014 - 10:01

      Just get a SSD and you will fix all the slowness. LOL
      Hard drives are slow nowadays compared to a good SSD.

      Experience 20sec startups on a good SSD.
      If your laptop supports mSATA then get a good mSATA SSD and experience startups within 5 seconds.

      My Sony Pro 13 starts up almost instantly from a full shutdown. (Not Standby)

  • nikey2k27 on 06/01/2014 - 08:23

    i personal would just by a windows computer a cheep and good one. i ask school what they going to run on it.

  • lplau on 06/01/2014 - 09:45

    Get any laptop, if it doesn't support 5ghz then simply buy a new mini pci-e intel wifi card from ebay and throw it in and all good.

    Almost every laptop on the market supports 5ghz. However not in dual band mode (e.g. using both 2.4ghz and 5ghz at the same time).

  • frostman on 06/01/2014 - 13:02

    I don't know what this whole hoo-ha is all about

    802.11n runs on both 2.4/5Ghz spectrum, however 802.11ac runs primarily on 5Ghz band, however is backward compatible with 802.11n DEVICES.

    So if the school is running a 802.11n - 5ghz only standard, any of the 'later' 80.2.11n devices should be able to operate on your school's wifi, yes it wont be gaining the full potential speed, but until the 802.11ac devices come out, any device should suffice…

    • ProjectZero on 06/01/2014 - 14:02

      Actually if i remember correctly, 802.11n started off with 2.4Ghz with a later added function of 5Ghz. Thus, all 802.11n compatible devices during the initial phases were 2.4Ghz only.

      There is a choice to choose to run either one only or both together. Although, it seems there were signal issues when you use 2.4Ghz on a dual band router (please correct this if i'm wrong).

  • frostman on 06/01/2014 - 14:51

    Either the original poster didn't understand the School's requirement advising it's running both 2.4/5Ghz

    OR

    The school will have the dumbest IT Admin if they chose to run a 5Ghz band ONLY..

  • teamjet on 06/01/2014 - 15:40
    +1

    If it is a NSW government high school I can confirm that they are only running a 5GHZ band only. Schools are using the existing infrastructure installed when then Digital Education Revolution [DER] was around. [They have disabled the 2.4GHZ band]

  • frostman on 06/01/2014 - 16:05

    I've worked for a University as an IT Admin, and can tell you the ICT Manager was as clueless as a School Student. I think this is a norm for ICT and Education Sectors…

    Anyway, if it's 5Ghz ONLY…that should be fine in terms of compatibility, most "decent" tablets, laptops, netbooks etc have dual-band network capability, unless you buy some No-Frills Pad for $100 or a Chinese Apple Product from their Fake Apple Store.

    The issue I have is that the schools are usually multilevel, and 5Ghz is fairly bad at wall penetration (as many advised above)

    In general, the higher the frequency of a wireless signal, the shorter its range. Thus, 2.4GHz networks cover a substantially larger range than 5GHz wireless networks

    • v1c on 06/01/2014 - 23:46
      +1

      While all the current macbooks support both 2.4/5GHz, a lot of the Windows laptops do not. Just take a look at the default configurations for Dell/Lenovo consumer laptops priced less than $1000.

    • 1q2w3e on 07/01/2014 - 08:55

      The schools have a router in virtually every classroom. There shouldn't be any problems regarding wall penetration.

      • MATTDAMON on 07/01/2014 - 10:27
        -1

        Why would they have that? They would have WAP's (usually Cisco) and be placed every 2nd/3rd room/corridor for the best cost/coverage

        • _Bruce_ on 07/01/2014 - 10:33

          Because it isn't just coverage, you need to support a very large number of devices.

        • teamjet on 09/01/2014 - 11:51

          Yep there is 1 Aruba WAP installed in every classroom to ensure a defined bandwidth was available to all devices.

  • Steptoe on 06/01/2014 - 17:07

    Bring back Chalk!

  • MasterNoob on 06/01/2014 - 17:21

    Bring Your Own Drinks?

  • twocsies on 06/01/2014 - 20:53

    Try Dell outlet.

    http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/product…

    Dell Latitude 3330 for $499 (refurbished without OS)

  • Dotha on 06/01/2014 - 22:21

    Narrowing down from the OP criteria this is a NSW high school, they are using DER infrastructure so it is restricted to 5ghz currently. DER was not in primary schools nor was standardised wireless, the 5ghz restriction is more policy based and not technical. Age old government story.

    In NSW the 5ghz restriction wouldn't technically be an issue in the 1800 primary schools.

    • v1c on 06/01/2014 - 23:39

      There are valid technical reasons for using 5GHz, particularly with regard to increasing the possible number of wireless access points and thereby increasing the maximum number of connected clients. http://www.metageek.net/blog/2012/11/designing-wi-fi-in-the-…

      • Dotha on 07/01/2014 - 07:34

        I completely agree. In NSW 25000 wireless access points were installed to connect ~300000 laptops, BYOD increases the client number exponentially.

  • jacknthebeanstalk on 07/01/2014 - 04:48

    As a 2013 high school graduate and being introduced to the laptop program in 2011, I can say that a lot of these laptop suggestions exceeds the criteria for a high school student. I think the E330 is the best choice despite its look. I had to use the acer travelmate 8372tg running on an i3 for 3 years and it was suffice to my needs. The most demanding program/s were the adobe kind - photoshop. Majority of the time was spent utilising microsoft word, pdf's and powerpoint slides. That said, an i5 would be more than enough.

    I don't know the technicalities in regards to the wifi issue however.

  • lplau on 07/01/2014 - 09:02

    My advice would simply be ignore the Wifi thing.
    Just buy him a new laptop e.g. current model, and you will not have an issue with the 5ghz thing.

    Almost every laptop made within the last 2 years support 5ghz, it may not do the "dual band" e.g. run with 2.4ghz at the same time to make it faster, however it will do 5ghz by itself.

    Even my Vaio from 4 yrs ago did 5ghz. LOL!

    • [Deactivated] on 07/01/2014 - 13:31

      Vaio and Acer consumer entry level are 2 very different things.

    • ProjectZero on 07/01/2014 - 13:54

      Your advice is not entirely true… not all laptops are the same, just because your VAIO had 5Ghz doesn't mean it's the norm.

      Either way, i do agree with the buy w/e cheap model you think will suit your needs and then just get a cheap $30 usb adapter for 5Ghz 802.11n if needed.

    • [Deactivated] on 07/01/2014 - 14:03

      Even my Vaio from 4 yrs ago did 5ghz

      I'll go one better, my Asus from 7 years ago can also use 5GHz. It uses a common wlan card for back then.. the Intel 4965agn.

      In other news my home devices rarely select 5GHz frequency over 2.4GHz on my simultaneous dualband home wireless network.

      And when manually forcing 5GHz frequency I found the wireless performance poorer than 2.4GHz.

  • mangoman on 07/01/2014 - 13:37

    Have you looked into the Asus T100 or any of the Bay Trail devices.

    Reviews seem to be pretty good for what is a low end processor. I would get one but im very fussy and waiting for more Bay Trail devices before making a choice on a new notebook.
    Fussy being that i would like to have a device where it has a replaceable options (the t100 is apparently difficult to dismantle) such as battery, RAM, Hard Disk.

    Im not sure if the ability of being able to use it as a tablet is more of a novelty as opposed to functional option.

  • pennae on 07/01/2014 - 18:13
    +3

    I am a high school teacher and over the past two years my school slowly phased in a 1:1 laptop program (using DER funding - yes, this late! - ) for two year groups. This year, it will be BYOD. The most frustrating things for me in 2013 were -

    1. BATTERY LIFE. This is so, so, so important and should be considered above HDD space, etc. as criteria for purchase. Consider purchasing a spare charger cable for your son to store in his locker or leave with a homeroom teacher. Even include a double adapter on the end. Most (older) classrooms are not equipped to charge laptops and may have only one or two powerpoints in the whole room. But I would be happy for a student to 'piggy back' on a powerpoint and be able to use his/her laptop vs not being able to use it at all (!!).

    2. Weight. The second top reason that students don't bring their laptops to class/school is that they find them to heavy to carry around (the first reason is that they don't use them in class, so why bother bringing them?). I'd be sorely tempted to get a Macbook Air (and dual boot if necessary) because they're so light; have excellent battery life; and don't have protruding bits/parts to get caught on things or cause damage to screens (our students have tablet-style laptops with swivel screens and many have been badly cracked / otherwise damaged because they have hurridly closed the lid and got it caught on the stylus or the antenna or whatever).

    3. A good insurance policy / repair policy. Many schools are forming partnerships/agreements with suppliers whereby support and repair is included as part of the package. If a laptop is accidentally damaged, they will pick it up and repair it and return it within 24-48hrs and/or provide a loan machine while this is going on. There must be some sort of back-up if something goes wrong - being without a laptop for a week would cause a lot of stress.

    I used to double-plan lessons because half my class would be laptop-less for some reason or another. But now it's getting to the stage where they simply cannot do their work without a computing device and I can't double-plan. This year my new year's resolution is not to do so much work on that double planning and spend more time on feedback and feed-forward. If your son, for some reason, is device-less, make sure that he takes responsibility for catching up - and if he knows in advance, that he takes responsibility for finding out what he should do/bring to support his learning BEFORE class rather than rely on the teacher/s alone.

    • scrimshaw on 07/01/2014 - 19:01

      Yes. For the students who are lucky enough to have a technologically savvy teacher, they will utilize computers as part of learning and thus it's actually quite important for the student to have a laptop in class, and hopefully one that doesn't run out of battery in less than 4 hours.

      It may be tempting to just buy a 15.6" Acer with 4cell battery and call it a day, but a laptop like that isn't suitable for school — weight and battery life is a major issue.

      • pennae on 07/01/2014 - 20:06

        Yes, there's also a "transition period" in many schools whereby students will have both textbooks and laptops to carry around. In a couple of years we'll look back at this thread and smile :)

    • [Deactivated] on 07/01/2014 - 21:40

      BATTERY LIFE.

      Whilst I somewhat agree battery life is important, if a school requires students to have laptops as part of their learning then the school should be providing work desks (or floor below) equipped with power points.

      • pennae on 07/01/2014 - 22:14

        Yes, I agree. But that's not going to happen in the short term and sometimes there's other constraints, such as the power feed to the school itself. One of the major reasons why batteries don't last the whole day is that students use their laptops for gaming etc. on the way to school, or haven't fully charged it the night before. It's easy enough to forget to charge it!

        That's why I'm suggesting that battery life is paramount - get a machine with really good battery life, and a spare charging cable (one at home and one at school) and this will make life easier :)

  • darktransition on 07/01/2014 - 23:46

    I would advise against buying from "mainstream" retailers such as Harvey Norman, Good Guys etc. You will 99% of the time get a better deal from specialized PC retailers such as MSY. (http://www.msy.com.au/)

    Otherwise, if you are already set on a certain model device I would strongly recommend using Static Ice to compare prices to find the best deal available, as this site compares prices from all major retailers and PC stores in Australia. (http://www.staticice.com.au/)

  • Lorenzo1998 on 08/01/2014 - 11:30

    We have the same thing in my school. I see people bring iPads, macs and even iPhones (must be iPhone 5 and up) . I recommend an iPad despite it being expensive( it's a good investment) because it is really light, you can take photos of the board. Use voice recorder and heaps of apps that will help your son excel through Highschool. The only setback about this is you can't simply copy files using your USB and I'm pretty sure there's much more issues.

    • [Deactivated] on 08/01/2014 - 13:03

      can't simply copy files using your USB

      Please tell me these so called "high tech" schools aren't using USB drives to store data? Surely they'd be encouraging "cloud" storage by now…

      • zulu8000 on 08/01/2014 - 15:41
        +1

        If I simply want to transfer some file from one device to another, I don't want to depend on the cloud. Horses for courses I mean.

      • pennae on 08/01/2014 - 18:15

        Cloud storage is often too flaky when 30 students are trying to access it in the same place at the same time. There are also restrictions as to what can and what can't be stored "in the cloud" if the servers are not located in Australia. For transferring large files, sharing a few USB sticks around is quick and easy!

        But… AirDrop on iOS/Mac devices can be great too :)

  • Lorenzo1998 on 08/01/2014 - 11:32
    +2

    I thought it's Bring Your Own Drink to Highschool

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