laptops for teachers

[guynexdoor]

My principal just made me responsible for choosing and ordering 10 laptops for teachers.

My budget is around 1200.

I was thinking of going w/ the lenovo line?

I'm just curious as to which companies I should stick to when buying laptops. I was told/experienced to stay away from SONY.

DELL seems to be the cheapest option, but should I stick with them?

Thanks

 

[esun]

I highly recommend Lenovo. Very good products. I've seen a lot of professors with computers and they all have either IBM/Lenovo or Apple laptops.

Maybe the teachers should get some choices, though. E.g., a Mac option, a 12" vs. 14" size option, that type of thing.

 

[guynexdoor]

we have to go w/ PC

there's no MAC support at our school.

Is lenovo more expensive than dell b/c of the quality of the plastic?

 

[hennessy1]

You can still go with apple and use bootcamp this is what I did. They work wonderful under windows.

 

[esun]

In my experience, build quality on Lenovos is much better than it is on other brands. However, I've only used consumer-level products from other companies, not business-line products (e.g. I've used Inspiron laptops, but not Latitudes). I don't know exactly what makes them better, but they feel more solid to me.

I've also had great experience with Lenovo support (on more than one occasion), so that's a huge plus IMO.

 

[dbailey]

Bang for the buck, I would say Acer. Levino's are tough and recieve high ratings. Dell is mainstream and has decent support. Just make sure you have good warranty support of 3 years if possible.

 

[WombRaider]

Dell Latitude is a good all around choice. It also comes with standard 3 year warranty. Lenovo Thinkpads are a little bit more expensive but you get what you pay for. However, you probably won't be able to buy a decent Thinkpad for $1200 with a 3 year warranty; they come stock with 1 year warranty.

 

[zig3695]

lenovo's are nice and small, and if you can afford them they are idea for business use.

screw acer laptops, you want something that will run for more then a couple months.

best bang imo is easily DELL. even the inspirion series are built very sturdy (much more rigid then t40 lenovo's at least) but the dell's are bigger then the lenovos. you really cant beat the portability of the lenovo t series laptops.