Second hand laptops for local school

arrowman

The school where my kids go has managed to get some decommissioned Dell laptops from a local business. They are Dell Latitude D630.
They are blank with no OS and need both replacement batteries and power supplies.
I think they will take Windows7 and will need Office installed as well.
Any tips on where to source all this at a reasonable cost?

Alanstrainor

Windows 7 will work on these systems, I had a D620 for a long while and had Windows 7 on it towards the end. But I do have to say that these machines are well past their best. They are 10 year old laptops, and even if they were top spec ones when new they will struggle a lot now.

I am not sure where you will be able to source Windows licenses for these either, presuming you will be looking for them for free. Some schools can get free/low cost access to Windows products, at least I remember helping a customer years back that was in education and they had licenses through some portal or another with Microsoft. I'm sorry I don't have more info, this was at least 5 years ago...

Now my next question is, do these computers have to run Windows at all? I think the best course of action for such systems is installing some form of Linux. The OS is generally well suited to low powered and older systems, and driver support should hopefully be okay. The other huge advantage here is that the OS is free to use (there's lots of different free, full featured versions of linux you can use). Ubuntu, Linux Mint are two off the top of my head, but there are more depending on what you need. All will either come with an office like package, or you will be able to install one easily.

Batteries might be a problem, I would expect that you would end up having to source them from Ebay and the likes. This would mean buying third party batteries that might not be the greatest. Dell appear to sell them... for 145eur a pop Ex.VAT. :pac:

Chargers will be similar to the batteries. The prices from Dell are 50eur exVAT, ebay is an option, but again you'll end up buying spurious knock off chargers which might not be ideal.

ressem

Regarding the Office and Windows software, you might want to talk to SAMI http://www.sami.ie/school-software/microsoft/
about school software Volume licensing at about a tenth of the cost of the business equivalent.

Windows 10 enterprise is OKish on a D630. I still use one for odds and ends albeit with an SSD hard drive.

Replacing Batteries and power supplies though? I'd keep in mind that it might not be worth the spend for an old laptop.

Just keep in mind that much newer refurbished machines are available with warranty, for a price not much higher than 2 batteries.
https://www.aspensolutions.co.uk/online-shop/product-category/laptops/?orderby=price

arrowman

Thanks for the comments and pointers lads.
I know these are old models by today's standards but I still think if I can source the necessary batteries, power cables and software at a reasonable cost they will keep the school going for another 5 plus years.
At the same time I don't think you could justify a big spend per machine in getting these laptops up and going. The batteries are needed as the school works off a laptop trolley.
I'll contact SAMI in the morning re the Microsoft products.
Have you come accross either of these outfits for sourcing the batteries

http://www.laptopchargers.ie/

https://www.batterydepot.com/

TerrorFirmer

By the time you have batteries and chargers bought - and considering cheap versions of both tend to have high failure rates - would you not be better off simply buying a range of chromebooks? You can get a brand new Chromebook starting from about €160 and realistically it would be faster than using a ten year old laptop with Win10.