Buying a new device - Factors to investigate

Before you make your decision:

Do you have Which? membership?

If you are a member of Which? Check out what they recommend or warn against.

Virus protection

I've known parents invest in good devices but children ignorantly downloaded viruses that made them useless.

No amount of uninstalling on my part helped. Further expenses were then required to clean up. 

It is important that nothing is download without supervision.

Make children aware of Trojan horses when downloading seemingly harmless freebies.

Compatability issues?

The Google education suite of products and Chrome books are fantastic. However, be aware that you cannot run Windows products on a Chrome book but you can run Google products on a Microsoft machine.

How much to spend?

Apple Macs and many other top of the range laptops meet all the criteria but are very expensive.  I would struggle with spending a lot of money on something that a child is carrying around all day.  

Using an old work laptop is a great idea to save money. However, you will need to check that the machine can power up and that everything required can be opened and saved quickly.

Dyslexic students struggle enough in class without adding the additional frustration of a slow machine.

Peer pressure

Older students are sometimes reluctant to use devices at school as they don’t want to stand out as being different from their peers.