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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

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Laptop for secondary school

15 replies

Trulybluey · 20/09/2022 16:12

DD has just started year 7 and needs a laptop she can use at school. The school uses MS Teams and Microsoft. She has dyslexia and dysgraphia and can use a school laptop but we have talked to the school and it would be better if she had her own laptop. Can anyone suggest a lightweight and portable laptop with a long battery life? There are so many options!

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Bunnyannesummers · 20/09/2022 18:57

macbook would be light, great battery life and can have all the Microsoft apps on it, but is very expensive for a Y7.

surface might be your best best

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dizzydizzydizzy · 20/09/2022 18:59

Toshiba laptops always used to be very robust which would also be very important for school (I used to work in the industry)

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SunnySomer · 20/09/2022 19:03

I bought a Lenovo to do a degree - it’s very very portable, battery lasts a full day at least, very user friendly. I’d buy another if anything happened to it

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SkygardenTower · 20/09/2022 19:06

A surface Go laptop is a nice computer, small to lightweight but big enough to be useful, touch screen etc… my daughter (off to uni) is happy with it.

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maddy68 · 20/09/2022 19:46

Don't go MacBook lots of the software that's used at school isn't compatible

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Takeachance18 · 20/09/2022 21:14

Microsoft surface go - if they are a Microsoft school, or whatever the others use in class.

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Trulybluey · 20/09/2022 21:35

Thanks, I will look up all the suggestions. The surface go 3 doesn't get very good reviews though.

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Houseplantmad · 20/09/2022 21:41

A lot of our students use a Chromebook.

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SkygardenTower · 21/09/2022 17:16

The go laptop is different from the go, I prefer the laptop version.

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LondonQueen · 21/09/2022 17:19

maddy68 · 20/09/2022 19:46

Don't go MacBook lots of the software that's used at school isn't compatible

Very outdated argument now. If you have the budget get a MacBook. If not get a ChromeBook, I wouldn't bother with a cheap windows laptop, Nearly everything is web based these days so battery life, being robust and the display is more important.

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Trulybluey · 21/09/2022 18:28

SkygardenTower · 21/09/2022 17:16

The go laptop is different from the go, I prefer the laptop version.

I see that now, the laptop version hers much better reviews than the tablet version.

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OhCrumbsWhereNow · 22/09/2022 21:05

DD (Y9) has dyslexia and hypermobile fingers so finds writing hard. She started with a laptop, but moved last year to using an iPad with a keyboard and e-pen.

Made a massive difference - it's smaller and lighter, and she can use the camera function to take photos of the board and worksheets and then annotate them using the pen. Was also a lot cheaper than a laptop.

It works with teams and with Office 365.

We didn't get the Apple keyboard or pen but a cheaper version that was compatible and both work really well.

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OhCrumbsWhereNow · 22/09/2022 21:06

Re battery life, I got her the 128GB one and a full charge easily lasts the whole day at school plus watching videos on the train on the way home.

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whattodo2019 · 22/09/2022 21:13

My son has a surface book pro. It's absolutely brilliant.

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Trulybluey · 22/09/2022 21:36

Thanks so much for the replies. Interesting about the iPad and e-pen, DD also has hypermobility in her fingers.