Stumbled upon this when browsing on GearBest, looks like a flash sale until 8pm AEST today on this item.
Cheap Netbook with cherry trail Atom x5, 4GB RAM and 64GB eMMC. Windows licence not included (BYO licence). Spec looks like it may be useful for a BYOD laptop for school or as a second laptop. May not work too well with Linux according to other Ozbargainers.
Here's the only review that I could find: https://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http…
BYO laptops are whatever the hell you want.
Yeah right. Try telling that to the schools. If you don't have kids in school, you wouldn't know.
So you're forced to get Apple products? I remember my in-laws had a choice when they were in highschool a few years back. Either Mac or Windows. They took Macs at first, then swapped it for the Windows ones after a year or something. They hated the damn things.
Most government schools have decided to standardize the platform and Apple is the unanimous choice. Starts with iPads in year 7 and then on to MacBooks from year 9 onwards.
My two kids got cheap dell and acer laptops and perfectly fine.
My son addicted to playing games so I wiped out windows os and installed linux and still 100% fine.
They just do web browsing, pdf reading, word processing, etc. Very basic stuff.
My son does not care his laptop so a display replacement and a hdd replacement were done by dell the under warranty.
Also most of free school sw from education dep. are windows based.
I myself use the same cheap laptops at home - I am a sw engineer btw. To me machines are just for trying out my idea and cheap machines are powerful enough for this purpose. Of course running my idea on production is a different stroy - I need fast machines.
Bottom line: a very minimum level of laptop will be more than enough for schooling.
@Climber: So the school doesn't care what laptop or even OS the kids use? Also… you didn't install an Ubuntu derivative right? Because… you know… Steam.
No need to, my sons school uses & prefers Win10 based notebooks.
Just because your kids school uses Apple doesn't mean it's become the defacto standard.
Windows PC's dominate a vast majority of vic gov schools.
2 schools i know of have 1 single student each with a MacBook.
There are a few rough department rules for BYOD machines and one of the main ones is that the purchaser of the machine can choose pretty much whatever they wish.
That pretty much makes @potplanty 's comment spot on.
I'd recommend Windows based machines as most (not speaking for all!) schools know and support them better.
yep this
some schools use mac some use windows
think about it this way, with all the schools out there and all the different 'socio-economic levels', you think every parent can afford a macbook for their kids?
further to this, some even moved to chromebooks partly for that reason
@ms: a mate was surprised that his kids were told to by Surface Pros (the $2k ones) for yr 7 in a public school - they were WTF? they'll trash it…indeed they did.
Yes I chose a hassle free ubuntu because I am a lazy man :) I know I can't fight against modern day game companies, just make things hard to use and make my kids think.
I strongly believe that parents have to provide a vey minimum level of machine and make kids think how to use machines wisely. Otherwise they just believe that machine power is their power or knowledge.
(I found even adults have this behavour. With slow machines people need to think not to make mistakes, but with poweful machines people do things again and again until it seems to work, so repeat making mistakes a lot and faster!)
one thing i would note.
this "DERE" has only 11n 2.4ghz I assume up to 300 (could be 150)
this will be problematic in NSW schools that have 5ghz… someone tell me if they opened up 2.4 to byod
you could always use a dongle i guess
i cannot imagine that they havent opened up 2.4
i mean why persist with 5ghz
but then nothing surprises me with NSW DEC
Government school I went to recommended any Windows laptop with Chrome as browser.
Same school also didn't own any Apple computers or iPads themselves. All Windows, PC and tablets.
Friends at other government schools also used Windows devices.
Only friends at private schools had to buy Apple products exclusively.
@Climber: You should see the people I work with here. They need to run run a few Adobe apps (they're not designers, but they view documents and do some image manipulation)… and they're asking for an i7, 16GB RAM, nVidia Quadro graphics. All because they Adobe apps don't load fast enough for them.
I would use a powerful electricity hungry desktop. Give a huge amount of rams and poweful gpu to Adobe, they are not for laptops!
@Climber: So would I. But being in IT, we can only offer them solutions. They decide what they want in the end. And they want to be mobile. <rolls eyes>
Depends on the school. Source. My then gf's younger sister is using a lenovo for school. Not saying all schools use windows based on one example. Just saying depending on the schools. Some recommend macs some windows.
Just to let you guys know that getting linux to work on this may be a hassle….
I have a similar spec ALDI laptop that sound and wifi drivers are not functioning even with the latest linux kernals(If you are interested in Linux on atom here is a good link:http://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com.au/ )
Thanks for the reply. Updated description just in case. :)
Lacking computering knowledge, can u upgrade this to ssd?
Hard Disk Memory: 64GB EMMC
Hard Disk Interface Type: BGA
no
also only 6 units left
Cheers, I'll pass then. Any of these cheap Chinese laptops support ssd upgrade? Budget is ‹250.
If you can stretch your budget a little further then a Jumper EZBOOK 3 PRO Notebook - SILVER 13.3 Inch Win 10 Home N3450 6GB/64GB AU $293.18 Delivered @ GearBest (when on sale) is pretty decent.
@altomic: Thanks mate. Have purchased one for US$199 from lightinthebox yesterday if anyone is interested.
BYO laptops are Apple MacBooks.