Primary ICT - Laptop Pros and Cons

Not mentioned in the video, but worth thinking about :

1) Laptops typically consume about 1/3 of the power of Desktop machines. Lower running costs helps to offset the higher capital cost, and they produce less heat. As they also consume less resources to make, they win the eco-friendly vote.

2) Reliability remains an issue. Laptops are portable but not ruggedised (with a few premium-priced exceptions). Getting a good warranty is essential, with 3 years now being typical. As specialist repair of laptops is expensive, consider selling them off at the end of the warranty period, after wiping off all data, and replacing them with new machines. As the government now allows IT equipment to be written off 100% against tax in 3 years, this would seem to be the optimum solution. Incidentally, the same consideration applies to video projectors, for the same reasons.

3) The typing position for the keyboards of most laptops isn't very good. Fortunately, add-on, more ergonomic keyboards are relatively cheap, and have the additional benefit of saving wear on the inbuilt keyboard; a similar consideration applies to using an external mouse - - much easier to use for most people than a glidepad or trackpoint, and cheap to replace.

4) Small Form-factor PC's are rapidly adopting many of the advantages of laptops as far as low power consumption and small size are concerned, and have greater expansion possibilities than most laptops. Laptops don't tend to have great graphics, except at a premium price, so if you need a machine for advanced graphics work, such as video editing, a SFF PC with a good graphics card and a large TFT monitor could offer better value for money.

5) The price of TFT monitors has been dropping for some time; their low running costs compared to CRT monitors makes it worth upgrading sooner rather later; there are also space considerations that act in favour of the same argument.

6) Wireless networks are great if they are secure; a major liability otherwise. Don't leave the task of setting up a network to someone who doesn't fully understand the security issues. e.g. choosing and enabling an appropriate encryption standard ; setting up specified MAC addressing ; setting up firewalls; setting up and maintaining network passwords, particularly for shared file access. In particular, never leave the security settings of a wireless access point / router as their default values.