This time is a little different than the previous 7 in that my son Josh is headed to middle schools (grades 7 and 8 here). I taught that age group for much of my career so I'm well aware of all the issues, so that part isn't so bad. Besides, I'm just down the street at the high school and he'll be in a school staff by my former colleagues. I do have to get ready for a one issue though. Perversely; from a technology standpoint, our school district is much better prepared to deal grades 5 and 6 as they issue those kids the Dell Latitude 2100.
True: it's not the most advanced notebook ever with it's 10" screen and Atom processor, but it was rugged and came with 2Gb of RAM. No I'm not joking. That 2Gb is FAR superior than the 1Gb they put in the ThinkPad X200 that they bought for the high school and don't get me started on the 512Mb that was spec'd for the X61 of the middle school machines!!! It's so bad that the majority of the students don't check out school machines any more, preferring to BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology), or the most prevalent solution, use a smartphone. You can imagine what that does for efficiency when they have to actually have to do something productive; oh like type a paper....
You're probably thinking: "surely your son has a notebook computer", and of course, he does and has had since he was 4 or 5. In fact, he's now on his 5th or 6th generation of notebooks, having started with an A22p and most recently using a T500. Which gets me to my story. If you're the least bit familiar with that 15.1", 6+ pound machine you'll understand that it's a wonderful "workhorse" computer eminently suitable for the combo school work-Minecraft job it had been doing..... while sitting immobile on his desk. However, the concept of having a slightly built 12-year old packing it to and from school daily in a backpack probably isn't an ideal solution. At first I considered moving him to a smaller-lighter-slightly derelict T400 I have sitting around, but really; it isn't that much smaller and lighter. "What to do", says the propellerheaded dad?
The obvious solution is to buy another computer, right? You guys know me too well! In this case, there's more to it than my losing battle with TAS (Technology Acquisition Syndrome), but hey; we all have our little issues, right? Anyway; lets look at the decision matrix. Starting with the fact that school desks are NOT any bigger than when you and I went to school with nothing more than paper and pencils. Despite what the politicians would like you to believe, they are not building the schools any different than they used to. Sure, they add projectors, some Ethernet jacks and a WiFi AP in each room, but the rooms themselves are the same. As in the same size, with the same sized desks in there, with more students by the way (but that's another issue altogether). So you have a desk surface with the same size that they used to have, but the students are expected to have a notebook computer AND paper and pencil on there as well! Which gets us back to the original issue with the model of computer. If you compare the actual difference between the T500 and T400 side-by-side, there's not that much to give between them. Sure the T400 feels lighter, but the reality is that even the "S" model isn't that much better. Solution? You're lookin' at it..... The X-Series of ThinkPad! These machines were designed from the ground up to be "sub-notebooks" meaning between 3 and 4 pounds of carry weight, and a footprint based on a 12" screen. I kind of already knew this as my experience with them go back to the original X20 way back in my IT days in Chicago. In fact, I've owned every model between the X2x, X3x, X4x, X6x, and up to the X30x that have been my personal machine before the current X1. However, my detour through the X300/301/X1 had left me in the bigger screened branch of the line and have forgotten about the 12" machines since the demise of my daughter's X61. At this time, I'm not going to regale you with the process of deciding between relatively recent 12" models, but will simply say that I ended up at a working X220 at $59, but missing parts.
If you haven't read my old stuff before or I haven't made my point: here's the deal. These are ABSOLUTELY, the notebook computers to target!!! Let's start with that it was $59..... less than $80 after shipping. It was missing the A/C adapter, hard drive, drive bay cover, but had the critical battery! It was missing everything I had and mostly didn't want and had the one relatively expensive piece to replace. The X220 is the "Sandy-bridge" i5/2520m core version of these machines and is only 2 generations off of being current. Additionally, the 4Gb of RAM it did have was in the form of 1 module, giving me the ability to simply put in another to max it out to 8Gb (which I did immediately). The missing hard drive was going to get pulled and replaced with a 120Gb Intel 330 SSD out of his old machine anyway. Oh yeah, least I forget that I had to spend $1.96 to buy a drive-bay cover. Woe is me! Need I say that I have a drawer full of ThinkPad A/C adapters and that he'll be able to go anywhere in the house without having to move one. And since his and my schools have both been equipped with ThinkPads for years, there'll be A/C adapters everywhere! This might very well be the slickest upgrade I've done in years!
Now that I'm feeling good about myself.....
