News

Richards Bay High School

Posted on by Liam Daniels

In September 2017 East Coast Radio switched on its new Richards Bay antenna and broadcast the East Coast Breakfast show live from Richards Bay High School. Device Shop was there, and we left behind a load of high quality IT equipment for the school. Nine years on, schools are still one of the customer groups we enjoy working with most, so here is the story and what we have learned about equipping a school lab properly.

Quick answer: Device Shop donated ex-corporate IT equipment to Richards Bay High School during East Coast Radio’s live broadcast on 15 September 2017, and we still help South African schools build labs using graded, warrantied refurbished machines.

Key takeaways

  • East Coast Radio launched its Richards Bay antenna on 15 September 2017, with Darren Maule and the East Coast Breakfast team broadcasting from the school.
  • Device Shop CEO Craig Sneeden and Acting General Manager Mark Herbert announced the donation live on air.
  • Ex-corporate desktops and laptops let a school buy three or four working machines for what one new consumer PC costs.
  • Everything we sell carries genuine Windows 11 Pro, a one year warranty and a seven day return window.

The morning the breakfast show came to school

Darren Maule and the East Coast Breakfast team set up at Richards Bay High School for the antenna launch. Craig Sneeden and Mark Herbert were interviewed during the broadcast, and when they announced that Device Shop was donating IT equipment to the school, the learners made sure the whole KZN coast heard about it. The school posted its thanks afterwards under the #ECRBay tag. It remains one of the best mornings this business has had.

Why schools buy refurbished

School budgets are set early in the year and stretched thin by the fourth term. Ex-corporate hardware closes that gap. A Lenovo ThinkCentre M90p with a Core i5 sits at around R1 250 at the time of writing, and an HP Compaq 8200 with a Core i3 lands at the same money. Buy twenty of those instead of six new consumer towers and you have a full lab rather than half a lab.

These are not consumer machines that have been polished up. They came out of banks, law firms and corporate fleets, where they were built to run all day for three or four years before a lease cycle replaced them. Our range of refurbished desktop computers is almost entirely made up of that kind of stock.

Desktops, all in ones or laptops for a school lab

Three questions settle this for most schools.

  • Does the room stay a computer room? If yes, towers are cheapest per seat and easiest to repair.
  • Is space or cabling the problem? An all in one unit puts the whole machine behind the screen. An HP EliteOne 800 G5 with a Core i5-9500 runs about R6 950, and an older HP 8200 all in one starts near R2 450.
  • Do staff need to take work home? Then laptops, and budget for a docking station at the desk rather than a second machine.

What to check before a school signs off an order

  • Grade. A, B and C describe cosmetic condition, not how well the machine works. For a lab, grade C saves real money and nobody minds a scuffed lid. We set out the differences in our guide to what A, B and C condition actually mean.
  • Licensing. Ask for genuine Windows 11 Pro, not a home licence or an unactivated install. Pro is what you need to join a domain.
  • Warranty. One year is our standard. A three month warranty from a back room dealer is not the same offer.
  • Data handling. Ex-corporate drives have to be wiped properly before resale. Our note on how drives are cleared before a machine is resold covers what to ask any supplier.
  • Spares. Buy one extra machine per twenty. Chargers and RAM for a common model are easy to find. For an obscure model they are not.

Tip: Standardise on one model per lab. Identical machines mean one image, one charger type and a spares drawer that fits everything in the room.

What about parents buying for one child

Most of the calls we get after a school order come from parents at the same school. A used business laptop beats a cheap new consumer one at the same price almost every time: metal hinges, a keyboard that survives a schoolbag, and parts you can still buy in five years. Our entry level machines under R3 000 cover homework, research and Office work comfortably. An HP EliteBook 840 G3 with a Core i5 sits at about R2 750 in grade C, which is the sweet spot for a high school learner.

If the child is heading into matric IT, design or engineering, step up a generation or two. The wider refurbished laptop range runs from those entry machines through to an EliteBook 840 G8 at around R9 450.

Frequently asked questions

Does Device Shop still donate equipment to schools?

We support schools and NGOs when we can, and we did so well before the Richards Bay High School broadcast. Get in touch with the details of your school and what you need, and we will tell you honestly what we can do.

Can a school buy in bulk and pay on an order number?

Yes. Bulk and institutional orders are a large part of what we do, and we deliver nationwide.

Will refurbished machines run the software our syllabus needs?

Office, browsers, Scratch, Delphi and the usual CAT and IT syllabus tools run fine on a Core i5 with 8GB of RAM and an SSD. Video editing and 3D work need a stronger spec, so send us the subject list and we will match the machine to it.

Richards Bay High School got a hall full of cheering learners and a pile of equipment that morning in 2017. The equipment mattered more than the noise. If your school is sitting on a lab full of machines that no longer run a current version of Windows, refurbished ex-corporate hardware is the cheapest honest way to fix it, and we are happy to spec it out with you.