On Owning a Laptop

Greetings students, teachers, parents, and care givers and welcome back to school! We at Laptop Upcycle are pleased that school is back in session and we wish everyone all the best in these difficult times. We have a lot of news to share on multiple fronts; partnerships, milestones, progress in our lab, and new volunteers, but to start a series of posts on these pages we share our opinion on the difference between Chromebooks and other laptops, with a focus on usage in our public schools in Montclair.

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The Montclair Board of Education announced in late August of 2021 that they would be issuing Chromebooks to every student as a part of their one-to-one Chromebook initiative (see this Montclair Local article for details). Laptop Upcycle fully supports this effort and we congratulate the district for this action. Getting technology in to the hands of students who need it has been our passion for close to five years now and we have succeeded in giving over 1000 laptops to students locally.

Laptop Upcycle would like you to understand the difference between borrowing a Chromebook from the District and getting one from us. Without further ado -

• A loan of technology versus ownership. A Chromebook loaned from the Montclair school district is a device provided to your student(s) to do their school work. It is theirs to use, but MUST be returned upon the completion of the school year. There are detailed usage and loan requirements from the Montclair Board of Education (MBoE) that you agree to when you receive the Chromebook. We will not list them here since they are quite detailed, but Here is the link. Of note is that families are responsible for the Chromebooks being returned in working condition upon completion of the loan time. Any damage/replacement must be paid for by the family. At Laptop Upcycle, the high quality laptops students GET from us are theirs to keep, no tracking software, no restrictions on use, and no cost. They do not need to return them to us, ever.
  
• Ownership is powerful. We have seen the faces those who have received laptops from us light up when they are told the laptop is THEIRS. We describe how they can take care of their new laptop and all the things they can do with them. In addition to connecting them to school, it connects them to their friends and family.
• Chromebooks are great, but limited. We have also given out many Chromebooks to our younger students. Don't get us wrong, we like them and they certainly are great tools for basic school work. The problems creep in when our students want to do MORE. Want to do detailed work offline on a Chromebook, the answer is no. Want to explore beyond the web browser on your computer and use a special app for something like web development, sound editing, or that fancy new game, sorry the Chromebook won't support that. We could go on, but if you would like to learn more, just see this detailed comparison of the Pros and Cons of Chromebooks.
• The Linux Mint laptops we give to students support all the main stream web browsers (including Chrome) and they provide for incredible access to powerful and unique apps to challenge and meet the needs of our curious students.
• Support. We do not know the exact process for support in the MBoE if a student has problems with their Districts issued Chromebook, but our policy is simple. If you have received a laptop from Laptop Upcycle and it fails for any reason, we will accept its return with no questions asked and you GET a replacement. It doesn't matter if you broke it or some component failed. No judgement, no problems. Easy, right? We have replaced many laptops using this policy and it works great.
  

We hope this brief summary has been helpful. If you have further questions or would like to debate any of the points here, we would be happy to hear from you. Remember, we are a 100% volunteer organization and a 501c3 nonprofit and we enjoy supporting our kids in school. Finally, if you know of a student who needs a laptop for school, please pass on this link to Get a Laptop.

Thanks, Laptop Upcycle