PC or Mac Mini for Secondary School

Laptop. Portability is a must for school.

As a dedicated Mac user...

...I'd say Windows Laptop for secondary school stuff. Especially if you aren't embedded in the Apple world already. And £300/£400 should be enough.

It's a hard one as a PC will be more compatible and more likely to work with any thing from the school. I also think kids need to know how Windows work for the working world. However, Mac's just keep on going for years and years, whereas PC's always slow down and become redundant after 4 or 5 years. I have a Mac Mini from 2012 and it's still as fast as when I got it. My work laptop that is 3 years old runs like an old dog now and we have just started swapping laptops on a 3 yr cycle.

For longevity I would get a Mac.

Sorry should have said Laptop is not an option. It is only for home plus they have a habit of dropping stuff! See cracked screen on Ipad and Mothers phone!!

Good point about practice using windows software. They use this at school and we have another PC (Dell Insipron?? PC built into a screen thing) so not too worried about that. I guess another question would be around parent controls for the Mac, as at the moment we use Windows Family a lot to restrict time and site access, so whats this like on Apple?

Mac Mini then they will be using both OS and Windows. All standard MS Office is compatible,  Android phone photos uploaded to a cloud thing will be accessible. Its fast, quiet and not power hungry.... plus MAC do Skool and student discounts too.

Loved my Mac mini at university

re woody74

I disagree with your comment about windows pc's becoming redundant.. We are only just clearing out a load of 2010 era dell desktops from work, not because they are bad/broken but because they lack some security features we require. yes they have had increased Ram and changed to SSD's over the years, but perfectly serviceable.

I would say, an entry level laptop has a very limited service life.

A school kid will mostly work on Windows at school, will mostly work on Windows in the workplace.  And Macs are more expensive from the get go, and are at the end of the day, only PC's running macOS on tightly restricted hardware.

I disagree with your comment about windows pc’s becoming redundant.. We are only just clearing out a load of 2010 era dell desktops from work, not because they are bad/broken but because they lack some security features we require

I concur. I was running an 8 year old desktop up until this time last year. It lacked the ability to upgrade to Windows 11 but would have soldiered on running Windows 10 for a while longer.

Am I just falling for the fancy marketing tricks of the Mac Mini,

Yes. Not sure if it's the same elsewhere but kids in Wales get a free Chromebook and that's fine for all their needs. They use them all the time for slides, word docs and other Google apps like GMail and Google Classroom. Such devices are cheap as chips, especially for the WG buying in bulk, and they work perfectly well.

Point is you need very little power. If you have £600 to get rid of there are better things to spend it on like school trips etc.

If you want a desktop, buy an office refurb PC for £150-200. These are very reliable and cheap as chips. You may need a WiFi dongle though and an SSD upgrade if it doesn't have one. My kids both have one for playing on and for lockdown work, this was only possible because they are cheap and reliable.

All standard MS Office is compatible

In theory!

I work as a professional colouring-in person - people send me Word files all the time and more often than not the formatting has a mind of it's own when opened in Word on a Mac! 🙂

I insist on PDF files, or at the very least create a PDF from what I see and send it back to them.

For longevity I would get a Mac.

As above my office PCs are I think 10-12 years old, they 'just work'.

I use a mini PC as my daily driver PC, it's been faultless. I was sort of aiming for the look and feel of an all-in-one pc but repairable/expandable/upgradeable. Acer veriton n4680 would be today's equivalent. Loads of power for your needs, and takes no desk or floor space. Dell and Lenovo do equivalents in the same size. You can mount them to the VESA mount on the back of your monitor.

Chances are they will either doing everything online* [using Google Docs or Office] or will be uploading as PDF so it doesn't really matter.

That said...... PC.

*  if not then they probably should be - the chances of "Miss I lost my homework" are minimal using Google Docs (I'm not so sure about Office/One Drive after my daughter last 3 days of Uni essay writing for absolutely no reason).

plus MAC do Skool and student discounts too.

As do Dell, etc.

If you're used to running Windows and it can do everything you need, just stick with that.

With Intel NUCs, be careful what you're buying. Some are complete systems with Windows preinstalled, ready to run out of the box, some require a hard disk, memory, and OS to be installed.

As above, Chromebook will probably do 99% of it and you can always plug it into a monitor/TV and use a BT keyboard, etc.

Windows PC more likely to be compatible with what the school has if you need to be installing anything.

Mac perhaps if having a fancy trinket trumps the above. Wouldn't bother investing too much as when they hit FE/Uni and format really matters toull be stuck with something that's either wrong, or already a few years behind the curve.

The correct answer is probably asking the school what they think if compatibility is the driving factor.

I'd still go for a laptop as even if they are a clumsy bugger they'll have to learn sometime not to be.

If you buy them a Mac you'll ruin them forever. I was a windows user for 2 decades, got just one Mac Air one day out of curiosity while travelling in the US and that was that. No more windows.

Refurb Dell/HP/Lenovo PC from Ebay they can have an i5 with 8+Gb of memory, a 1TB SSD pre-loaded with Win 10/11, for relative peanuts and they're setup to go...

The school will probably use O365/outlook/Teams for homework and comms...

That would be plenty good enough for school (and adult) work, can be upgraded and (when they wreck it with viruses and games) will be easy to replace like for like...

Pretty much the same applies to refurb Laptops.

I also think kids need to know how Windows work for the working world.

Although certainly in the case of the OP if you're a

We’re a Windows-loving family

Unless the kid is much smarter than you and can learn (and then teach you all) how to use Macs? 😂

I bought one of these a few months ago for my dad to replace a really old NUC. Super impressed for the money, and blazes through the usual browsing and office stuff. Even cheaper now at £120 after voucher. Celeron N5095 won't set the world on fire but 4 cores that can burst to 2.9Ghz is plenty for most people.

edit: silly link processing. Trying in quotes or search "TRIGKEY Micro Computer Intel 11th Generation Processors N5095 Mini PC W11, 8G DDR4 256G M.2 SSD 2280 Green G3 Desktop PC, Support Micro PC W10 Pro Dual 4K@60Hz HDMI/WiFi 5/BT 4.0/W11" on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B41NZVRJ?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

Surely get a mac - then they'll have a head start on anyone in an office environment as they'll know how both Windows & Mac OS works.
Windows machines for Christmas - Macs for life.

If you aren’t already in the apple ecosystem then go with a windows machine, it will probably be easier for all concerned! Personally, as we are already in that world with phones and MacBooks, I wouldn’t look at anything other than apple now, I just got fed up with IT not working as wanted, so long since ditched other stuff. We have an old MacBook Air that my daughter uses and it is faultless, she can also happily swap between that and windows machines as my wife has several for work. My 80 year old technophobe mum was a nightmare with a windows laptop, swapped to a MacBook and technical support calls are a thing of the past. Things just need to work 🙂

A current M2 Mac Mini will last years. My Mac Mini is one of the very last 2010 models with an optical drive; when I bought it I had the optical swapped out for a second HDD. After the second drive failed for the second time a couple of years ago, (as did the backup drive!), I’ve just had it upgraded by a friend with a 2Tb SSD, with a pair of 2Tb robust portable SSD’s running alternating backups. It’s got 8Gb of RAM, and would be perfectly capable of running Windows using an appropriate emulator. People have been doing that at least since the Mini first came out. The friend who did the work still has a couple of former work Macs from around 2001/2, that have tape backup’s attached that even now he gets requests for copies of! The durability of Macs shouldn’t be underestimated.

We’re a Mac household. Have been for years.

But the kids have Window 11 laptops for school. It’s just easier. All the work comes through Teams but teachers still manage to find the most weird Windows specific file formats for handouts in some cases. Or they’ll use random feature that’s only in the Win version of PowerPoint and not the Mac one.

As you’re a Windows house, just make life simple. The last thing you want to be doing the night before your kid’s homework is due to be in because they’ve left it to the last minute is trying to figure out why the Mac version of Office just does something slightly different…

300 quid, Dell, job done. It’s about picking the right tool for the job. Not the best tool.

Our secondary schooler has a Chromebook issued by the school. That works fine for all the education stuff. For gaming or other stuff then they may need something fancier but not for school stuff. Do they not get them free in Englandshire?

Only one suggestion to ask the school?

I think we can supply office on any of the 3 leading platforms. However if you end up video editing with us you’d ideally want a Mac at home. However I suspect computing students would really need to be on windows

My only other suggestion is that it should boot from an SSD

We're an apple family but... bought my daughter a windows laptop at start of A levels, she was one of 3 windows users in her Maths class.

A current M2 Mac Mini will last years.

So will an Intel NUC running Win11. There is no advantage either way, as long as Apple don't go breaking backwards compatibility again.

Ask the school? Two minute email and they’ll tell you what they recommend.

For school stuff an M1 Mac Mini is more than enough. But so is a £150 Lenovo Thinkpad and can at least be dragged around the house and away with them from time to time. Dual battery versions will run all day and a bit more.

I’m not sure that screwing all their possessions to the floor because they have a habit of dropping things is a sustainable approach going forwards.

Check whether the school is one of the ones that has thought it a good idea to use Google instead of O365 as if they are then there’s little point in getting a Windows device purely for consistency with school applications. Obv you can use Google Docs on a Windows device but it works the same on MacOS similarly O365 works on a Mac but you can sign into the device itself using the school account in a Windows device (if they are using O365) and then everything else, Teams OneDrive, Office is automatically synced.

On security ensure any machine you buy will run Oauth2 if Office 365 is involved. The lucky person will be limited to web-based access if the machine doesn’t meet Oauth2 requirements.

My 2 (currently in Years 8 and 10) used our aging iMac until this year when we got a Macbook Air mainly due to my eldest doing Graphics and wanting to work on stuff at home.  The iMac was just too long in the tooth to cope with the current Adobe products.  We are an Apple family so it was an almost no brainer.

Seeing as he just got an award for the best Graphics student in the whole (rather large) school I suspect it might have paid off!

However, pretty much everything else they do at school is web based, mainly on google classroom.

TLDR: Unless you kid wants to Graphics or similar it probably doesn't matter a jot.

Windows Laptop as most infrastructure at Schools, FE and HE is Windows/Office.

Ask the school .  We've been using a Chromebook as that's what's recommended .  Elder child got a subsidised laptop as that's what his school used

On security ensure any machine you buy will run Oauth2 if Office 365 is involved. The lucky person will be limited to web-based access if the machine doesn’t meet Oauth2 requirements.

Eh? OAuth are authentication standards that everything on the planet implements.

Suffice to say, and Windows or Mac machine will have no trouble accessing O365 or Microsoft 365 as it’s now known.

There's only one answer here and that's a windows laptop.

The boast that a mac will outlast a pc needs context in so far as people who claim this are invariably comparing a two grand Apple with a £300 pc. I have a 2011 laptop in daily use and a 2008 one probably finally nearing retirement.

The notion that they slow down over time is bollocks spouted by fanboys who haven't touched a pc in 20 years yet still feel qualified to comment.

In any case, none of this matters. The high school will use Windows exclusively and after five years of student use a mac will be just as ducked as a pc.

@bensales I have direct experience of Macs that won't allow login direct due to no Oauth2 support. Yes it may be standard but not all Macs support the later version necessary for Mail and Office suite direct use. It all has to be carried out on Web (this is for older secondhand stuff).

@sandwich, I presume you’re referring to this…

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/microsoft-and-apple-working-together-to-improve-exchange-online/ba-p/3513846

That’s not that Mac don’t support OAuth2 in Mail and across the OS, they do, all variants of it. It just means that Mac Mail clients with very old email accounts need to be set up properly in the identity management for the M365 installation.

Does reinforce my suggestion that a Windows laptop is the best bet when dealing with a school who uses M365 and who are unlikely to have admins who can support edge cases.

You've missed the 'older' bit. All our newer kit plays nice though the 2 factor authentication can be a pain.

We use both high end “mobile workstations” and Macs in our teams. They’re used for Data Science, Modelling and Physics Simulation, the Macs last about 4 years, the PCs about 5 years before they’re starting to struggle with SotA tasks. At this point, the PCs are still good for interns, but the macs often aren’t.

These are closer comparisons than most here are making. The units have almost equivalent costs, but the workstations have higher specs, hence they last longer.

For a school computer, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a laptop, but I’d want something smaller but moderately powerful. HP or Dell would be my go-to as their backup is usually very good.

Me and Mrs NS both work in a university with O365 and use both Mac and windows on a daily basis without issues - formatting problems when moving between documents edited on a PC, Mac, or even through sharepoint in a browser window are relatively rare. I do sometimes need to use software that is PC only (e.g. instrument software for processing data), which I can do perfectly fine on my Mac inside a virtual PC using VMware.

Personally I’d go with a Mac because I’d have the option of using Mac OS, plus running Linux and windows inside virtual machines, and if not having windows OS native became an issue I’d still have the option to do a clean install on the Mac (or even make it dual boot).

You can install Linux directly and seamlessly into Windows. "Ooh, I really need MacOS for this task" said no non-Mac user in the history of ever. Well, maybe Photoshop users in the 1990s.

Regardless, as I said earlier, it's the wrong choice in this use case. Even if a Mac is "better" by whatever metrics you care to come up with, she'll spend the next five years battling with "yes but mine is different, what do I do?"

So Windows it is. Anyone got any recommendations for an Intel 5 (There are so many varieties), 500GB,  8GB ram, wifi6E, upgradeable,  smallish PC towers, also ideally not full of bloatware. I could possibly self build but would need a full parts list as it would be a first time...Thanks

@shuhockey
Have a look on Hotukdeals, there are a couple of contributors who post up deals on custom builds and suggested "best value" upgrades.

We are thinking the same, and as someone who has been exclusively Mac for work and personal for last decade, I would lean to PC.

He would want to game on his as well as school work so this is a consideration too.

https://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdfb1&l=en&s=dfb&sign=PXhcOSHtr1T4IOw%2fPR7UdbHurhpT6gZknmreXt4BEWW5rI4qaZqP2ZgwuAZec7ABtbFlY6QN%2bQXudO9V6TnJjTyhGhglSywTMliQO0o1Kl07mDKppCaRsGyctZ%2bK4JxmvQL0Agx0eqXbU9%2bOzBsAztvYbcoPob9P1qBsl%2bwaKXGfS%2fiAiX8T%2fvm8D9If9Q1HSfmzZxL9S%2fd8SHNsHedE%2fAgBA9cwoB%2b9CuzMx3PyVwQ%3d

This is pretty decent for under £400

Yep, pick a budget and go to Dell.  Again, it's not the best there is, but it'll work, it'll be supported and guaranteed.

No schools have budget for Macs (everything in school is done through chromebooks) - and the vast majority of business machines are windows. stick with Windows

get a refurb from these people, so much better than just sendbacks from Dell, they have teams that rebuild properly and check the hardware before retailing

https://tier1online.com/collections/refurbished-desktops?price=99%3A275

Pagination on Word docs is usually wrong for whichever is the format in use at school if using the other one at home. We have sent an old Mac home for one of us to use so that time is not wasted re-paginating word docs created on Windows or vice versa.

get a refurb from these people, so much better than just sendbacks from Dell

They don't have much in stock i5 wise, they are all older cpus that don't support win11.

https://tier1online.com/collections/refurbished-desktops?grade=Grade__Grade_A&memory_ram=RAM_8GB&price=99%3A275&processor=Processor__Intel_Core_i5&storage=Storage_500GB&storage_type=Storage_Type__SSD