Our CodeClub had the privilege to receive funding in March 2016 from the SeedBed Trust. This allowed us to purchase 10 new laptops, mice and headphones. We also purchases a mini wifi router which acts as the club’s firewall and web content filter.
Laptops
The laptops are 11 inch ‘CloudBooks’ purchases from Tescos with the following specifications:
- 11 inch display
- 2GB RAM
- 32GB SSD
- Intel® Celeron N3050 Dual-Core processor
- Windows 10
- WIFI
The first batch of 6 were Dell 11-3162, while the second batch of 4 were Acer AO1. These laptops were purchased while they were on offer (the Acer AO1 cost £119 each!).
All these laptops arrived with Windows 10, which ran without any issues, baring in mind that these laptops are extremely low CPU and low memory, and there imposed limitations are their performance.
It became apparent in time that Windows 10 was going to struggle with the limited 32GB SSD disk space. Eventually all these laptops were reloaded with LUBuntu – Light weight UBuntu 64-bit.
On top of LUBuntu, the following software was installed:
- Resilio Sync (free) – provides shared folders across all laptops
- Privoxy – non-caching web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities – configured with WhiteList access (e.g. block everything)
On each boot, the laptops run a startup script, allowing for rapid reconfiguration of all the laptop. Therefore deploying new tools to all laptops becomes trivial.
WiFi Router
The router, an Asus RT-N66U purchased from Amazon, is a powerful WiFi router, reflashed with Asus Merlin Firmware.