In my area, and I think it's like this in much of the USA, they come out with a new "edition" of books every year and require you to get the latest for class in

In my area, and I think it's like this in much of the USA, they come out with a new "edition" of books every year and require you to get the latest for class in college. Even in high school I remember they kept having to buy new books quite a lot. Also keep in mind 1 laptop = all your books for all your classes + the whole internet. In my high school we took 7 classes per day per semester, so that's 7 books = 1 laptop. Every school I've went to growing up had cheap usually out of date desktop computers bought in bulk. They were old and ugly. But they were fine, most of the time it was just used for reading or word processing. Sometimes google or an e-course. You don't need a lot of power for that. They kept those computers for ages, I am pretty sure way past 5 years. When my younger brother went through high school they gave everyone cheap laptops and if you broke it you paid for it, that seemed to work fine. Lots of really young kids are getting cell phones these days and managing to take care of them. I think that's probably helping teach them to be careful with electronics.