Family Computers, 2015 edition

As summer draws to a close, I am planning my family's computer use for the 2015-2016 school year.

My plans for this year are:
  • Each family member gets their own mobile phone and laptop.
  • We also have a shared desktop and a few shared tablets.
  • Shared network scanner/laser printer.
  • We print color documents and pictures at the library or at the drugstore.
  • Android TV for shared movie watching.
  • Chromecast for audio sharing.
  • Comcast Business Internet
  • Apple Time Capsule for backup / WiFi / NAT
Note the lack of a dedicated game console. The kids play games on mobile, tablets, and laptops (for Minecraft specifically!).

My two youngest kids are getting their first phones this year. I'm worried about their phones getting lost, broken, or stolen. So for the first six months my kids will use hand-me-down phones. After they've learned to take care of phones, I'm going to give them better phones. (Still used, though!)

To achieve my plan I need to buy one laptop and three mobile phones. For the laptop I'm leaning towards a 13" Retina Macbook Pro. For the phones I'm leaning towards used iPhone 5Ss.

Why a Macbook and not a Chromebook? Build quality and applications. I have a low-end ARM Chromebook, and I noticed that nobody in the family uses it by choice, due to its low speed and poor quality screen. I _could_ get a Chromebook Pixel, but for my family, at that price level a Macbook is a better deal.

Why iOS and not Android? It comes down to ease-of-administration. I want to lock down my kids' phones, and unfortunately experience with my oldest child using Android is that it's all-too-easy for him to defeat the aftermarket Android parental control apps.

For phone service I'm probably going to go with the BYOD T-Mobile Family Plan, because:
  • It is cheap.
  • Unmetered music streaming.
  • When you hit your data cap it switches to low speed data for the rest of the month, rather than charging more.
  • It has free 2G international roaming.

Thoughts on laptops and other legacy hardware

If I were on a tighter budget, or starting from scratch, I'd consider dropping the laptops, the Comcast Internet, and the home WiFi, and going pure mobile. I would get bluetooth keyboards to make typing school assignments easier.

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