Four year old laptop

Hi all
So I have had approval from sfe that I am eligible for dsa. I have filled in the forms from study tech and it's waiting for them to have a look at now although the scale thing was hard to work out.
Anyways I currently have an 4 year old hp pavilion that's 8gb ram and 256gb storage and I have rated it at average condotion. I am not bothered if I don't get a laptop but I am.wonderong what the criteria is for age..also I don't know if I would want a laptop at a lower spec. I am doing open uni course which will last 6 years so the laptpp will be 10 years old by that point.
I have a question what sort of things are provides for ou students who are deaf as I would imagine the usually things like speech to text wouldn't apply due to not going in lectures..although there are tutorials onlibe which I may struggle with note taking and trying to hear at the same time.
Thank you

Hi all
So I have had approval from sfe that I am eligible for dsa. I have filled in the forms from study tech and it's waiting for them to have a look at now although the scale thing was hard to work out.
Anyways I currently have an 4 year old hp pavilion that's 8gb ram and 256gb storage and I have rated it at average condotion. I am not bothered if I don't get a laptop but I am.wonderong what the criteria is for age..also I don't know if I would want a laptop at a lower spec. I am doing open uni course which will last 6 years so the laptpp will be 10 years old by that point.
I have a question what sort of things are provides for ou students who are deaf as I would imagine the usually things like speech to text wouldn't apply due to not going in lectures..although there are tutorials onlibe which I may struggle with note taking and trying to hear at the same time.
Thank you

what was the model of the basic laptop that studytech offered you?

what was the model of the basic laptop that studytech offered you?

Hi Caitlinreads
I am an OU student myself ( since 2017 / 18 ), I have aspergers and adhd and asked the OU if I could have the printed materials as it allows me to read through the materials in my own time and without having a computer or phone screen shining in my face, especially at night when I get the best opportunities to study with neighbourly disturbances.
The tutorials are live on the day & date they take place but the tutors do record them so if you cannot attend the tutorial the recording is always available for you to go through at your own pace. I think they do have an automatic transcription but I would still advise asking your tutor / student support team regarding this.
Regarding your computer / laptop, up until December 2023 I was using a HP Compaq CQ61 laptop with windows 7 home and student loaded onto it but I think since 2020 or 2021, the computing requirements for modules ( not sure if it applies to all modules ) is windows 10 or above but having said that, even when those requirements were introduced, I was still using windows 7 as my tutors did say that because the modules I am doing involve mathematics in various forms and as long as the symbols were correct I was permitted to carry on using windows 7, that was until late November early December last year when various functions took ages to complete due to a slow processor speed.
I now have an Acer Aspire 3 which I got from curry's pc world which has windows 10 or 11 on it but I'm afraid I am not sure how much dsa will offer towards a laptop.
Hope this helps but if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to ask.

It was until recently the Lenovo V15 G4 but has now updated to the HP 255 G9.
In your DSA2 award letter you'll see a full breakdown, however it will not automatically highlight that you pay the £200, I'm not sure why and my experience with study tech post assessment has been dreadful. Id post here if I knew how pictures worked.
So if the award says £450 for laptop its actually only £250 student finance provide. Upgrading with them is a nightmare and clearly profiteering imo

Thanks for the response but I actually got the DSA email yesterday with the model name. Strangely if you pay £30 extra you can get the Lenovo V15 G4 instead which has worse specs than HP 255 G9, whilst I would want the 16GB ram version of the G9, its sure as hell not worth over £60 for the difference so I get what you mean about the upgrades. I've sent them an email asking them to confirm the base model, though I've also asked they gave me 2 sticks of 4GB RAM instead of one 8GB stick of RAM though I have doubts they'll agree to it. That was yesterday so I'm still waiting on their reply.