[truenamenofame]

I really don't believe that is the best alternative. If $1000 is really enough to get enough laptops for whatever number of participants there, then you're better off using half or less of that to upgrade with SSDs and RAM. Elitebooks are HP's business class laptops, so they have great amount of ports and upgradability alongside with being built like tanks. Very repairable as well. What proper laptops do you think you'll be able to get with only $1000? At best they would be chromebooks or flimsy consumer grade laptops. Or did you mean $1000 per laptop for each participant? That seems like a poor use of resources tbh. I don't think there's a need to use that much money on beginners learning to code. Not all of them will even stay and finish the course anyway. In fact, it'd probably be a real nice experience to order the ram and ssds and then instruct them how to upgrade the laptops themselves.

Just my opinion though, it's not up to me so I have no skin in the game so take it for what it is.