I can talk to managing Pis in an educational setting, and honestly, it is less bad than expected. (Disclaimer: No longer a school sysadmin. But was for a number of years.)
First some comparisons. Kids are seriously rough on technology. We had a fleet of about three hundred laptops, two hundred iPads, and two hundred Pis in the junior school.
In a year, we'd end up with about a hundred laptop screen replacements, two hundred keyboard replacements and about a hundred hard drive replacements. About ten "I accidentally dropped the laptop in the river"s. We'd cycle the laptop out for a brand new one at four years, if it survived.
In the same year, about sixty iPad screen replacements, ten or so battery replacements, and twenty or so river dunkings. Only ever had one hard drive failure, apart from water damage, but the iPads were on a short two-year upgrade cycle.
The Pis were used for the robotics clubs (optional) and programming (compulsary). Pis aren't great for kids and robotics due to lack of protection on the pins for dumb mistakes. We had about twenty fizzle the mysterious smoke every year. About twenty more than experienced SD card failure in the year, usually related to yanking a power cord, not direct write failure. We also had a couple students a year who snapped theirs in half.
All in all, the cost of maintaining the Pi fleet was negligible besides the rest.
I've snapped/bent a few microSD cards myself trying to remove them from "exotic" cases, both times in hasty situations (interactive art shows). I've learned to slowly remove them while not exerting any vertical pressure when it's still halfway inside the Pi - just keep trying to slide the card out while using fingernails to catch the bump on the end.
Ah, sorry. When I said "kids snapped theirs in half", I wasn't referring to the SD card. I was referring to the Pi itself. Kids can be monstrous when it comes to technology.
By sitting the iPad in the mysterious gunk that lies at the bottom of a kid's backpack. After stewing for a few weeks in exotic biological material the internals can begin to break down.
The cases are sealed, but they're still permeable to stuff you wouldn't let near your computer because you have a slight respect for technology.
I found fungus growing inside more than one iPad case, usually directly in the boards.
The iPad doesn’t have a hard drive. It has flash storage. The term “hard drive” is not a synonym for on-device storage: hard drives were a prevalent form of storage, but let’s not become so lax with terminology that it no longer means anything...
Yes, the iPad has flash storage. The same specific kind of flash storage that you'll find inside an SSD. And SSDs are typically referred to as hard drives.
First some comparisons. Kids are seriously rough on technology. We had a fleet of about three hundred laptops, two hundred iPads, and two hundred Pis in the junior school.
In a year, we'd end up with about a hundred laptop screen replacements, two hundred keyboard replacements and about a hundred hard drive replacements. About ten "I accidentally dropped the laptop in the river"s. We'd cycle the laptop out for a brand new one at four years, if it survived.
In the same year, about sixty iPad screen replacements, ten or so battery replacements, and twenty or so river dunkings. Only ever had one hard drive failure, apart from water damage, but the iPads were on a short two-year upgrade cycle.
The Pis were used for the robotics clubs (optional) and programming (compulsary). Pis aren't great for kids and robotics due to lack of protection on the pins for dumb mistakes. We had about twenty fizzle the mysterious smoke every year. About twenty more than experienced SD card failure in the year, usually related to yanking a power cord, not direct write failure. We also had a couple students a year who snapped theirs in half.
All in all, the cost of maintaining the Pi fleet was negligible besides the rest.