I'm teaching courses aimed at helping students get the fundamentals need for earning the Comptia A+ and Network certifications. A year ago I started a computer lab to give them hands-on experience building, troubleshooting, installing an OS, setting up networks, etc. I did this on the cheap, buying 20 year old computers off facebook and getting several donated for free, then buying some toolkits for working on them. Can't go wrong with cheap computers and if something gets broken, which happens, it is no big deal. Buy some parts off ebay and you have work for the next class fixing the problem. My lab accelerated the university's plan to setup a lab, which opens this Fall. It will be better and more structured, though I will probably miss my wild west approach.