Promethean vs Smartboard

[ZeroHour]

I have to say the table does look very cool though. I am trying to think what the promethean surprise is.

[witch]

I wish I could find out how you get a set of Prometheans to work properly, as some of you manage to. I have left one school where the Prometheans caused me excessive amounts of grief,(hurrah!) to join a school with *gulp* more Prometheans,(boo) and in the 4 days I have been there, I have had to sort out 3 problems relating to the flaming things - doesn't bode well for the future!

[Voodoo]

Whilst both companies offer ever-expanding functionality in their dedicated software for their boards, we strongly encourage our teachers to concentrate on developing resources using board-independent software.

That helps reduce the decision making process down quite a bit to what is the easiest to use hardware. And if you have a mixed bag of boards, like we have, it's a plus.

[Marc-Engineer]

Hi all those that dont know me i am an independant Engineer for projectors and whiteboards, firstly pens and PSUs can be bought from a number of places including me and at much less that mentioned above, if you have problems with either make of board i will try to help you on here for ease sometimes it may be esier if i ring you or you ring me, i do NOT charge for any of this support.

Marc

[russdev]

Whilst both companies offer ever-expanding functionality in their dedicated software for their boards, we strongly encourage our teachers to concentrate on developing resources using board-independent software.

That helps reduce the decision making process down quite a bit to what is the easiest to use hardware. And if you have a mixed bag of boards, like we have, it's a plus.

Interesting new version of ActiveStudio (which must say I do like) is now being made into board independent software.

Russ

[mrforgetful]

We have the odd SMART but mainly Promethean. The odd problem but no more than with any hardware.

Maybe had 2 pens go missing in the last 5 years. 2 or 3 support calls for issues which were sorted quickly from very helpful support personel.

The biggest problem we've had was one which was broken from install but noone mentioned it, over a year later we've called Promethean and we may be haivng a new one even though warranty ran out.

Can't complain.

The 'Clean Filter' was annoying until I found you can tell 'ActivFilter' not to start on Windows startup so that's sorted.

Yeh so, no problems with Promethean at all. Only thing which is annoying is the drivers aren't signed so you must manually tell the machine to use ActivDriver' and not 'HID Compliant'.

[Silvor]

We dont have any Smartboards - we have about 29 promethean whiteboards instead. Biggest issue is £15 per pen replacement and drivers seem to get updated every 5 minutes - which is a pain as the installs are done manually.

We do have trouble with them, but not loads. All of our projectors are ceiling mounted and the whiteboards are mounted to the walls.

Biggest issues we get are pens breaking and drivers causing conflictions with other drivers. We had to re-image a machine a few months ago because the ActivDriver screwed up a load of devices big style, couldn't revert back or anything! Nightmare.

I have seen the Smartboards and they're good...but never used them enough to justify voting them.

[garthsmojo]

We dont have any Smartboards - we have about 29 promethean whiteboards instead. Biggest issue is £15 per pen replacement and drivers seem to get updated every 5 minutes - which is a pain as the installs are done manually.

We do have trouble with them, but not loads. All of our projectors are ceiling mounted and the whiteboards are mounted to the walls.

Biggest issues we get are pens breaking and drivers causing conflictions with other drivers. We had to re-image a machine a few months ago because the ActivDriver screwed up a load of devices big style, couldn't revert back or anything! Nightmare.

I have seen the Smartboards and they're good...but never used them enough to justify voting them.

Try whiteboardpens.co.uk they do pens from £9.00.