interactive whiteboards

[passport]

I own a private school of english in Greece and I intend to equip all my classrooms with interactive whiteboards. I havent't madeup my mind yet, though, which brand name to buy : smartboard 600i, hitachi, or promethean? Can somebody help me out?

[EduTech]

Personally i would go with either SmartBoard or Promethean.

In our school we do have mainly SmartBoards though

James.

[Midget]

Smartboards can be used with anything, fingers etc

hitachi and promethean require the use of their pen and theyre more acurate for it, but you'll have to make sure not to lose the pens because they're expensive to replace (~£100ea)

[wc51pb]

I am not sure where Midget buys pens from but you should not be paying more than 10-12 euros for a replacement Promethean pen. I cannot comment on Hitachi.

[Vegas]

Go for the Smartboards, absolutely bomb proof, 50 here and one fault in 7 years!

[K.C.Leblanc]

We've got over 50 Smartboard here and they don't give any trouble and the staff find them easy to use. The only disadvantage with the smart is their surface is relatively soft, so if you forsee furniture being bounced off them it might be worth looking at something else.

[Midget]

I am not sure where Midget buys pens from but you should not be paying more than 10-12 euros for a replacement Promethean pen. I cannot comment on Hitachi.

that was for a hitachi pen 2-3years ago

[Iain.Faulkner]

We're also a school who uses SmartBoards, never had a problem and significantly cheaper than Promethean. Can't comment on Hitachi though.

[laserblazer]

We have around 30 Smartboards and would recommend them. Short throw projectors are aslo a good idea but I'd suggest the Hitachi rather than Smart's own which I believe has very expensive replacement bulbs.

[teddybear]

I used to swear by the promethean boards, but any new schools that are built in our area are going exclusively with smartboards.

Getting support and help once they'd been installed wrong was a nightmare. Bulb life is on some of ours 600 hours, which if they are used all day only last around 6 months (and they cost a fortune to replace)

The smarboards that we have, 99.9% of the time just work. I've only had one issue but that was software (and my fault) so I'd say smartboards all the way.

Oh, just remembered we did have one issue that was eventually sorted. We had a smartboard installed in one of our nurseries that is an outside wooden insulated building. The guys that were installing it warned the school that there could be problems because of the metal insulation used within the actual walls itself.

The smart boards have a metal sheet in the boards, this is how it works but because the whole wall behind it had metal too it didn't work properly. The smart board guys did fix it even though the warned us they did a great job and got it working.

So, it's not really a bad thing against the smartboard, just the walls...

[alan-d]

I'd suggest Smartboards with a short throw projector which sits just above the board. Initial cost may be a little higher but in the long term cheaper to run (600i bulbs are expensive!) and should allow more flexibility in the future should you wish to upgrade.

[Dos_Box]

I own a private school of english in Greece and I intend to equip all my classrooms with interactive whiteboards. I havent't madeup my mind yet, though, which brand name to buy : smartboard 600i, hitachi, or promethean? Can somebody help me out?

Please note we have deleted the post from Greece replying to this threa as it appears that the reply came from the same ISP as the orginal poster. This is of course very suspicious behaviour, and we frown deeply on non-authorised commercial use of the forums.

Dos_Box.

[laserblazer]

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

[JA_Gonzalez]

we have 20 smartboards (teacher´s love it) and 5 polivision 600.. There´s a new cheaper smartboard named VULCANO ,here in Mexico there´s a special prize right now 3x2 for $1,500 dlls.. we only had one problem with one mothercard of polivision

[maniac]

Smartboards can be used with anything, fingers etc

hitachi and promethean require the use of their pen and theyre more acurate for it, but you'll have to make sure not to lose the pens because they're expensive to replace (~£100ea)

Promethean pens are different to the hitatchi ones. The Hitachi ones run on AAA batteries and are a nitemare and very expensive to replace. The promethean ones are passive and don't have a battery and are thus very cheap to replace - we pay around £10 a pen and order 10 at a time.

The Promethean boards are very hardwaring because they have a hard surface which is difficult to damage - that's the main reason we opted for them, but I understand the smartboards can be more intuative to use although I've only used a smartboard once it did work well.

It very much depends on the situation as to what board you want to opt for, they're all pretty good at what they do.

Mike.