Trial of IMPERO

[mark]

That was already said above jinkz, hence why I mentioned it. I thought that was obvious.

ABTutor has a free trial too. The client installs easily to the whole network via msi. ABTutor is also completely teacher friendly.

Sounds like you're another Impero bot sneaking free advertising again.

[JLunn]

We have been using AB Tutor for 3 years now as we found it to be the most cost effectivve classroom desktop management solution available for a network of over 700 systems with 15 suites. The licencing based around Tutor licences and unlimited client is by far the cheapest solution for us.

We started looking at Impero along with Securus (as these were the two recommended in the Edugeek forums) as we wanted a network activity monitoring solution and not necessarily a classroom desktop management solution. Like most we struggled with keeping up with the filtering of the hourly creation of Proxy sites. We just didn't have the time to be monitoring all our students activity and disabling the sites in our Smoothwall filter or at Grid level filter that they were bringing into school. We needed on screen monitoring. Both Impero & Securus provide us with this and Securus has just resleased flesh tone recognition which was very tempting but the reason we chose Impero was that Securus was still a retrospective action system which relied on a technician reading through logs daily and disabling accounts. Impero developers assured us that they would consider adding to their policy structure the functionality of when a user breaks a particular policy their internet is disabled wherever they log on to the network and can only be enabled by a console user. This means in one fell swoop we would cut proxy site use as as soon as a few are caught and loose access to the internet for a period of account (depending on their previous offences) then others will not risk it.

At the moment I don't know how much of this is a sales pitch but we payed a price for the licence now that enables us free upgrades to version 3 which would cost us double to buy.

The fact is that Impero and AB Tutor functionality overlap quite a lot. If you only had the budget to buy one and you have no desktop management solution at the moment I would advise you go for Impero. If you can afford both AB Tutor is far more polished after the recent upgrade and is far more intuative for classroom teachers to use.

Jon Lunn

[tom_newton]

We started looking at Impero along with Securus (as these were the two recommended in the Edugeek forums) as we wanted a network activity monitoring solution and not necessarily a classroom desktop management solution. Like most we struggled with keeping up with the filtering of the hourly creation of Proxy sites. We just didn't have the time to be monitoring all our students activity and disabling the sites in our Smoothwall filter or at Grid level filter that they were bringing into school.

Jon Lunn

Jon,

If you are finding proxy sites that get past Smoothie, you either have some *very* clever proxies or a config error. Let me know either way and I will make sure it gets sorted. (This bit of advice applies to any of our customers seeing sites they don't like get through!)

[JLunn]

Apologies Tom and to the smoothwall team I should have mentioned we only use the free smoothwall version 3 and not the latest commercial version.

Jon Lunn

[tom_newton]

Jon,

Thanks for the speedy reply - I was (perhaps slightly perversely) looking forward to some new, harder to beat proxies ;-P

Apologies most definitely not needed!!!

[reltihmd]

We trialled Impero shortly after the head fell off his chair when he saw the price of securus, have to say we've never looked back

I've now rolled Impero out across 2 schools, and moved with them through version 1 and 2, we are currently trialling version 3 and if you thought version 2 was good, you aint seen nothing yet

Version 3 is scarily good, all the features you never knew you needed are right there in front of you in a fantastic new user interface, they have just released the next Beta and I'm hoping to roll it out over christmas

anyone who is interested should take a look at the new site
Impero - Complete Lab Management Solution

We did recently have a member of staff recommend the one they used at their old school so we did re-evaluate impero against the competition - whilst doing so we also found that another school had also done the same, and uploaded the results to youtube


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD1vvlCJFuY"]YouTube- Review of Top 6 Remote Control Software Products[/ame]

Whilst I didn't review ABTutor myself so can't comment - they are included in the video though

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJHC_DlNWNI"]YouTube- Impero (v3) vs AB Tutor (v6.3.3)[/ame]


just hit preview - apparently the videos will link across to just here - enjoy

Mark

[Henry]

I'm sorry to say this but OP you're pretty naive if you believe some of the posts in this thread. I wouldn't put it past Impero to make accounts on forums such as these and create hype for their product under a different allias. As you would expect from any large company. However I can asure you Impero is not as secure as these people would have you believe. Many of my fellow students at school have already learned ways to bypass Impero without the use of external programs or removing the input cable (myself included).

It also stifles creativity and is regarded more so as the Nazi party of Internet Security systems. I'd also like to add to teaching staff on here, when students use their initative to bypass a filtering system they shouldn't be regarded as would be internet terrorists. Many of the people intellegent enough to get around the system are smart enough to realise why it is installed, and the risks which younger people can be exposed to, and also the potential risks to the school computer system. However these people are unlikely to perform malicious acts with the wide range of resources on the internet. If staff members can't seem to trust 15 and 16 year olds, almost all of which have access to the internet at home, enough to allow them to browse the internet at will, then it's time to have a public book burning from the school library.

Please don't add the old "Students are in school to learn" phrases either, as they're incredibley short sighted. Many students finish their work ahead of the alloted time and are left to twiddle their thumbs while waiting for slower members of the class. It's rather pretentious of teachers to think that children don't have the right to surf the internet without being constantly monitored. I'm pretty sure if someone looked hard enough it'd also be against some form of human rights.

Don't rely on this system, don't rely on restricting children's ability to learn of have at least some enjoyment. Rely on your own initave and the control you should have over your students.

- Henry (student) -

[_Adam_]

If the above post is anything to go by, Impero has just been given a boost in PR. Still Henry could be an Impero employee in disguise

[MGSTech]

I'm sorry to say this but OP you're pretty naive if you believe some of the posts in this thread. I wouldn't put it past Impero to make accounts on forums such as these and create hype for their product under a different allias. As you would expect from any large company. However I can asure you Impero is not as secure as these people would have you believe. Many of my fellow students at school have already learned ways to bypass Impero without the use of external programs or removing the input cable (myself included).

It also stifles creativity and is regarded more so as the Nazi party of Internet Security systems. I'd also like to add to teaching staff on here, when students use their initative to bypass a filtering system they shouldn't be regarded as would be internet terrorists. Many of the people intellegent enough to get around the system are smart enough to realise why it is installed, and the risks which younger people can be exposed to, and also the potential risks to the school computer system. However these people are unlikely to perform malicious acts with the wide range of resources on the internet. If staff members can't seem to trust 15 and 16 year olds, almost all of which have access to the internet at home, enough to allow them to browse the internet at will, then it's time to have a public book burning from the school library.

Please don't add the old "Students are in school to learn" phrases either, as they're incredibley short sighted. Many students finish their work ahead of the alloted time and are left to twiddle their thumbs while waiting for slower members of the class. It's rather pretentious of teachers to think that children don't have the right to surf the internet without being constantly monitored. I'm pretty sure if someone looked hard enough it'd also be against some form of human rights.

Don't rely on this system, don't rely on restricting children's ability to learn of have at least some enjoyment. Rely on your own initave and the control you should have over your students.

- Henry (student) -

I think you may need to take a reality check as I don't remember unrestricted internet access becoming a right?

You need to remember Henry, not all students are as upstanding as yourself. Our job as IT support staff is to protect both you and the network from abuse. School networks are provided for all to use and benefit, not to become the playground of just a few tech savvy students.

Unfortunately we HAVE to put in place restrictions, not just for the protection of minors but to prevent the school from allegations of failing to protect its students. Each and every school in the UK has a duty of care to uphold and any school not seen to be taking SOME precautions may be seen as negligent. Also remember YOUR parents expect us to be filtering your access to inappropriate material, I as a parent would expect nothing less!

We use Impero in school both as a monitoring tool, but also as a teaching and learning tool. I've used it on several occasions to prove a student’s innocence not their guilt!
You should also be aware that the right to unmonitored internet access does not exist out there in the commercial world. Its highly likely that in a business environment attempting to bypass a companied firewall or internet filtering software would result in dismissal and potentially criminal proceedings, it is after all an offence under the computer misuse act to use a computer system for purposed not authorised by its owner!

Regards

S

[lionsl2005]

i did try lanschool. its brilliant, my vision is nooo goood. wanted to try Impero and ABtutor. registed wit impero yesterday no link still. :-(

[MGSTech]

Version 3 of Impero has been "comming" for nearly a year now, the features look excellent however it needs to get here first!