Which monitors?

[tomgrindle]

Hi All,

 

Just a quick one ....

 

We are about to replace all of the computers in our main IT room.

 

At the moment we have some older Stone All-In-One PC's ... as these are pretty expensive to buy and I am trying to save money due to a very restricted budget we are getting conventional PCs, but are now in need of monitors.

 

Traditionally we have always purchased hard glass screens to reduce damage but as these push the price up a bit we are looking at just normal soft TFT's.

 

How many people have hard glass monitors or see the benefit in them? Those that don't have them, do you tend to see much damage?

 

My concern is that because students/teachers are used to having hard glass monitors and know that touching them won't break them .. will they just presume and we accidentally end up with a load of damaged screens?

 

Cheers

Tom

[timbo343]

We have hard glass monitors and to be honest we had our first breakage in a class room last week, the glass panel cracked however the lcd is still working. I guess it did its job. This monitor was the edge10 T223a. They have stopped producing this screen however to repair it, it was £62.

We do see finger print marks on screens so the kids are obviously touching the screen.

The majority of ours are 17" T171 edge10 monitors. The monitors themselves are fine however the stands are awful. We have a room of Hanns-g 19" ws hard glass monitors, these are nice and not had any failures with these.

Staff machines in work rooms ger normal non hard glass screens but teachr machines in classrooms are hard glass lg 17" 4:3 screens, to keep the same aspect ratio for the old projectors.

[synaesthesia]

We have standards in all our ICT suites - we do have some hard glass ones but we now restrict those to science labs etc.

We get so little damage compared to some describe here I suspect we're really lucky, but also I'm sure the difference in cost & quality would be worth it in the long run.

Our last batch were cheap Phillips monitors - screens are good but the stands are atrocious. We tend to just go with what's on offer

[strawberry]

If they're going to be destroyed anyway buy second hand jobs, Several suppliers on here do bulk loads of cheapo second user monitors.

[chazzy2501]

you'll be surprised how hardy a regular tft is. They'll get compression marks and scratches but rarely stop working.

[sonofsanta]

We're very lucky with damage here, so have no need of hard glass (though other school's I've worked at could have done with diamond-fronted monitors). We tend to get whichever 22" monitor is good value at the time and reviews reasonably well at tftcentral - we've used a lot of LG in the past, last lot were some Hanns G HL229DPB that have got quite the lovely panel in them for £70-ish quid.

[twin--turbo]

We stopped buying hard glass years ago as the cost did not make any sense.

 

In 2.5 years we have had 3 monitor out of 250+ badly damaged by scoring them with sharp impliments and one cracked panel.

 

Prior to that we had some hard glass screens and in 18 months 5 out of 100 got nocked over and left very dangerous glass shards all over the place.

 

Rob

[robjduk]

what the hell is going on in some of your school! Worst I get is 1 escape key picked off a laptop every few months!

 

Anyway on topic, Philips make some very nice screens at great prices.

[teejay]

We abandoned hard glass quite a few years ago, we found we were getting more hard glass screens damaged than normal screens due to the glass shattering, so just stick to normal monitors now. We're just getting in a load of Dell 3011 all in ones, they were actually cheaper than desktops + monitor.

[truebluesteve]

We have virtually all hard glass - although they are plastic and not glass, and they have served us very well. There seems to be a temptation to prod other screens with pens and pencils which doesn't stop them working but it doesn't look good.

[ICTDirect_Dave]

We will do you some great prices on some 2nd User refurbished screens if you like

 

HP, Dell, LG etc

[Stone_Liz]

Hi @tomgrindle

 

I think with everything there's always going to be pros and cons. With hard glass, they're more resilient and robust but I guess it depends on the nature of the classroom - are they likely to get broken?

 

The other side to this is that in some lighting, hard glass monitors can be reflective and difficult to see.

 

We've noticed a vast number of schools do go for matte black soft screens with little or no problems.

 

I think the question would be to look at the number of screens you think may have been damaged over the previous years and see if this would outweigh the costs of purchasing hard glass monitors.

 

If you don't think it's worth paying the extra, then we do have an online refurbished PC store, Encore, where 2nd hand monitors can be purchased - it may or may not be of use to you but here you go

Monitors

[daveyboy]

We have 400 hard glass here - Neovo E17 DA's.

 

In 7 years: - 2 monitors cracked (Both accidents), we have replaced about 30 Inverters ourselves (£25-30 each) and we are going to use these again for our next refresh.

So, we are looking for at least ten years worth from them......