SMART Notebook licensing

[GeekyPete]

Pretty sure you can use your existing version of Notebook on the C-touch anyway if staff really want to cling to it (if they have resources set up that only work with it for instance) - it's just like a massive touchscreen, shouldn't require anything special.

 

Last time I checked you can install it on unlimited devices on your site for Prep work but not on any device with a touch screen.

[localzuk]

You used to have to have a special "collaborative" license for non-SMART interactive devices, at a cost of £800ish per device per year. This new scheme unifies the whole thing, so you pay for any and all devices, regardless of whether they are SMART or not.

 

As a mostly non-SMART school, but with teachers who want to go back to using their software, this new scheme makes a huge amount of sense for us. £3300 and we can use SMART Notebook for 5 years on all our interactive devices!

[StevieM]

Last time I checked you can install it on unlimited devices on your site for Prep work but not on any device with a touch screen.

 

That's another reason NOT to go for the 2014 Advantage.

 

Customers installing Notebook 2014, as part of Notebook Advantage, will sign up to a new End User License Agreement, restricting the number of installations of the license key to 4 times per classroom.[/Quote]

[Vegas]

This what my supplier is quoting:

 

Notebook Advantage

SMART Technologies have announced that from 15th April 2014 Notebook 2014 will

be released and all 600 and 800 series SMART Boards will require a software

maintenance licence called Notebook advantage to be upgraded. This is a cost per

classroom.

Notebook Advantage 1 year £16

Notebook Advantage 2 years £28

Notebook Advantage 3 years £36

Notebook Advantage 4 years £44

Notebook Advantage 5 years £45

[StevieM]

This what my supplier is quoting:

 

Notebook Advantage

SMART Technologies have announced that from 15th April 2014 Notebook 2014 will

be released and all 600 and 800 series SMART Boards will require a software

maintenance licence called Notebook advantage to be upgraded. This is a cost per

classroom.

Notebook Advantage 1 year £16

Notebook Advantage 2 years £28

Notebook Advantage 3 years £36

Notebook Advantage 4 years £44

Notebook Advantage 5 years £45

 

The use of the word 'require' is misleading. You don't have to purchase anything new. You can continue to use older versions of the software at no additional cost. You just don't get the upgrades, like your supplier says.

Edited April 4, 2014 by StevieM

[GeekyPete]

I don't know where the £120 per screen comes from. Introducing SMART Notebook Advantage - MySMARTSpaces

 

Looks like £34/yr, cheaper if you licence more screens or take out a longer term. Even at £20/yr/screen, it would still cost my small schools around £500/yr to keep one piece of software up to date! Time for Smart to get real.

[GeekyPete]

What makes Smart think that people will be using their software in 5 years time? 5 years ago there was no such thing as an iPad. Look how things are changing.

[localzuk]

What makes Smart think that people will be using their software in 5 years time? 5 years ago there was no such thing as an iPad. Look how things are changing.

 

Because people have been using it for the last, what, 10 years? Why would people suddenly stop? They've increased their technological support with SMART Notebook for iPad, a web based version, and other such things.

 

The thing with SMART here is that they've seen a significant chunk of their traditional market disappear to other, cheaper, interactive products. People have been choosing to pirate their software to use on those devices, or choosing to stop using it altogether.

 

In order to combat this, they've decoupled their software from their hardware. That way they can regain some of those customers.

[StevieM]

The questions are will it be faster than the current wading through a muddy bog software, and will it work behind a proxy? If the answer to either of those is no, why would anyone want to pay for it?

[Mr.Ben]

I have an Issue with the Name 'Notebook Advantage'..........The only advantage I've seen so far is for Smarttech!

[StevieM]

I've just emailed Steljes and included a link to this forum. Hopefully, we can get someone on here to whom we can ask our questions directly.

[LeMarchand]

TBH, the only reason my schools carry on using SMART notebook is tradition. It's what they were told to use, and what they have lots of resources already made up in, but I rarely see anything that they couldn't have done just as easily in Powerpoint. Probably different in secondary(?).

[fiza]

TBH, the only reason my schools carry on using SMART notebook is tradition. It's what they were told to use, and what they have lots of resources already made up in, but I rarely see anything that they couldn't have done just as easily in Powerpoint. Probably different in secondary(?).

 

No different in our School and we are a Secondary. 99% of resources created in Smart could have just as easily been done in Powerpoint.

[StevieM]

Now all we need is someone to make a cheap (preferably free) and reliable .notebook to .pptx convertor and we're home and dry! Anybody...??

[LeMarchand]

Now all we need is someone to make a cheap (preferably free) and reliable .notebook to .pptx convertor and we're home and dry! Anybody...??

 

I thought you could do that in SMART anyway? (Not got it at this school to take a look). The problem is more that most staff can't be bothered to make that switch/effort.

[fiza]

I thought you could do that in SMART anyway? (Not got it at this school to take a look). The problem is more that most staff can't be bothered to make that switch/effort.

 

Smart can do it but I found its not that reliable. Document has some formatting issues once its converted.

[LeMarchand]

Smart can do it but I found its not that reliable. Document has some formatting issues once its converted.

 

Even if it was a perfect conversion, I'm pretty sure that the only way a school's notebooks would get converted would be if we did it ourselves - and I'm not suggesting that!

[Tob]

Why doesn't anybody seriously consider switching to Easiteach NG? It improved a lot the last two years. It can import Smart Notebook files, i is available for site licensing and has features comparable with Smart Notebook. My school just switched and don't regret it. However, I should mention that Easiteach NG has some annoying but not crucial issues with multi touch, especially with Windows 8. If anybody is interested I can write more about it.

[jmak]

Why doesn't anybody seriously consider switching to Easiteach NG? It improved a lot the last two years. It can import Smart Notebook files, i is available for site licensing and has features comparable with Smart Notebook. My school just switched and don't regret it. However, I should mention that Easiteach NG has some annoying but not crucial issues with multi touch, especially with Windows 8. If anybody is interested I can write more about it.

 

I'm interested especially in personal experience...

As mentioned by others above, I don't want to end up converting hundreds of files manually. My thought is to persuade the teachers to start using something different now so that when we do move away from Smartboards we won't have a problem. I expect to run a mix of screen types for several years so would like a solution for multiple hardware platforms.

[localzuk]

I trialled Easiteach NG with one of our more competent teachers, and they disliked it. Its conversion of files from SMART was not great and its interface completely different.

 

Add in top that it would cost us already as much as SMART, and I don't see the point in forcing everyone to change.

[Tob]

I use Easiteach as a teacher on a daily basic. I am also a teacher trainer for teaching with software at my school. Regarding features I don't hesitate to recommend Easiteach as a cheap alternative to Smart Notebook or Promethean Inspire but without limitations to any hardware brand. Easiteach has a much less used community platform (http://www.easilearn.com) than Smart, but loaded a lot of readymade content for free on it.

 

A comparison of features is available here:

http://www.teachertechnologies.com/comparing-smart-promethean-and-easiteachs-software-the-table/

This comparison doesn't include latest improvements in Easiteach NG, like the possibility to import Smart Notebook files.

 

However, interface and usability is unusual. Teachers who are already trained to work with Smart Notebook might need extra training to understand the concept of Easiteach. Once this is done, you can do great things with Easiteach. Regarding Easiteachs Glasmodus-Tool (a tool to write on any screen, similar to Smart Notebook 10) I recommend to use Chalkbox instead, which is a freeware alternative working with any touchable device and is much more convenient to use (http://www.habilience.com/product_chalkbox/).

 

With Windows 8 and multitouch we have two issues currently:

- A single touch is often interpreted as a double touch, which makes it a little inconvenient (but not impossible) to select objects. This bug doesn't appear with single touch boards or older versions of Windows. This bug is reported and will hopefully be solved with the next version of Easiteach.

- Easiteach doesn't have an option to lock an object in a way to move it in any direction on the one hand but without allowing to change its size on the other hand. This didn't matter in the past, since changing size wasn't possible in presentation mode and only here it would be necessary to lock size changing. However, in newer versions of Easiteach you can change size using multitouch gestures - which is a bug or inconsistent with Easiteachs general idea what the presentation modus is about. This bug is reported too.

 

Regarding costs I will write under localzuks comment from today.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Tob

[Tob]

I trialled Easiteach NG with one of our more competent teachers, and they disliked it. Its conversion of files from SMART was not great and its interface completely different.

 

Add in top that it would cost us already as much as SMART, and I don't see the point in forcing everyone to change.

 

Localzuk, indeed, the interface is unusual in design and usability. But once you get used to it, it is not great but ok.

 

Conversion of notebook files works better since version 1.5. In case you checked with an older version you might want to check again. Still the import filter is only good enough to make the content of the notebook file available in Easiteach. In most cases you still have to change little things like font sizes etc. Some flash objects from Smart aren't compatible because they check in which software they got opened and refuse to work. The same is true with some widgets from Smart Notebook 11. I recommend my colleagues to open their old Notebook files at http://express.smarttech.com as long as they don't need them on a regular basic.

 

About costs:

It all depends on the scenario. My school has only 8 Smart Boards but 30 iwbs from another brand. The company we bought the non-smart iwbs from gave us 5 user licences for each IWB we bought and also a site licence for deploying of Easiteach over the school network. All licences are permanent and were included in the total costs of the boards.

[StevieM]

Forgive my cynicism here, but a new user creates an account and his/her first 3 (and, so far, only) posts are to promote a specific piece of software... That's never happened before. Edited April 7, 2014 by StevieM

[Tob]

Forgive my cynicism here, but a new user creates an account and his/her first 3 (and, so far, only) posts are to promote a specific piece of software... That's never happened before.

 

Well, a little bit more of your cynism and it will probably also never happen again (-;

 

But seriously, I also wrote about Easiteachs unusual interface, anoying bugs and a glas-modus-tool which should better be replaced by a freeware alternative. And probably I did all this in a rather bad English since I am not a native speaker. Does all this fit to your accusation/cynism?

Edited April 7, 2014 by Tob

[StevieM]

Well, a little bit more of your cynism and it will probably also never happen again (-;

 

But seriously, I also wrote about Easiteachs unusual interface, anoying bugs and a glas-modus-tool which should better be replaced by a freeware alternative. And probably I did all this in a rather bad English since I am not a native speaker. Does all this fit to your accusation/cynism?

 

No offence intended, @Tob. Certainly not an accusation, more of a consideration. People do sign up to Edugeek just to promote/defend a product/company as if they were a user/client. If I were to do it, yes I probably would include some obvious product flaws in order make it appear more like a genuine post.

 

That said, Edugeek is a very friendly and incredibly helpful site that has saved my bacon on more than one occasion. Stick around, join in a few other discussions and I'm sure you'll love it. (...and your English is much better than my German! )

 

Anyways:focus:

 

Still not heard anything back from Steljes after my email.