Cost Savings

[robh0]

You found it. If the projector is left on at break, dinner times etc the the device turns it off. If the projector is off then it does nothing. We save them a fortune. Typical daily use before the bulbmaster was 6.79 hours a day. After they were fitted 2.42 hours per day. Saving 4.37 hours of bulb and also 1180 watts per day of electricity per projector.

 

Rob.

[Davit2005]

We just set a shutdown task on the all the Computers and then configured all the projectors to a no signal standby timeout for a controlled shutdown, job done.

 

It saves the projector running 24/7 like a lot of them used to.

 

People would have more of a energy saving attitude if it was their money paying for the bulbs, power etc.

[localzuk]

You could buy and fit some ISYS Bulbmasters. They extend the life of the projector bulbs and projectors by nearly %75 and also reduce the amount of electricity by the same. We save one of our schools £9000 every 756 days.

 

Ok, first this reads like an advert. Second, without knowing *how many* projectors that saving comes from its rather difficult to judge.

[robh0]

Eighteen projectors.

[featured_spectre]

Thats an arbitrary number, but ok. Most schools I know have more than that. I do find it amazing you sign up today and mention these products however

[robh0]

I just googled how schools could save money and found this thread. Yes I invented the product, but get so frustrated when schools moan they have no money but do nothing to save it or the environment.

[laserblazer]

You could buy and fit some ISYS Bulbmasters. They extend the life of the projector bulbs and projectors by nearly %75 and also reduce the amount of electricity by the same. We save one of our schools £9000 every 756 days.

 

I'm not going to bother doing the sums but savings of £500 per projector over 2 years sounds a bit far-fetched to me?

[jamesbmarshall]

Top ICT Money Saving Tips - Microsoft UK Schools blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

 

This is from quite a while ago, so it won't all be accurate or necessarily relevant but good food for thought.

 

- Cutting printing

- Virtualisation (or even moving some workloads to cloud IaaS)

- Outsourcing services like mail, IM, to cloud service providers like Office 365 (others are available, but I don't think they're as good )

- Power management

- Outsource major print jobs? Rather than run off letters to parents and stuff internally, surely there's a "Moo" equivalent for printing letters? (I have no idea if there is, but there's a business idea if there isn't)

- You can get, and I have no idea what their ROI is, fancy power blocks that detect when a PC switches off and will turn off everything else plugged into it (i.e. monitors). Granted a flat screen sips power in standby, hence the uncertainty about ROI, but if you scale it up across hundreds of computers it might add up.

 

Switch out fat-client PCs in areas like an LRC or open access suits with a VDI or remote desktop solution with lower-power thin client terminals? Quite a big project, but could reduce power usage over time.

 

... even look at BYOD with something like Windows To Go where the student or teacher brings their own x86 laptop and you provide them with a Windows To Go memory stick. I won't explain what WTG is but you can read up on it: Windows To Go Demo | James Marshall - it's pretty awesome, and might mean you could reduce the number of fixed PCs you have over time.

[robh0]

If a lamp lasts 2000 hours and cost £250 to replace and you only need to buy one lamp instead of 3 over a given period of time then you've saved £500. Plus savings on electricity and reduced maintenance cost by the projector being switched off when not needed.

[featured_spectre]

I just googled how schools could save money and found this thread. Yes I invented the product, but get so frustrated when schools moan they have no money but do nothing to save it or the environment.

 

How can they save money if their budget wont allow them to?

[robh0]

Hi, Most schools we work with use the same pot of money for the Bulbmaster as they do for projector maintenance.

[featured_spectre]

I worked in schools for just over a decade full time, and a further 4 years part time/consulting. Projector money was only there when the bulbs blew or they literally stopped working. Its only recently (last 3 years maybe) that they've been pushed for a budget for them in many schools (not saying all here!!).

 

Some schools still dont believe in a projector budget, so its a long battle. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it isn't going to work with a lot of them until they get a proper projector budget sorted sadly.

[SYNACK]

... even look at BYOD with something like Windows To Go where the student or teacher brings their own x86 laptop and you provide them with a Windows To Go memory stick. I won't explain what WTG is but you can read up on it: Windows To Go Demo | James Marshall - it's pretty awesome, and might mean you could reduce the number of fixed PCs you have over time.

@jamesbmarshall - WTG without the need for a $100 USB stick would be truly useful and awesome for BYOD, a WTG VHD that could be dumped on a BYOD tablet and booted to that connected to O365 or something to authenticate it was licenced would be epic. A tablet with a big, expensive, power hungry and fragile school owned USB stick hanging out of the side of it is simple ridiculous. The only thing holding it all back is obscenely crazy licencing conditions, MS has gone this far, why not that one step further to make it really useful for BYOD. (Even a VHD on a microSD would be a massive step in the right direction).

[jamesbmarshall]

@jamesbmarshall - WTG without the need for a $100 USB stick would be truly useful and awesome for BYOD, a WTG VHD that could be dumped on a BYOD tablet and booted to that connected to O365 or something to authenticate it was licenced would be epic. A tablet with a big, expensive, power hungry and fragile school owned USB stick hanging out of the side of it is simple ridiculous. The only thing holding it all back is obscenely crazy licencing conditions, MS has gone this far, why not that one step further to make it really useful for BYOD. (Even a VHD on a microSD would be a massive step in the right direction).

 

Windows To Go is specifically the feature for building a Windows image onto a USB 3.0 memory stick. The sticks cost a little more because they have to meet certain read/write and throughput conditions to ensure a decent performance. In theory there's nothing to stop you using a micro SD card for the Windows To Go build - but it'd fail, I think, because it's not certified. Also, is a micro SD card any better suited to the education environment than a chunky memory stick?

 

A VHD image of Windows doesn't have to be "Windows To Go", it's just a... VHD of a Windows machine? If you don't want it to be portable (i.e. on physical hardware) then implement VDI for BYOD devices perhaps? (Although the upfront costs of providing the server infrastructure would mean a longer time before you saw a good saving unless you already had the infrastructure in place)

 

Kids are rough, and hanging a memory stick off a laptop increases the risk that someone will snap it off but I don't think the risk is necessarily higher than kids damaging fixed PCs (punching in empty drive bay blanks, sticking gum everywhere, graffiti, screwing with mice, damaging keyboards, flicking the PSU to 110V mode, etc.) It'd obviously have to be a judgement call on a case by case basis; i.e. if your kids are bad, it's not for you.

 

Anyway, it's just a suggestion of a different way to potentially save some money. i.e. a single PC = 3 or 4 Windows To Go sticks.