Tablets

[entyp66]

Hi

 

just looking for a bit of advice. We don't currently use tablets in school but are looking into doing so. We are an 11-16 Academy and have a Windows Server 2008 network with Windows 7 clients. Ideally we would like to 'manage' the tablets using group policy similar to the desktops. Does anyone have any experience of using tablets and what tablet would you recommend.

 

Thanks

[sted]

its more about what you want to do with them imo.

 

Windows tablets easy to manage run all your existing software pain to install modern apps as they are per user

ipads not that hard to manage just time consuming using configurator (my main issue is every time I do an ios update 10-20% just go nope and fail requiring rebuilding)

androids imo forget about them managing is a pain no consistently good tools for them not to mention grab 3 different android devices at random and you have an almost 0% change of them having the same skin or even version of android

[Iain.Faulkner]

Agreed with @sted in that it all depends on what you want to use them for (what is the purpose of the devices?).

 

We're doing something similar and we're currently canvassing our staff to try and establish what device will fit their needs (staff questionnaire produced, and directed time is being used for staff to complete the questionnaire). I do believe it will end up being either a Windows tablet or an iPad though (rather than an Android). Although managing the iPads can be a bit fiddly, at least during the initial setup, I believe it is going to get easier when they release ios9. Someone posted a link to the changes a couple of days ago.

 

Will be interested to see what people recommend on here though.

Edited June 17, 2015 by Iain.Faulkner

[Oaktech]

I've got 30 Acer w510 and they are nippy enough off the domain, but once they are on it they are dire - logins take about 3 minutes - up to 10 for a first time. They have barely enough room on them for our image. We have 10 Acer w700 as well, and whilst they are a bit fiddly, they are i3 and perform perfectly acceptably.

[witch]

The staff wanted a keyboard so we went with Lenovo Yogas which are tablet/notebook combos

 

My other school is looking into the same question and is keen on the above, or the Very PC classmate which looks rugged

[mikeprice]

We ahve just gone through this - eventually found that the requests for 'tablet' were just for 'nice shiny stuff' and asking what functionality that they wanted to use brought confusion!

 

After some diplomatic questioning we found that only valid use where a tablet would be better than a laptop was for real time capturing of image with Target Tracker (we are Primary)

 

We are currently awaiting a very small and cheap Windows Tablet with a half decent camera just for this use - and 20 new laptops for everything else that is needed

[mikkydoos]

imo they're all pretty cack. You'd be better off with Chromebooks.

[mikeprice]

imo they're all pretty cack. You'd be better off with Chromebooks.

 

In our case we need Winddoze hence the decision - comes down to analysing the actual needs rather than wants - which causes confusion - in our case this means windows - YMMV - obviously

[TechieWils]

For android we had a look at learnpad as the management and updating looked amazing. Got a set of 8 with wireless charging on order so will let you know.

 

8 with charging station and cases comes to around £2300.