Smartboard - USB3

[Bezwick]

Hi all,

 

Just sounding out for some advice. We have a few Smartboards across the school of varying ages which are used mostly in Maths, English and Learning support. Every 4 or 5 years we give the teachers a new laptop however we have discovered that the Smartboards don't work with new laptops. Essentially when you draw a line across the screen it generates a bunch of random dots. However if you plug an old Laptop in its works fine.

After a few calls to Smart, I eventually found out its to do with USB3. This happens if the cable is more then 1.5M long on a USB3 connection but is fine on USB2, essentially something to do with frequencies. The engineer also admitted this affects all Smartboards, including new ones.

Now a lot of classrooms are laid out so that it would be impossible to get every laptop used within 1.5M of the right-hand side of the Smartboard (where the USB connection is).

Couple that with Smart charging for the newer versions of notebook. I'm thinking of moving away from them. I have a meeting tomorrow with the Deputy head and would like to present him with some alternatives. Any ideas for hardware and/or software replacements?

 

Thanks

[Steve21]

You know you can disable the USB3 aspect of the port? We use our boards on USB3 ports via USB2 hubs, but there's also option in BIOS to drop USB3 down

 

Steve

[mowgli82]

If you use a passive or active (I'm not sure which, my brain isn't working today) USB cable this fixes the issue too.

[smithson83]

USB - Cat5 Converter?

[Steve21]

Active/Powered (Powered Hubs in middle work too)

 

Steve

[jmak]

There was a thread with details of a few options for iwb software a few days ago:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/showthread.php?p=1433435

 

If you're looking at replacements, Epson interactive projectors and BenQ panels now come with Smart software bundled.

 

For my part, I'd question how much of the iwb software capability is used at all. Most of what I see could run on PowerPoint or even Prezi.

[edutech4schools]

How odd all ours are running on USB3 and cables are about 5 meters.

 

Lucky I guess.