Geo GeoBook 1E Education Laptops - HORRIBLE!

[sonofsanta]

Well I managed to flag up to Jolyon Maugham (he currently campaigning on government corruption during the pandemic) how much of a waste of money these laptops were, and now I've got someone in my mentions insisting that Microsoft licensing is like a drug dealer hooking its client and I guess, therefore, implying that I'm a mule for them, all because we didn't get Chromebooks instead. No good deed goes unpunished, eh? Especially not on Twitter.

[Norphy]

Well I managed to flag up to Jolyon Maugham (he currently campaigning on government corruption during the pandemic) how much of a waste of money these laptops were, and now I've got someone in my mentions insisting that Microsoft licensing is like a drug dealer hooking its client and I guess, therefore, implying that I'm a mule for them, all because we didn't get Chromebooks instead. No good deed goes unpunished, eh? Especially not on Twitter.

 

"I don't want you to give money to this multi-billion dollar corporation with a near monopoly on certain products. I want to you to give money to THAT multi-billion dollar corporation with a near monopoly on certain products instead. Because REASONS"

[sonofsanta]

"I don't want you to give money to this multi-billion dollar corporation with a near monopoly on certain products. I want to you to give money to THAT multi-billion dollar corporation with a near monopoly on certain products instead. Because REASONS"

 

 

Quite. I suspect those reasons boil down to "I've not changed my opinion on anything for a decade", because that's about how out of date his ideas on MS and Google are. I'm not denying MS used to be that way, but they're a lot better now, and we get a bloody good deal off 'em, frankly.

 

Anyway, saying no more lest I get frogged. Oh, except that I finally looked up that Celeron N3450 CPU on the Intel Ark, and they date back to 2016. They have quite feasibly been sat on a shelf in a warehouse for four years before they found someon gullible enough to buy them...

[chazzy2501]

We've got some GE114 B Geobook's are these those?

[JJonas]

I have a Geobook 1E that has been returned to me that just has the power light slowly pulsing. I cant get it to do anything.

 

At the moment I am waiting for the power to drain. Is there a reset button or do I have to take it apart and remove the battery?

[bwilliams_hc]

We had 25 GEO books delivered preloaded with WIN 10 Education and must admit, they've been fine.

[kennysarmy]

Returned one of these as it was faulty (dead) filled in the online form to RMA and specifically asked for a "standard" one and they've sent through another "managed" one

[Dos_Box]

We have currently unapproved the posts replying to the journalist until we know more. I have just PM'd him, and once we know more shall make a decison on what to do then. Please note that this is primarily to prevent you from getting in bother for any comments you might make, however unintentional

[Boredguy]

to be honest, we've had 1 faulty one (that we're aware off) out of nearly 200, and it just won't charge back up, and when we get time to do a RMA for it we will.

Yes they are well below the spec we would look for if purchasing ourselves, but they are handling up perfectly fine for us joined to the domain, with Always On VPN and Office 365 etc all configured on it.

[Andrew_C]

Not sure if this is the best place for this...

 

According to HIGNFY "following the success of the school meals replacement, a new laptop scheme is launching"

[sister_annex]

Hello all, I know bad news isn't what we need right now but we've just fired up a bunch of these to prep and number of them have alerted via the built in AV that a WORM has been found. These are the non DFE spec laptops

 

The virus in question is labelled as Worm:Win32/Gamarue.l

 

 

For those not wiping and rebuilding these it may be worth rechecking these before giving out.

 

And just for clarification, this has shown up on devices that have not been connected to our network in any form, have had no internet access and the only process that has gone on is running through the OOBE. No USB devices plugged in either.

[Steve21]

We haven't had any alerts on any of the geobooks and have been using the built-in image for months (multiple batches as well), unless it's a new batch/image they're using maybe. As that virus normally targets browsers that aren't installed on any of the geobooks we've had

 

Out of curiosity what's inside that bat file? Take it not just a random mis-flag for some reason

 

Steve

[sister_annex]

Out of curiosity what's inside that bat file? Take it not just a random mis-flag for some reason

Steve

 

TO be honest we've not looked, mainly due to the AV removing it before we could start. On multiple devices it's a different random filename ending either .bat .com or .exe all found under the same category.

 

This is a relatively new batch (we had 128 delivered last week)

[Steve21]

TO be honest we've not looked, mainly due to the AV removing it before we could start. On multiple devices it's a different random filename ending either .bat .com or .exe all found under the same category.

 

This is a relatively new batch (we had 128 delivered last week)

 

Ah fair enough, Guessing yeah must be a new batch then. Will have to remember to keep an eye on that!

 

Thanks,

Steve

[DrCheese]

https://www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-pupils-cant-hear-or-see-lessons-dfe-laptops

 

If I had to bet, this will be the Geobooks, likely the DFE secure ones as they'd have slapped on their own image/enrolled them & assumed that Windows Update would pick up the slack with the audio drivers...

[StevenH]

Thanks for the Drivers Norphy.

[ITGURU]

Interesting one this morning when setting up the Geobooks, we've had 1 come up with a virus alert after going through the first run wizard and getting to the desktop before doing anything else with it

 

[sister_annex]

Yup, that's exactly what we had: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/218211-geo-geobook-1e-education-laptops-horrible-8.html#post1881301

 

Update: Thankfully it seems that only 10 out of the 160 we have seem to be infected but it now seems that it is a build thing

Edited January 18, 2021 by sister_annex

[danselvey]

Not a of a fan of these GeoBooks myself.

 

Maybe a bit of an insane idea - remote thin clients. I thought about booting straight to an RDP Session, perhaps with a little wifi chooser menu on boot, VPN Tunnel back to the network (if its not on site). Obviously students having poor internet could be an issue, but RDP is fairly efficient, so it would have to be a fairly unusable connection anyway. I've even seen tools to get the laptop battery status to appear in the RDP session.

 

It would be a low maintenance setup and could even run it on top of Linux/FreeRDP, for a really light base system with no local licensing required.

 

Thoughts welcome!

[MrEprise]

An annoying thing I've just found - the SD card slots don't line up with the cases properly, so it is possible and very easy to lose a SD card inside the case.

[torgo_uk]

Hi All,

 

Just received this via our headteacher; I know it's been covered but thought I'd share

 

Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2021 at 12:37

Subject: IMPORTANT ALERT regarding DfE laptop virus

To:

 

 

 

Dear colleague

 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING A VIRUS IN DfE LAPTOPS

 

 

 

We have been made aware of the following issue from a Bradford school. They have just received their final assignment of Windows laptops from the DFE. The laptops are Geo Geobooks 1E.

 

 

 

Upon unboxing and preparing them it was discovered that a number of the laptops are infected with a self-propagating network worm (Gamarue.I). The network worm looks like it contacts Russian servers when active.

 

 

 

The DFE helpdesk has been notified and a screenshot of infected files has been provided to them. This shows the infected file was last modified on 7/12/2019 shortly after the laptop was manufactured. The DFE have confirmed that a few schools have reported this.

 

 

 

Can you please ensure that your ICT department/partner responsible for the preparation of the devices is made aware as a matter of urgency. It is recommended that they check school networks as an added precaution.

 

 

 

I will be meeting with DfE colleagues later today so will ask if there are any further updates or advice that can be provided to schools with infected devices.

 

 

 

Best wishes

 

 

 

Marium

 

 

 

 

 

Marium Haque

 

Deputy Director

 

Education and Learning

[Kipalong]

Hi Marium

 

Can you please confirm if these devices were set up by the DfE or if they were shipped directly from the supplier?

 

Sincerely

Kip

[torgo_uk]

Sorry not I can't, we haven't been given that information. If we receive an update I will be sure to update everyone.

 

We have received about 90 of these units, we opted for the non DfE managed devices. We are using the installed OS and as part of our configuration we install Sophos Intercept X. We have not seen any issues with the units we received.

[markberry]

It was me that reported the issue to the DfE yesterday!

[markberry]

Hi Marium

 

Can you please confirm if these devices were set up by the DfE or if they were shipped directly from the supplier?

 

Sincerely

Kip

 

These were shipped from the supplier (through ComputaCenter). We didn't get the DfE configured ones although I would suspect those ones are infected too as all they are doing for those is adding the hardware hash to Intune so they autoconfigure.