Education Laptops. DVD drives and VGA!

[Gongalong]

After being unable to get laptops (Lenovo and Dell that is) with VGA, I now can't get any laptops with a DVD drive.

 

We can cope without VGA (will have to use an HDMI to VGA adapter) but we've still got lots of teachers that use DVDs.

 

Anyone else struggling with this? Not sure what we can do other than buy laptops from sub-par manufacturers (although I'm struggling to find any from those as well).

[thimon]

Buy external dvd drives. You can get them for around £15 / £20 on Amazon.

[Steve21]

Depending on the reason you need DVD drives, if it’s something like copyright wise DVDs etc could you use external usb ones etc? Think it’s only really English who use it for ours so shouldn’t require many unless it’s something else you use them for still

 

Steve

[Gongalong]

Particularly at the moment it's the faff factor of having to carry an external drive around, but it's looking like no choice.

[dhicks]

Not sure what we can do other than buy laptops from sub-par manufacturers (although I'm struggling to find any from those as well).

 

You could go for refurbished laptops - there's a couple of forum sponsers on here that do ex-corperate devices, generally decent, solid devices maybe a couple of years old and with warrenty.

 

You used to be able to buy USB caddies for desktop-size DVD drives, if you have teachers moving around classrooms and taking their laptops with them you could put a "desktop" DVD drive in each classroom ready to be plugged in with a USB cable rather than have teachers carry a separate DVD drive with them. Depends on cost / number of classrooms, of course.

[Gongalong]

Ahh, refurbs is an interesting idea! Thanks.

[Koldov]

Yes, I have the exact same problem! Classrooms full of VGA cabling and projectors (with no budget to strip them all out and go HDMI anytime soon) and teachers wanting to watch films and such.

 

We had good luck going to @ICTDirect_Dave ...

[Gongalong]

Yep, ICT Direct were really helpful when we had some graphics card woes. A shame that Dell and Lenovo don't realise there is this niche market still for DVD drives and VGA, but I guess they're all about the big market share.

[3s-gtech]

The problem with VGA is it's an old sticking plaster - it has been a legacy connector for nearly 20 years, and was kept on because so many installs still needed it (and cheapo monitors kept having VGA only). It’s like RS232c, but not as worthwhile as at least that has industrial applications, but even that’s long gone.

 

Some USB C docks still have a VGA connector built in though! I’ve got the same issue, as most projector installs use VGA but in my defence they were put in in 2007.

Edited November 6, 2020 by 3s-gtech
I cant speel

[DJ-1701]

After being unable to get laptops (Lenovo and Dell that is) with VGA, I now can't get any laptops with a DVD drive.

 

We can cope without VGA (will have to use an HDMI to VGA adapter) but we've still got lots of teachers that use DVDs.

 

Anyone else struggling with this? Not sure what we can do other than buy laptops from sub-par manufacturers (although I'm struggling to find any from those as well).

 

Yeah, got the same issue at the Primary, so brought it up with our Deputy Head who used to be the IT Coord, he said he didn't believe DVD drives were needed for teacher use so I didn't buy any. So far we have 3 laptops without DVD, but that's going to increase soon. As a backup solution in case someone really needed to show an old Christmas film Educational Resource I was going to either convert the old DVD drives in the old laptops to be USB pluggable or just get external USB DVD drives.

[Jamman960]

When I replaced our workstations over the summer I figured it wasn't worth paying the extra for DVD drives and brought some ext drives from amazon instead as well as stripping a few from outgoing pc's, we've loaned out 3 so far and in at least one of those cases they just copied the disc contents to their network drive and returned it.

[Gongalong]

I’ve got the same issue, as most projector installs use VGA but in my defence they were put in in 2007.

Yep, we've got around 40 classrooms with VGA and projectors. Some we could rewire with HDMI, but I'd rather put the money towards touchscreens. It looks like we can budget to replace 12 a year, but that's still several years of a half and half solution.

 

@DJ-1701 We're a secondary, and have an English department at least that regularly show bits of films from DVD. I'm going to poll staff to find out exactly how many need DVD drives, and can cope with a VGA adapter.

 

@Jamman960 Because we mostly use copyright films I'm guessing we'll fall foul of the law if we rip those.

[FN-GM]

The core issue needs fixing here. This isn’t going to get any better. The technologies are pretty dead.

 

I remember removing the last VGA device is 2013. It’s been redundant for a long time.

[DJ-1701]

The core issue needs fixing here. This isn’t going to get any better. The technologies are pretty dead.

 

I remember removing the last VGA device is 2013. It’s been redundant for a long time.

 

BSF Building in 2011, VGA everywhere apart from RGB Horizontal sync Vertical sync... but no one involved IT in that. I envy you.

[Gongalong]

The core issue needs fixing here. This isn’t going to get any better. The technologies are pretty dead.

 

I remember removing the last VGA device is 2013. It’s been redundant for a long time.

It will, given time, but as above we've only got budget to replace maybe 6 classrooms a year with HDMI and touchscreens.

 

DVD drives aside.

[Chaniel]

We got rid of VGA many years ago. How many of your projectors have HDMI at all?

 

All the new laptops we've bought don't have DVD drives, we've been purchasing £15 external DVD drives for staff if they need them. Staff don't mind as it means they get a thinner/lighter laptop in comparison to their old ones.

 

I'd run HDMI cables for the projectors that support it and those that don't have HDMI prioritise for replacement and deal with adapters in the meantime. Spending the money on some HDMI cables saves the headache of using adapters for those rooms.

[Gongalong]

We got rid of VGA many years ago. How many of your projectors have HDMI at all?

Not sure, but we have a real hodge podge of setups that have been installed over the years. We could probably get them all recabled with HDMI, but I'd rather put the money towards a touchscreen install and use adapters in the meantime.

[localzuk]

We have been gradually replacing all our VGA only IWBs with touchscreens that have HDMI over the last 5 years or so. We've got about 20 rooms out of 90+ to go. A lot of our newer projectors accepted HDMI anyway, so we've retrofitted HDMI leads onto those too. So, in reality, we only have a handful of devices which are VGA only, so we just give those teachers adapters.

 

DVD drives? We don't really care about them any more. Only 2 departments still use DVDs - French and English. So, we just made sure they get USB DVD drives. Everyone else doesn't even notice.