Media Studies Room - Setup / Hardware / Ideas etc...

[john]

Hi All, I am looking to implement a Media Studies classroom in Sept. This room will have 4 or 5 Apple Macs and then around 15 PCs in it. Has anyone in Yorkshire / Lancaster / Cumbria got one that I can come and have a nosey at please? At the layout of the room, spec, storage etc...

 

In terms of specs, I am thinking dual or quad core Intel chips, 4GB Ram,22" Widescreen TFTs (maybe even 2), 2 HDDs one for the OS and then one the students can store files on so they use a fixed PC each lesson (only going to be teaching 2 years of students so around 40-60 students this year) that then gets auto copied back to some network storage (looking at a Sun SAN for this and other general storage).

 

The PCs will run XP Pro, the usual MS Office etc and Adobe Premier Elements (may be upgraded to Premier Pro as looking at a CS4 Site Licence), the Mac will run Final Cut Express, probably will bootcamp the Macs as well to ensure we have a room of 20 XP PCs for night classes etc, but obviously then they have the choice.

 

Mac Hardware, we have 1 existing Imac (new last summer), so was thinking probably going that way again unless its been known to be successful to use Mac Minis for the job. I am thinking the mini will be a bit too limited really and lacks expandability so its probably best avoiding.

 

With having 5 Macs (and hopefully no more in the future as they are just too costly to justify!) would a Mac server be justified to help us manage and contain them and have some control over them and make them bind and control better. Would folk be suggesting a true Mac Server or the infamous Mac Mini and a copy of Mac Server?

 

To put a bit more context into this, we are aiming to offer a 14-19 diploma in Media so obviously the use will grow over the coming years so these machiens need to be good and high enough spec for 5 years use rather than a solution for now that will be no good in 5 years time.

[Potato-Peeler]

Can't offer much on the mac front im afraid, but for the p.c.'s

If your running xp pro, unless you get the 64 bit edition, it can run a maximum of 4gb of ram including a graphics card, and for media your probably going to want a graphics card. So could i recommend two 1 GB sticks in slots and two 512 MB sticks in slots as you apparently get optimum performance from slots having the same ram, and then using a 512 MB graphics card? Id personally get the core two quad running at 2.4 GHZ.

That would last for a while, and it could easily handle windows 7 if an upgrade was needed. If you can't save onto the network, then the hard drive plan is a good idea, as long as you map the my documents onto it off of the C drive.

And i love 22inch screens but not a bit overkill

Hope it helps