Opinions on Hard Glass TFT

[Kyle]

To hard glass or not to hard glass.

 

We are wondering whether to have Hard Glass TFT screens this time round....but only wondering. We have around 45 19" Dell TFT at the monet and have had this just over 12 months. To be honest we have had no problems with them at all as far as kids damage or destruction. I am quite enclined to go for normal TFT again but the 'Hard Glass' has been branded about byt SLT.

 

I can seem to warant to spend the extra money on a TFT with this glass. I have had a quotes of £190 for a 19"hard glass tft but this compared to one of Dell's 19" tft is nearly double the price.

 

What are your thoughts on hard glass tft screens and does anyone one know if Dell do thses?

[Ric_]

I exclusively use Neovo E-series hard glass screens. These are more expensive than your run of the mill Dell offering but the picture quality is excellent and the glass filter affords a lot of protection.

 

We had one kid who decided to punch one of the screens right in the middle. The monitor wobbled a bit but no damage occured (although the kid's hand did hurt for a while afterwards!).

[Kyle]

How much are you paying for Neovo E-series 19" Ric?

[openhgs]

I'm not that impressed with the Neovo E17s - out of 30, 6 have had to go back to the manufacturer for repair in the last 2 years. The display goes very wonky, but not in a consistent way. A couple had displayed the same was when a CRT monitor drops an electron gun, and the rest all manor of odd displays.

 

We also have about 130 GNR TG705Ds (again 17"). The ones used by staff have been fine, but we've had 4 of the 90 the pupils use catch fire (nothing major just smoke pouring from the back). Again all repaired under warranty. They've been great monitors at a very good price and we will be getting more of these.

[timbo343]

we have the 17" AG neovos, very nice monitors but... we paid about £130 each for 20 of them and tehy have external power supplies. We seem to like the belinea 17" hard glass with internal power supplies. We bought a few for £121 each. Ebuyer do their own at £105 each, in black and i think they are internal power supplies too.

[Ric_]

I have over 90 E-17A and 30-ish S-15 (15" ones that aren't made anymore). I think that the last batch of 30 were under £130 each from Oliis but prices do seem to vary a lot on these.

 

I've never had a problem with a Neovo monitor (touch wood), except for some damaged video cables on the 15" units but this was down to ham-fisted use and the detachable cables were easily and cheaply replaced.

 

They look the business too in a room full of HP thin clients... all that black and silver

[Heebeejeebee]

I'm not that impressed with the Neovo E17s - out of 30, 6 have had to go back to the manufacturer for repair in the last 2 years. The display goes very wonky, but not in a consistent way. A couple had displayed the same was when a CRT monitor drops an electron gun, and the rest all manor of odd displays.

 

We've had similar problems with the E-17 series monitors. Out of 20 we purchased I've had to get 13 replaced. I wouldn't mind if the company who does all of theie exchanges actualy kept them in stock and the swap out was quick but this seems not to be the case and we've had to wait up to a couple of months to get them swapped. They even managed to loose all trace of one and refused to replace it.

 

I've been buying other makes up till my last batch of 53 PCs which have the tough screen (not glass). Let's see how these work out. I'm only just deploying then now so haven't had any faulties yet.

 

Nice monitors while they work.

 

HBJB

[Sylv3r]

Up to now we haven't had the need to purchase hard glass TFT's. As the students are not that bad. We will be getting another 250 soft TFT screens ready for september.... I hope I am not made to eat my words.

[deano]

I have got two suites of 27 computers equipped with the 15" Xerox hard galss screens, 20 computers with the Neovo 17" TFT's and my personal opinion is they are great and tend to a bit more robust than the normal TFT's.

 

I purchased these for the school, simply because we had a few incidents where students had accidently tapped the screen with a pen or knocked the screen of the top of the desktop base unit.

 

I've not had any moans from students or staff but i must say that if you situate the screen facing a window, and its a sunny day, then your going to find it very difficult to see the screen!

[meastaugh1]

I have been using AG Neovo for hard glass for a few years, although I am now going to try out Belinea 1970S1P for my next install. They have height adjustable stands and the power supply is internal. I've bought the soft equivalent (1970S1) recently, all seems ok so far.

[Ric_]

The reason I didn't go for the Xerox or Belinea ones is that the bases didn't seem as sturdy as the Neovo ones.

[kylewilliamson]

We've had a few knocked over - but.. in our Technology areas where theres a likelyhood of a length of 2 by 4 going through the screen, we've gone hard glass.

[Grommit]

If you have a room of 30 TFTs

 

Cost of a hard glass is double the cost of a normal TFT...

 

So you will have to a whole suite of 30 non toughened TFT's damaged to equate the cost of the toughened glass..

 

So lets say you lose normal TFT's 10 over 3 years that's a cost of £1000

 

The cost of the toughened glass is £3000 and you still lose £2000... no economies of scale here

[bishopsgarthstockton]

We had one kid who decided to punch one of the screens right in the middle. The monitor wobbled a bit but no damage occured (although the kid's hand did hurt for a while afterwards!).

 

system running a little slow?

[Geoff]

I doubt it, Ric has thin clients.

[Linfit]

I would highly recommend the Xerox models - we bought 65 last year, no failures or problems at all, just bought another 33, so all our 3 large IT suites are now equipped with them. Very solid and they look good.

The price premium is not that much - the last batch cost us £113 each from A2Z.

[localzuk]

We have 3 rooms of non-hard glass screens and have not found a reason to change to hard glass. The kids are not as bad as to need them - although they do like moving computers around!?

[enjay]

To be honest we have had no problems with them at all as far as kids damage or destruction.

I think that's your answer - we don't experience vandalism problems either, so have decided against hard glass. If a "soft" one were to get accidentally damaged, then we would simply replace it - given the price difference, it would be cheaper to buy one extra if needed than to have gone hard-glass on every monitor. This is fine with a single replacement but would not be the case if we were needing to replace 20 of them.

 

If you don't have problems, then personally, I'd say to save your money and get soft-fronted ones.

[DSapseid]

I would highly recommend the Xerox models - we bought 65 last year, no failures or problems at all, just bought another 33, so all our 3 large IT suites are now equipped with them. Very solid and they look good.

The price premium is not that much - the last batch cost us £113 each from A2Z.

 

I to recommend the Xerox models we must have at least 70 here now and they are fantastic and the one i have had a problem with they replaced instantly.

[witch]

We just got 30 edge10 17" hard glass TFTs

This is a first school and we do have issues with little fingers poking the screens.

They were bundled with the PCs and were only about £20 more expensive than the usual soft ones

[Geoff]

Used Xerox and Nevo's in primary schools round and about. Not because of damage, but because of sticky fingers/ease of cleaning.

 

No problems.

[mrforgetful]

I really do not see the point in getting glass screens.

 

Maybe it's this school but the standard TFTs don't get broken often.

 

We have around 300+ now and have built this number in the last 4/5 years. I think in all that time we've had 2 monitors damaged.

 

So if the average cost difference between glass and nonglass is ~£60 we could have saved £120 on replacement monitors if they'd been glass.

 

Instead, by buying nonglass we've saved ~£18,000.

 

The original post said you the glass screens were nearly double the price? That means unless you're going to break half your monitors in three years then you've spent more than you've saved.

 

Glass doesn't add up.

[Geoff]

There's two reasons for glass screens IMHO:

 

1) Ease of cleaning.

2) Robustness

 

So in either case it depends on the situation you have in school.

 

AFAIK, Glass screens only add an extra 20 or so quid on the price vs normal TFTs.

[Busybub]

To hard glass or not to hard glass.

 

What are your thoughts on hard glass tft screens and does anyone one know if Dell do thses?

 

Depends on the kids. My ones go at the screens with the pointy bit of a compass, scratching them up and puncturing them in some cases, so it won't make much difference to me, they will just put more effort into destroying them!

 

Not aware of any from Dell. Even their larger ones are regular types.

[Trav]

Using AG Neovo E17's at our school and have no problems, they're easy to clean, look good and are more resilient to damage with very little increase in cost which is easily outway'd by the above.

We've bought from 2 suppliers who have given us great prices provided we bought more than 10 or so at a time (we usually buy 18, 20 and sometimes 30 at a time).

I'd recommend the Neovo's to anyone.