synaesthesia

Ah, so a cycle would be if a laptop was initially at 100%, used half to 50%, put back on charge back to full then used again to 50% charge, that's a cycle. Then I suppose once you take into account the average day for a chromebook - starts at 100%, taken by a student who can't find the B key because someone scratched half off it off, puts it back at 98% but not on charge, picked up by next student when its down to 95%, used for half an hour and put back not on charge, at 70%, used as a frisbee for a while then put back on charge by a teacher who stubbed their toe on it after dragging it out of a urinal, gets up to 80% before the next student decides they want to use it for 5 minutes then puts it back, 75% - rinse and repeat every single period until the laptop thinks it's a fridge-freezer, the battery thinks it's a tesla and elon musk is coming to pardon the klingons! Usage may vary Regardless however the 3100 are edu specific, surely they'd last a bit longer than that

What's a cycle count as in their eyes, full charge & discharge?

Things are definitely different - our last batch of staff laptops from 2023 & 24 are showing noticeable drops in battery life and that irritates the hell out of me. I have a strong preference for the batteries made up of 18650 cells, but that's going back a few years now! 100 cycles though for 6 year old devices is good going, they shouldn't be dropping like that Do you have an account manager at Dell you could try and pull some strings with, or plead poverty? "We're considering replacing 200 desktops in the near future and if this is the level of service or quality we can expect we might have to look elsewhere" would be my preference

To be fair, 6 years is plenty long enough for a battery and I would absolutely expect them to want replacing regardless of how well other batteries do. They may report health statuses differently. However, I'd suggest popping one open and making sure the batteries are physically OK - any sign of any bulging take them all out of service immediately until you replace the batteries. I would not expect any manufacturer to be interested in batteries failing at that age, it's beyond expectancy for lion cells especially those in edu service.

Ooooh - this I did not know. Many thanks for that, I'll have a play and a test, may well tick all the boxes!

DIdn't want to hijack the other active thread on this as it was more geared towards Lightspeed, but have indeed gone through and a lot of my concerns are still there regarding keeping KCSIE compliant when devices are "shared" use. We have very limited use of them at the moment - only a single batch of 5 and they are "manually" managed, it's a good department (Dance) and they track who is using what device manually. Another department is now asking after iPads on a slightly larger scale, and obviously this is raising concerns for me regarding safeguarding. We use Mosyle to manage what we have, and are a Google hybrid school (eww). Smoothwall filtering, hybrid local and cloud. Ages ago I played with smoothwall browsers and never really got it to work reliably, but one of the primary functions of these devices would be recording video so it'd be great therefore if they could be tied to an account allowing access to email, google drive etc. Android would be a neater option for that side of it, but even more of a pain to manage. Any pointers or modern advice on this? I'm trying to steer them towards flippable chromebooks but want to cover all the bases.

Ah, I see. Intriguing, probably not a silver bullet but certainly neither is sticking loads of crud on the walls. Hopefully SLT give the thumbs up soon and we'll see what we're allowed, hopefully for a summer install and a more peaceful September! Doesn't help that our year 11's are, due to the time of year, bouncing off the walls like red-bull soaked power balls!

They're the folk I've been speaking to The specs of the "acoustic" plasterboard definitely suggest improvement due to much higher mass, and along with the extra steps you mention should allow for at least some improvement. It's not a huge amount of money, just a lot of work but we might be able to bear in mind for similarly afflicted rooms in future. I've also looked at masking, assuming you mean the devices which effectively "echo" to sort of cancel out the noise, but I'm not sure how effective that could be against an ever changing cacophany of noise.,

27? christ, could have sworn it was last year! I take that part of it back, but I stand by comments that noone in their right mind should even consider a lamp projector

For existing models only. Anyone buying a lamp projector from this time last year onwards needs sacking.

I don't think it matters that much, as you can no longer buy lamp projectors new, it's not legal to do so. Any lamps being sold are merely old stock - it would be folly to purchase those. I would question why you'd want a projector with exception to large AV installations such as a hall, instead of IWBs?

Ah, cheers. It was the MDM question that made me wonder I don't think we're likely to go down the Neo route any time soon but always good to have options when the next project comes around!

I need a little educating here, mostly as I've not had enough time to sit and look properly yet. Are they full MacOS devices but with an IOS hardware base, or are they closer to IOS in operation?

At least some things never change Still don't have any money, but I managed to spend what I could when starting to get everything to up a reasonable scratch - now it's just employing the same tactics you are to keep them in one piece. SBM has walked on me several times over the last couple of weeks panel-beating HP laptop chassis back into shape, gluing, taping and soldering things. Some people's 5 year plan has a rolling replacement of laptops. Mine gives finance an idea of when I'll need more Gorilla Glue and Duck Tape

! That explains it! They'll all long gone now thankfully, but I do recall seeing a couple of older Lenovos I think they were. I only remember because I thought it was a step up from my "wedge it in with some blu-tac" method which was a go-to solutionfor many years, before case manufacturers made spaces for 2.5" SSDs

lol that's actually a good question... we tidied up over half term, I found it in the back of the cupboard and I've been looking for an excuse to use it so it's been sat on my desk Did you guys leave it here?

Not quite accurate - the current guidance will become law as it is, meaning there are exceptions and this would/could certainly be one of them.

@Fazza where exactly in my office are you hiding? I know you're only the next town along but this is ridiculous

Of course, this has naturally already been discussed with those people and I would also be helping Contractors are out of the question, but won't be necessary anyway for something this menial - the only awkward bit is turning off the mains as a failsafe when we take a short lump of trunking off the wall. I think we're now looking at 2-3 days max although a little more initial outlay, and I'll likely be doing the making-good myself.

Oof - at least viewsonic will a) provide the parts b) do so at a rate that isn't nearly the cost of the full board and c) won't berate for you doing it unlike either Smart (used to) or Promethean who are frankly terrible.

Doesn't add any mass - might dampen the noise in our office but wouldn't do anything to stop us tearing our hair out and learning more about GCSE/A Level Business than most of the students in the actual classroom. @robintechI'd seen another one of their videos and watching that one is interesting - it'd cost just over a grand to do the office in those Soundboards but using the same idea, I'm considering using MLV sheets with 12MM MDF over the top and should provide more than a 10dB drop to effectively half the volume. (The figures are 16dB for the sheet alone, so probably a little more with the MDF, so 10 is worst case scenario but still acceptable). One wall however has pipework which is sort of boxed out and I might use that to advantage a little - i.e. just the MLV and MDF on one wall, and add a secondary insulated stud wall, with MLV and MDF on that one. Even with the extra timber, we shouldn't break £600.

That epoxy is almost identical to the putty, but the putty gives more bulk and better suited for hinges IMO. I'm using that exact epoxy at the moment for broken screw holes on a laptop where I suspect the teacher used it as a cricket bat!

Yeah think that's likely to be more in-room. Edging towards a combination approach at the moment as one wall has an ancient radiator on and huge pipes, so thinking about fitting a stud wall to that and boxing those in, and going for a tecsound/acoustic plasterboard sandwich on the other wall

The joys of language! No chance we can do anything in the neighbouring rooms due to the services on the walls unfortunately. A couple more ideas have come up: https://www.noisestopsystems.co.uk/shop/wall-soundproofing/noisestop-2-panel/ - just under £600, minimal intrusiveness and an apparent "46db" reduction in sound although pinch of salt I assume that will be for particular frequencies etc. (a few variants of the same product available) And another I'm just looking into more, https://soundstop.co.uk/products/tecsound-100-acoustic-membrane?variant=43491337011423 - thinking a layer of that with some 12mm MDF over the top (because site would rather not deal with plasterboard if we can help it ) So in both cases that's just adding mass, I don't think there's any chance of isolating as we'd lose too much space.

A little off-piste for this one, but work related! We have an office sat between 2 classrooms, with walls that are primarily stud walls which replaced old folding doors many moons ago. The noise transfer is ridiculous and is often impossible to work in our own office if there's rowdy classrooms or excitable teachers. Just as worrying is the concern of people hearing our conversations or certain words uttered when toes are stubbed a UPS! We have *extremely* limited budget so I feel bad asking for this, but our SBM and head have insisted I'm right to investigate options and they'll do what's needed. There's not a huge amount on each wall electrically so there's no issue with adding something on top - whether it's specific sound proofing boarding, an additional insulated stud wall or something. Ideally want to avoid taking out what's already there due to the mess involved, but if we have to, we have to. The options we have already considered are: Removing our internal plasterboarding, adding insulation, replacing plasterboard with new acoustic plasterboard, tape, plaster, paint, make good & refit services. Doable for £400ish, a LOT of mess, week's work. No loss of space. Building a secondary stud wall onto existing, leaving old plaster in place. Insulate, fit new acoustic plasterboard, tape, plaster, paint, make good & refit services. Add another £100 for extra timber, much less mess and work. Loses circa 500mm of office space. I can see lots of "acoustic panelling" available, basically felt backed MDF panels but all these appear mostly cosmetic, and it really pi**es me off they're marketed as "acoustic". That sort of idea though would be perfect, as we'd just have to adhere them to the walls we have and could do it in a day. Has anyone got any experience of doing something like this? Maybe any recommendations of materials or solutions that would help? I don't know a huge amount about sound travel, and googling around shows a fair bit of information which I can't verify but does sort of make sense, for instance if the stud walls already in place don't have any insulation, are sound waves "bouncing" around in that cavity and making it worse? In which case, would we need to strip it out anyway? I think anything over a grand is likely to be a non-starter. Not a huge office, the stud wall sizes are 4.5m x 2.5m each wall.