farquea

ok this is confusing me now. The projector i'm trying this on is an NEC NP305. On the spec sheet here: NEC Projector NP610 NP510 NP410 NP405 NP310 NP305: Projector Lineup | NEC Display Solutions It says the max res it can do is 1600 x 1200. But yet it keeps forcing the res to 1024 x 768!!!! there is a setting in the menu to enable WXGA mode, turned that on and nothing happens and i've played about changing the aspect ratio but still it wont let me up the res on the computer. Is this normal or what?

we are upgrading the whole I.T suites and wanted to have some nice 22" monitors on the teacher PC's rather than the old small Dell 17" 4:3 monitors. So i think as we have the money we will go for a widescreen projector which i believe will allow us to set the desktop res to 1280 x 800 rather than 1024 x 768 which i imagine will look pretty ugly on a widescreen monitor.

so is it not unusual for the native projector resolution to knock down the computer resoltution to the same? ideally i want my monitors to be running at their max native res and the projectors doing the same so is this not possible?

ok, so at the moment we are using a 17" 4:3 monitor. we are buying some new 22" widescreen monitors, along with a new Promethean 387 board which widescreen. So i want to be using the highest possible res on both the PC and the projector which fills the board. So should i be going for a widescreen projector?

it is a NEC VT59 and ye just looked it up and says the native res is 1024 x 768. So is this default or a max res. as it seems to keep setting the computer default res to this resolution, is there a way to default it to another res?

can anyone explain a problem we are having. We have a setup where by the projector clones the image on the computer. We have a VGA to wall panel VGA whcih then runs to a projector on the ceiling and then a VGA out on the wall panel which is plugged into the monitor. The widescreen monitor we use, its native res was 1920 x 1080. If we just plug the monitor straight into the wall panel, we can only set the resolution on the computer to 1024 x 768. To get it to display 1920 x 1080 we had to plug the monitor directly into the computer and set it. Once set, we then plugged everything back in using the wall panel and the projector and monitor were displaying 1920 x 1080 res, albeit quite small on the board which I think would need the projector moving back in order to fill the board. But then once we reboot the computer something forces the resolution on the computer back to 1024 x 768. So by going through the wall panel the res is being forced to 1024 x 768 and not really sure what it is doing this. Anyone know what causes this?

the BBC's coverage of the F1 is infinitely better than it was on ITV, and thats why they recently won a Bafta i think for said coverage. I also always prefer the Football coverage on BBC1 over ITV and Sky. It just always seems more light hearted and watchable for me so for that and to keep it advert free i'm happy to pay a license fee.

i have a fair bit of equipment i'll be wanting to get rid of. Some of it pretty worthless, some it not so such as 2 LapSafe Smartline Mentor 30bay laptop trolleys. Anyone have some companies they use to get rid of equipment that will pay some money for it rather than just putting it into the back of a van and getting nothing for it? I'll obviously wanting it to be free to takeaway too, no charge for them to pick it up. Any reccommendations?

I am about to implement a plan which i hope will reduce the stupid amount of costs we incur from having to replace broken keyboards, which are £40 a piece and broken screens which we end up writing off the laptop due to the cost to repair. I have bought 30 low end spec laptops, dual core celerons, 4 GB RAM which are absolutely fine for what they will be used for, MS Office and Browsing etc. I've bought a 3 year accidental cover plan for each one so it means any damage, as long as it was an "accident" will get it replaced, even it a key is picked off. they are all in a lapsafe classbuddy trolley and after 3 years we'll buy another batch with insurance cover and dish out the older ones to staff, who rarely break laptops at home. Of if we cant afford a new batch, just let them be used until they are broke as their value by this point will be relativly small.

humm, god i hate microsoft!

I'm buying some new computers and determined to try and get around the problem of having to buy a qualifying license to be able to use our volume license key. The best i can get at the moment is a Vista license for about 40 quid. Does anyone know of anywhere i could get hold of some dirt cheap windows license, i'm talking like win 95, 98, ME etc?

the teacher wants to be able to demo things though either to the class or individual students without having to be sat at his desk, so being able to have a tablet and sit with a student i assume will give them a more personal learning experience. We already have tighVNC setup around the school so have an idea how to get it working so i think we will just have to get some on trial and see how they work.

I am looking to update the IT suites with new computers, which will mean widescreen monitor on the teacher PC so also looking at widescreen whiteboards and projectors. Anyone have rough figures of what you would pay for a Promethean wide board and could you get them as a bundle or best to get them individually?

humm i just want the teacher to be able to control his computer at the front of the class while he is talking with a student. I think unless someone has actually done this, i'm going to have to set this up and see it for myself as i'm not sure how well the touch capabilities will work when a windows desktop is squashed down into a tablet sized screen and over a VNC client.

It has been suggested the I.T teachers would find a mobile tablet useful. They want to be able to work on their desktop then when walking around the class be able to use the tablet which will control thyeir desktop. So i'm assuming a simple VNC option will sort that. Next is type of tablet, Are any of the tablets out at the moment windows based? Or if on Google does anyone know of anyone Android VNC clients i could use to achieve this? The other option i have i think would be to try and use a Dell Inspiron Duo tablet assuming its not a great deal heavier than a pure tablet. Anyone implemented anything like this before or have any suggestions?

A fair few of ours have been peeled off by the kids!

Good old MS licensing i guess. Realisitcally how likely is it to ever get 'caught out' if we ever were to install a version of windows onto them instead of linux? I'm not condoning this but i cant see how its really possible to check you bought hardware with a version of windows before installing your volume license version.

I've been told you need to purchase a license with every new computer, even if you have a volume license key on site. Is this the case? And if so is it still the case if we want to run Linux on them?

we are moving to an Academy in September and had someone in from Capita to talk us through the transfer process. Basically while not really knowing what she was talking about, we were told to just change our DFE number and school name would incur a transfer feee in the thousands. When this point was argued by our school bursar the saleswoman conveniently found some papers which said something that meant maybe we didnt have to pay the fee and would get back to us. Complete joke of a company, software is something i've seen university students produce better, the amount of updates and patches stuck on top is daft and so many simple bugs in it.

Trolley AP is a D-Link. I can get it setup as a wireless AP Client, join it to the school wireless and into the management console on it wirelessly through from my desktop computer and ping it etc although i can only get it to work if i use a 172.29.128.xx ip and default gateway of 172.29.143.254. Any other IP range and it doesnt work so i assume our wireless has been configured to only allow and use 172.29.128.xx addresses. subnet mask on everything is 255.255.240.0. The AP is plugged into a 5 port Netgear switch in the trolley. If i then plug in a printer to the switch it gets an address from the 5 port switch i assume as its not an address like you should get if you just plug into the wall. we have our printers on a 172.29.95.xx range with a default gateway of 172.29.95.254. If i set the printer to this i then cant ping it. I also tried setting the printer to use a 172.29.128.xx address and gateway 172.29.143.254 so that it was on the same as the wireless AP but still doesnt ping.

I had the idea to put a printer on the top of each laptop trolley so that we can remove printers from classrooms as they only print when they use the laptops. The trolley we have has a built in 5 port switch and a wireless AP. We dont use it as we have Wireless AP's in the roofs of each room so i want to connect a printer to the network using the switch and AP in the trolley. I can get the AP connected to the network, ping it etc and working as a client but when i configure the printer i cant ping it at all I've almost given up with it but wondered if anyone had managed to do this before and could maybe help me with where i am going wrong?

i'm also with mrbios on this, since i worked here we have bought parts and built the systems ourselves or had them built up and delivered to us. I cant really see how it can be cost effective to go down the HP/Dell route etc, and i dont see a problem with the PC's being respected more if it has a Dell badge on. These new I.T computers we are going for, like mr bios are going to be locked away in cupboards underneath, although we will put them in a case so that they can easily be swapped in and out with a spare and like someone suggested we are looking at putting in those USB/Audio hubs into the desks to finish off the whole look and hopefully they won't get broken too easily but at about a tenner each we could afford to replace a few a year etc if we had to. My main gripe at the moment is where to go with monitors. we currently have 17" dell 4:3 minotrs but finding it hard to justify buying some bigger newer widescreens as the current ones are perfectly fine for kids and it would end up with us scrapping about 30 perfectly good monitors, and i dont like to get rid of stuff unless it really isnt useful anymore!

yeah these AOC's were the only cheap monitor i have found so far with a USB HUB on them. wouldnt mind hearing how they are when you get round to installing them.

we already have a big stock of standard headphones and mic's unfortunately

i'm looking for 19" tft's that have a usb hub so kids will plug their usb sticks into the monitor as the computers are going to be locked away. Anyone have or know of any available? And at a long shot we also have to give them the option to plug in headphones and microphones too, so a monitor with these 2 audio jacks on would be amazing, but even if they exist i imagine they will come with built in speakers which we would need to be able to disable, but yet allow the headphones jack to work... which i dont think would be possible unless anyone has done this?