Robbocop

OK, a quick follow up to this just for completeness. Apple will let you buy software direct from them if your school is set up to do that. The "shop" page lets you pull the products into a list which you can save and pass on to your purchaser, but unless YOU are the authorized purchaser with Apple, you can't place the order. Talk to Apple to work that out. An authorized Apple reseller should always be able to beat Apple's pricing for hardware because we get a margin to play with, but for software there is no dealer margin available. However, for convenience you might want to order licenses from a dealer anyway, even if it's a quid or two more. Your call as always, but I thought I'd clarify that so you know we're not all trying to rip you off

Thanks Captain! I've fired of a question to Apple to ask what their official line is, but I'm sure you'll agree that if they can quote prices they should be able to sell to you, and if they can't sell to you they shouldn't be quoting unless they quote the prices a reseller can sell them for I'm glad you got your licenses sorted in the end.

Guys sorry to butt in. I work for Jigsaw24 and I'd like to get to the bottom of this for you. We work to the pricing Apple give us as a reseller, as does every other reseller, so if Apple are undercutting the prices they ask us to sell for I'd like to ask them why. Captain, your 45 OS X licences should have been quoted to you at £7.50 per licence - that's £337.50 plus VAT (£405.00 inc VAT). I'm looking through a long list of quotations and I can't see any other prices we've quoted so I'd be keen to find out what happened. i'll check with Apple and see what I can find out for you both. I apologise that you've had a bad experience over this.

Does it have to be Flickr?

I'm not sure if this has already been covered so forgive me if it has. You can obtain 5.1 audio directly out of the optical audio out on modern Macs. Obviously you will only get 5.1 if the media you are playing contains it, and obviously you need a receiver or speaker set with an optical digital input to be able to hear it. There's an article here describing how to get 5.1 from iTunes and from DVD Player. Setting up iTunes and DVD Player for digital surround sound The article which was mentioned in an earlier post About Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapters is really interesting because it shows that not all Macs output audio through their mini display port, and that not all MDP to HDMI adapters can pass multichannel audio. It's worth a look to be sure, but sounds like there's a lot to go wrong ;(

hi guys, iPad Mini is now out, and visible on the Apple site. when we get a chance to play with one we'll know more. I've been playing around with the Puffin browser for iPad, which does seem to work with Flash content like MyMaths and might be worth a look. Sadly I think some of the posts on this thread are correct. Flash has a future for Adobe, but delivering web based content is not necessarily in it! Yes Apple are forcing the move to HTML5, but they were not the only company with concerns about Flash.

stevenwba, someone might have already said this, but just in case: iWork for Mac is a different licence to the Pages/Numbers/Keynote apps for iPad. An iWork site licence is not valid for the iPad versions. Apple have allowed some resellers to sell 20+ volume licences of Mac apps now. We at Jigsaw are one of them, but it's fairly widespread I think. So if you need 20 or more Apertures, Final Cuts, Lions etc you can approach your favourite reseller. Sadly there still isn't a reseller scheme for one-off purchases like a single Lion Server licence or Apple Remote desktop. Hope that's useful.

I advise a little caution here. Bernardita seems to have answered the question about whether it's physically possible to get an iTunes library to play on multiple computers, but has completely avoided the question about whether it is legal to do so in a public space. I think that part of the problem here is the ownership of the material in the first place. I've assumed that the material is owned by the teacher. If that's the case the teacher has the "personal, non-commercial rights" to play the material. If the school purchased the material that might change things. Synack is absolutely right though. even though a school is non-commercial, you still need a performance licence to play any copyrighted music or video in school. The Performing Right Society (PRS) published this brief guide to licensing http://www.prsformusic.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Schools%20leaflet.pdf and is really helpful if you contact them.

Kris, it is confusing it's true, because the product code does have "Ent" in it. That refers to the Office component, which Microsoft see as an enterprise product. 2UJ-00011 combines Office, the Windows 7 upgrade and the CORE CAL package. If you want the Enterprise CAL package the code you need is 2UJ-00007 DsktpEdu ALNG LicSAPk OLV E 1Y Ent EntCAL - with the EntCAL bit at the end as the only clue It costs about 6 Quid more than the one with Core CAL.

Just as a further comment on the use of Apple wireless Keyboards with iPads: Some things are better - physical keys are great and having symbols like © and £ available without changing pages speeds things up. Some things you get used to on the iPad and they don't work on the keyboard - like hitting space twice to add a full stop. Not a problem though the keyboard functions exactly as you would expect. The bluetooth connection is very immediate and easy. I guess in a classroom or office you might need to number the keyboards which are paired with specific iPads. Although you can't use a mouse with the iPad when you're typing, the arrow keys allow navigation through the document. CMD + Arrow goes to the start or end of the document or the line. ALT + Arrow goes to the start or end of the paragraph or one word at a time on the line. SHIFT + Arrow allows selection of text and you can copy and paste those selections using the standard CMD + C/X/V commands. CMD + A selects the entire document, again as you might expect. This helps minimise the number of times you need to touch the screen, which can be more irritating than you would think

Sorry, I'm confused. If you had Leopard installed on these Macs before they were trashed, and they were running Photoshop, doesn't that mean you have a Leopard compatible version of Photoshop?

Traditionally we've always used a disk share internally, and we can VPN onto that from home. Recently we have been trialling Sharepoint and really like it for lots of reasons. Microsoft tell us that UK customers who prefer to use the online Sharepoint service are guaranteed that their data is only held within the EU, so we think that's a safe bet for anyone who wants to give it a try. With the new EES licensing plan, it's become cheaper to run Sharepoint than it used to be.

I'm liking that Nice one David!

Originally Posted by Robbocop The iPad does not have a keyboard You know what I mean David. If you had to carry a physical keyboard around with your iPad you might as well just have a laptop I do have an Apple wireless keyboard on my desk which I use when I'm in the office, but I don't carry it around. There's a hilarious case I spotted though with a keyboard in it iPad Keyboard Case Hey! Why not buy a gesture based low power device and turn it into an underpowered laptop! http://www.edugeek.net/images/smilies/tongue.png

Great thread guys, with lots of valid reasoning and so far relatively little Mac Bashing, which is nice. Just a couple of things I'd like to add, personal opinions rather than any professional view. The iPad does not have a keyboard, of course, and the on screen keyboard is OK for typing in URLs and emails, but is not a substitute for a mechanical keyboard for involved typing. This becomes worse when using VNC type solutions as some important keys are either missing or hidden away. That misses the point though really. The reason iPad is so interesting is that it's a very different device with different strengths and weaknesses. It's like criticising a microwave oven because it doesn't make good toast If you can't see the benefit of a wholly tactile interface - the whole device is basically a controller - then it's not the right device. Early years pupils absolutely love the iPad because they prefer to use their fingers rather than a pen, mouse or keyboard. They're learning positional and causative skills just by playing with one. "If I do this, something happens" type activities. For SEN we're seeing empowerment on a new scale with these devices, where a traditional PC just can't be used. In Primary it's less clear cut, but as a true instant on device with a massive battery life, great display and very cheap apps it's gaining ground fast. It won't replace the laptop any time soon for typing an essay or running existing software, but in the home the tablet will be a device that people buy INSTEAD OF a computer if what they need is a fast, simply way to browse, view and communicate and very little else. People don't generally need to actually "compute" any more. When Mr Jobs called the iPad 2 a "Post PC device" I don't think he was kidding. Feel free to disagree, because that opens up new ideas but that's how I feel about it.