AVShopper

Hi, haven't tried this particular dongle, but would exercise caution if you have a lot of other wifi stuff going on in the same area. Also, it looks like you have to have a seperate power supply at the receiver end (on top of the projector?) so need to make sure you have a spare power socket and/or space to put an extension socket of some sort. Can you get a CAT5 cable up there? There are basic unpowered CAT5/VGA dongles - I have to say the unpowered versions aren't brilliant over any decent distance, but should be OK within the same room. I've think I've got a demo pair knocking around the van if you wanted to try it as an option. Email me and I'll pop them in the post for you to play with. Greg

I will definitely be adding these boards to our portfolio. I used to install a similar surfaced product called EBeam Complete, which also had a steel/vitreous surface but used an ultrasound pen. The ENO boards apparently use a form of camera which picks up on invisible marking in the surface of the board (as you can tell, I only got the sales material and not the tech info so far). The interesting aspect for me is that many schools want to retain their dry marker boards in addition to the interactive boards and this will do the job of both. At first look, these are looking to be cheaper than SMART and Promethean (The 77" board is coming in similar to the 64" competitors). It will be heavy, and depending on the bracketry, you need the wall to be strong and flat, but it's not a real barrier to using these. But the pricing, robust construction and bluetooth rather than USB sounds good news to me.

Took delivery of a bunch of AJ130 yesterday and had a good play with one. Amazingly fast on/off is the first thing that hits you. I guess like most of us, I was sceptical about brightness with this new technology, but having seen one in action I was most impressed - and then realised it was in ECO mode and went even brighter! These entry level units will be fine for classroom and corporate meeting use. Tested with WXGA input and it looked great, with sharp edges to graphics and text. Good contrast and colour saturation. Tested with HDMI input and again looked great with HD movie trailers for Ironman and Tron. No immediate artefacts visible - although not a formal test by any means. I'd have one at home without hesitation. Other observations - when running in High Brightness mode, the fan noise was noticeable in our office, but I don't think this will be a major issue in a school - particularly as it can be run in eco for most apps. We also noticed that the unit still runs hot (like standard projectors), so whilst these are "green" in terms of TCO, they still consume a decent amount of juice and will need proper ventilation. Overall - fantastic product. I want one!

Official Cssio line is that the first batch into the UK should land on the 10th, then straight through the supply network to fulfil existing orders. We should get our hands on about 10, but already booked for installs. Next batch around end of month if all goes well. Casio haven't revealed the reason for the delay. Only a few samples been through so far. Agree with NewOrder that we need to see how well they perform over the long term in terms of brightness, relaibility and TCO. Am not clear yet how much maintenance they will need in terms of regualr cleaning (air flow). It's a small thin chassis and we've installed similar styles into corporate environments without issue, but I'll be watching to see how they perform when sitting in a classroom with 35 kids shedding dust and general gunk. One aspect no-one has mentioned is the amazing zoom range on these - which makes them ideal for fitting onto an existing pole if you're swapping out a dead projector. As for power consumption, these are not totally green - 230W normal brightness and 190W ECO which is similar to a standard edu projector. The green aspect comes from them living a long time so they aren't going to landfill every 2 to 3 years. If I was to predict the outcome of this new tech, I'd say that it will drive the other manufacturers to either boost their EDU warranties, or to quickly licence the lamp tech from Casio. Any other questions on these, let em know. I'll update the forum once we've put a few into play in schools. Greg

Not a big fan of the old Sanyo, but agree on the Hitachi EDA-111 even though it can be a bit fussy on installation (choose a decent bracket with lots of adjustment). The Hitachi warranty offer of 5year on the projector and 3years on the lamp is running from now up to the 16th April for education customers. Others you might want to consider are: Hitachi CPD-10 (Short Throw Unit, 2000 ANSI, XGA, 3 Year O/S Warranty with 3 Year Lamp Warranty) NP610SEDU (Short Throw Unit, 2600 ANSI, XGA, 3 Year De/Re-Installation and 3 Year Lamp Warranty)

Hi DaveT. if you let me know the symptoms, I can have a bash at remote diagnosis. We're a little out of your area (East Midlands), but we are occasionally in your neck of the woods. Happy to suggest a few things if you can tell me what's happening.

Hi Techsupp. The part number you gave at the start of the post is for the EDU model. The non-EDU model (usually for business) has an LMP suffix instead. So you should be covered for the projector warranty support, even if you didn't register the lamp within the 90days. The EDU warranty does cover on-site de/re-install so you should get an engineer to come out - I know this to be the case as just organised it for one of my customers last week. We started registering the EDU lamp serial numbers on behalf of customers about 18 months ago as we found that many schools either didn't realise, or just left it too late. As you found out, if you push a bit you should still be able to get the lamp supported even if you register late, but would recommend you go through all your projectors and register them pre-emptively, even if a little late.

Another quick thought on the XU305's (you may know this already, and I stand to be corrected..) , but the networking function of the 305 comes in two parts - you can network multiple pc's to the projector using the wireless interface, but the LAN interface is only for the PJ-Net interface for control and interrogating the projector status/log etc. Are you routing the projector via a wireless hub, and then on to your network - never tried it, but could be interesting?

Sounds like you've worked through this one, but a couple of observations from my experience as a disti in UK and in Europe. The price fixing thing doesn't really apply as B2B channels are not covered by consumer regulations. The price fixing stuff you do hear about is more related to cartels forming between manufacturers and doesn't apply here. Whilst I do appreciate the desire to purchase 10 units instead of 9, the 3 years "On-site" warranty provided by the UK sales channel is quite valuable. From experience, I don't believe all 10 Sanyo units will stay alive for 3 years, and if only one of them goes down permanently, the early gain on price will be lost. Once you've paid the importer they won't be that interested in helping out unless you have regular business with them. Your current AV supplier hopefully has rolling business and you have "leverage" over them if you need support on sorting out early life failures, or applying pressure to the supplier/manufacturer. Finally, trying to progress a "European Warranty" claim for Sanyo products in the UK will be nigh on impossible as Sanyo use a 3rd party repair house - and if your serial number ain't on their list, they can't talk to you. The bottom line is that Sanyo shouldn't really be putting customers into this position. If the units can be supplied at £700, then they shouldn't be forcing the UK channel to charge 10% more.

Sympathise with your situation. The problem with going "non-standard" on the board height is that you're dealing with multiple stakeholders - their ICT person may say something different to the head, the teacher(s) and possibly the students. If you get a confirmation ahead of time from one, the teacher on the day may demand something different. This isn't a tech question, but about your relationship with the school and of course procedures for sign-off etc. We've installed as low as "skirting board height" on one occasion due to a very specific request from an IT supplier for whom we were sub-contracting. 3 months later the teacher was demanding we "correct" the situation as it was too low. (moved at our cost to 30cm height). One thing you may wish to consider, which hasn't been mentioned is Health & Safety issues. If you put the projector below 2.0m height someone is going to bang their head or damage the projector. This usually dictates the minimum height of the board, particularly if you're using a short throw projector as there's no play room. If the school genuinely needs a height that can accomodate both nursery children and teachers, then they will need to go for a height adjustable unit and add a grand to the budget.