Tyrfau

I noticed that when I compared the Mobile One's weight to my heavy duty laptop I use for my day job. Probably Ok for Y6, Y5 maybe, but further down than that and they'll have to be put out for them. Not even worth considering for KS1. When we do get the trolley and laptops, I have to produce the instructions and do some staff training (maybe even issue them with an "L" or a "P" plate;)) so we'll get the "laptops out\laptops back in" process sorted so the staff are happy. Or at least happy ish! Thanks for the heads up.

I know what you mean, though replacing a broken keyboard due to hyperactive fingers\pen\pencil is preferable to having to replace the hardware from a spilt bottle of water. As to the weak catch, that's life I guess. I guess the catch will suffer more than normal as I doubt the users will be to gentle in the way they slam the lid shut. The Mobile one comes CC3\4 ready and it's cheaper than any other ruggedised laptop that I could find. Despite the issues reported here, it does seem to be generally liked. Or at least not generally hated which was one of my worries. I didn't believe RM's claim for battery life so I was grateful to Synaesthesia for confirming what he sees in real life use. Where do you get firmware updates for them by the way? I did find one interesting coincidence. Whilst I was looking round the net, I found an announcement of an Asus B51 ruggedised laptop but I couldn't find anywhere that was selling them or any release dates. Then i realised that the pictures of the B51 looked cunningly similar to the Mobile one. Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the Mobile one is actually an OEM rebadged Asus B51? Does anyone use any special power management settings for these laptops to eek out a few more minutes from the batteries? Or should I really be asking this in a new thread?

Lapsafe sell a charging station called LapCharge that could be put in a trolley I guess, though it may be overkill for what you want or make the bespoke trolley way to expensive as it appears you'd need three of them for 30 notebooks Lapcharge-charging We are looking into buying a trolley from Keep It Secure and had a demo of one last week. Power management is in a big brick at the back which is removable for maintenance\replacement. They're a British company who design and make their own stuff (though I didn't enquire as to whether that extended to the power management brick itself) so they might sell you one. You can find them here: Contacting Keep IT Secure Ltd

Thanks for the welcome. Oh yes, it all started so easily and then I got sucked in like water down a plug hole. It has been a massive learning curve but on the whole, I am enjoying it. And Forums like this are a huge bonus when trying to find information. I've tried making contact with some other local ICT governors for information sharing but they either aren't that interested or they're too busy. I must have a nosey around this site to see if there is somewhere ICT governors get together. Have fun!

Thank you for the reply. I haven't been able to see a Mobile one in action so it is very useful to know that it does actually do what RM claims and that someone has good experiences with them before we decide to buy 15 of them. Yes, the laptops are for a mobile unit in a primary and they'll be used in KS1 and KS2, so robustness is definitely a key feature for us. Thanks for the tip about the Bios - i'll advise the ICT technician just in case the issue arises.

Hi, We're looking into getting a mobile laptop trolley and some toughened laptops for our primary school. I've been researching possible options and as we have CC4 it seems that the RM Mobile one widescreen seems to be a good enough choice if we get them with the Core 2 Duo processor. I think the hardened screen and water resistant case are really useful features (we recently lost one non rm laptop to a drink of Ribena) and RM seem to have gone all out to indicate how tough it is with the you tube videos of the drop test and the car driving over them. What do those of you who have the Mobile one think of it's battery life and display brightness? I've seen a couple of posts about dead pixels on the display but they were 12 months ago. Battery life seems to be reported as being anywhere between 2 and 7 hours from various websites - can anybody say what the battery life is like in the real world? I've also seen some posts on here that say the lid clip is a bit of a weak point. I thought about considering other laptops, such as the Viglen Futura Durus mentioned in another post, but I'm put off as I have no idea how compatible such laptops may be with CC4. I would be very grateful to hear any opinions on this from people who use them and from those who wouldn't touch them with a barge pole fitted with a 4ft anti-bacterial extension . Cheers.

Hi all, Just found this forum while googling for information on suitable laptops for primary schools and joined up. I'm a governor ( ooo, i can hear the groans now ...) at my local primary school and with quite a few years in the IT industry, I was 'awarded' the ICT Link governor role. If i had ever entertained the idea that that ICT in education was going to be a breeze, it disappeared very quickly. Policies, LEA's, procurement, administration, AUPs, internet monitoring, ICT suites, RM CC4 - the actual ICT equipment is the least of my worries. And that is before I think about the teaching of ICT in the curriculum! This forum looks like a huge font of knowledge about ICT within education and no doubt I shall be posting quite a few questions. Sadly, by the time I might consider myself nearly competent in these matters, my 4 years will be up. Anyway, enough of my meandering twaddle. I'll let everyone get on with bumping up the share price of McVities