laptopsandspares

No no, of course not. It was just my way of illustrating how some might argue the things Job's was involved in weren't "original" for the case against his "Visionairy" description. To my mind the technology involved almost isn't relevant, more the application of, and cohesion brought to table by Mr Job's ideas wether it was iSomething, animation, marketing etc etc ...

vi·sion·ar·y Adjective: (esp. of a person) Thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom: "a visionary leader". Would suggest yes then. Noun: A person with original ideas about what the future will or could be like. Would open debates around the term "original" no doubt and call into question "Job's the Visionairy" The iPod wasn't a visonairy product (mp3 players had been around forever), but it's did change the game and that wasn't by accident. Making it work took vision becuase the existing soultions weren't working. (Apply that to tablets, and smart phones) Synonyms: adjective. fanciful - imaginary noun. dreamer - daydreamer yes and yes then. For me, "Jobs' as a visionairy" was never in question. I think the arguments/debates about this often gets into his involvement in the technical side of things which tbh, I have no idea about his expertise in. Always going to be a hot topic this one wasn't it

:D I'm still chuckling at that. Good share DaveP. I'm going to set it as my wallpaper to keep things in perspective.

Hi Nicolab, In my experience Sony keyboards are almost impossible to source. Much as I hate to say this, but eBay is probably your best option. Pop the keyboard up and get the model number off the bottom of the keyboard itself, this will allow you to search for the specific part regardelss of which laptop it was fitted too, should broaden the search a bit. that said, whenever we've looked for customers, they still tend to sell for £60-£70 on the 'bay. Probably just because they can!! Good luck D

It's always very difficult to predict how apple will react to anything. You would think, with a market the size of the educational one in the UK, the states and worldwide they would be bending over backwards to accomodate but apple have always been quite aloof. If you buy, you buy on their terms! I guess they can get away with it all the while people keep buying, and in the defence of the products, although expensive do seem to do what they say on the tin. Interesting business model though, I hear Microsoft are adopting a similar rigid and authoritarian approach to their app developer programme, now they've seen apple get away with it. i'm not sure if this is good or bad for the developer or consumer, or if it will even work with a shaky platform like microsofts mobile OS. I wonder if the european commision will ever tell Cupertino they have to offer a choice of browser to eurozone customers when they first register their products? Or if cupertino would listen? I looked at educational discounts when I bought my MacBook Pro but it's a paltry discount. I assume it's to help protect their market and market price. I'd bet if students could buy Mac equipment 50% off the "grey" market would suddenly be flooded with cheaper products. I think iOS5 might address the specific issues you have, it may be worth though having a look on the apple suppourt forums or the 1,000,001 ipad forums on the interent. the beauty of computing is that if you have an issue, someone else probably already had it. Good luck.

I read somewhere, I think it was El Reg that intel were responsible for dropping the optical tech for thunderfoot (sic) as they were plesantly surprised at the speeds they attained over copper. I think cost was a factor, but this was related to the amount of firms in a position to adopt the fibre tech into peripherals at the moment. Same article went on to say that when fibre is introduced, the cables will interchance and carry both optical and copper to ensure forward and backward integration. I'll see if i can find and link to the article as I've probably grossly misunderstood what was said.

Brilliant

The cart do look interesting, I was investigating because I'd read on here that schools were having similar issues to yours and I was hoping to offer them to you all via the forum. I've been tempted to buy a board and see if we can build something too but the project never grew any legs. I know the firm in the states that produce the multi-bay battery chargers that Datamation the iPod cart guys stock and sell. I'm hoping the are building the iPod docks too so I can look at importing them. then all i have to do is manage to get hold of Sean or Chris to finailse our sponsorship... Reading the thread on the apple forum, there's "no such thing as a family licence" which i guess applies to this situation however... My step son and I had two user accounts on the same laptop. We would "borrow" each others apps by adding them to the library from their locations on the hdd on each others windows accounts. i think itunes might have copied the apps to each account as I have "let itunes manage your folders" checked. We were both then able to add and sync each others apps. At update time it would ask for the password from the account that had purchased it. Occasionally i would get a message saying that my account had been accessed from another device and have to re-confirm or reset my password but not often enough to be sure the two things were connected. I'd think if you had all these machines syncing to the same account via a single machine, this is less likely to be an issue. I can't comment on the licenseing issue but I'd think it was certainly possible sync an app to more than one iPad, but selectivley rather than as a blanket rollout. Things to consider perhaps though are the implications of iOS5. The two features I'm thinking of specifically are the ability to own manage and maintain an apple iOS device without the need for a PC/Mac, or "over the air" I think the phrase is. This might negate the need for you sync any of the machines by cable, just transfer them to the one school apple account. The other is the talk of apps being available on any device you own. see Apple - iCloud - All your music on all your devices. This as I read it means if you want a new app you could buy it on one device and any other iPad on the account could download and use it. It wouldn't even need to be returned to a central point for syncing It might be these new features answer your problems, providing all the iPads are booked to the same single apple account. The licence thing probably needs looking at but if they don't have something like this set up for schools already, for iCloud to work there must be something in the pipeline for multiple users. D

I'm not trying to be a hippy tree hugger bringing peace and harmony but you are both right. Apple are very good at painting over older technology and occasioanlly implement something new first, for me the game changing aspect of apple (And be clear, I'm not Jobs' et al biggeset fan AT ALL), is that they make what they use work. Smart phones, yup had been around for years. Never actually worked properly though. The guy I do photography with part time has been punnishing himself with smartphones for 7 or 8 years. Constantly crashing, dreadful UI's clunky handsets etc. Lots of reasons for this, too long to debate but the fact is apple step in with the iPhone and you finally had a piece of hardware and software that work properly together. Fast forward 5 years and there's a thriving market for smart phones with Samsung, HTC, google etc all now producing credible workable devices. Would this have happened without the iPhone? Honestly it just wouldn't. No-one would have invested the huge sums needed to build this market speculatively if apple hadn't. You can apply all that to the tablet market too. I cut my teeth in distribution 10+ years ago and there were touch screen "tablets" then but the market share was tiny. Fast forward 10 years, how many tablets have you got to chose from for Xmas now? And why? I think if you look at the boom in investment and product choice you'll see a startling correlation with the launch of the iPad. Video calling? sure, been around for years just like web-cams have but have you used face time? It's very very good and far more impressive than any skype or msn video chat I've had. Even my mum can do it!! I don't think apples hardware is particularly cutting edge, I don't think it's massively behind the game either but the key is when they release something whatever the spec, it (usually) works. (OK so sometimes you have to hold it funny to get a signal ) I'd rather pay a lot less for it though. I think with Apple is very easy to be critcal and "hate the player" while forgetting that in many of the fileds they operate, they have often re-invented the "game"

there's a company in Cambridge that make a circuit board used in the two multi-charge and sync ipod docks. from reading the spec on those products (I'm sorry this is vague, it was a few weeks ago i looked at this), and i think one is made by parrat, my understanding is you have one pc, one itunes account and all the ipads sync to the same account. When they are connected they all show up in itunes under devices on the side. I'm not sure what flexibility these will afford you in terms of synching apps, whether all the ipads will have to have all the apps, or whether you can select each device and check the apps individually but I think it offers the solution you are after. Let me do some googling... Just found this on the apple site: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2479050?start=0&tstart=0 this suggests what I thought that if each pad is given it's own device name you can select apps to sync specifically. Think it will mean though that each iPad would need to be switched to a single itunes account though meaning apps needing to be re-purchased. These guys are in the states We are please to introduce the first security cart to sync and charge Apple iPads, iPad2, iPods & even MacBooks. gives you an idea of what's possible and that product uses a Cambrionix board Large scale USB charge and sync, iPad Charging and Sync Station, iPod Charging and Sync Station, Cambrionix Cambridge UK (look on the site for the C3-Case), maybe you could build something yourself? These are the guys in Cambridge. Hope this helps D

My thinking is the tech needed to make the ip5 "Groundbreaking" isn't ready yet. I'm thinking NFC will be included along with a lot of other stuff other phones already have. IMO I think the ip4s has been launched because ios5 will need more power to run the apple "experience" properly. There's nothing much in the ip4s to make me want to jump up from the ip4 however.... ...the misses 3gs handset on my contract is up and due for upgrade so being as I pay the bill, if anyone is going to have the newer 4s.... it might as well be me right? She'll love my old 4 It's been thoroughly tested these past 18months (And she'll probably break it within a week anyway) From an upgrade perspective though, the 8gb ip4 is an interesting option for any 3gs'ers out there.

Legend, thank you HodgeHi.

I'd not even thought about dual boot os's but then to be honest for me that would defeat the object of buying the Mac. I've a perfectly good PC sat there, I had to tell the misses that Windows really wasnt designed for someone with my (lack of) creative flair. I think the reason lion is so power concious is it likes to turn the screen off every 60 seconds Made trying to watch the online "so this is your first Mac" video on the apple site quite a chore!! OS is a very different logic but the biggest stumbling block for me last night was that you can never be sure if the feature your after is there and you can't find it, or if Mr Jobs decided you wouldn't need it!

lol, no you wouldn't want the bosses laptop going pop. There shouldn't be any chance of that as the mainboard and power currents running through it are designed to be capable of running all the devices the machine is designed to handle at the same time and the power packs etc are then all specced off the back that. I could try and explain this in technical detail but I'd have to make some of the answer up!! Short answer is no, don't worry that can't/won't happen. D

Thanks I tried CMD and backspace and it deleted the whole line!!

Ok, so I finally took the plunge at a personal level, harvested my childrens kidneys and stepped out of the dark and into the light! I bought my first MacBook Pro yesterday (Impulse purchase on lunch break!) It was quite a religuos experience, I felt I needed some ceremony turning it on for the first time so after putting the kids in ice baths until the dialysis machine turns up from eBay, I washed my hands, lit some candles and opened the box!! So learned EduMac Geekers, who wants to give me the top 10 "You can tell he's a Windows idiot" frequently asked questions I'm going to find myself asking? (and of course the soltions ) Anyone have experience of Aperture vs Lightroom? (I'm a 'tog in my spare time) Where's the delete key? Or won't I need one to reboot my machine any more? Just how many finger gestures are there for the touchpad? My old Dell just had a single two finger option that I would wave at the screen! Looking forward to hearing from you, my new enlightened kin. Best David

LOL, I'll hold off for a little while longer, it's not quite lunch time. with Amps on a charger, bigger is fine so go for the 4.74a charger options (most people won't keep the 3.9a). You could use the 6.5a unit too but it's over kill. the volts on a charger are set (=/-1v tolerance) but the amps are drawn by the laptop at different rates when it's doing different things. So on boot, your laptop will probably ask for the full 3.9a and then settle into tick over at 1 or 1.5amps. put a dvd on and it'll start to suck more through the charger. If you were to map the power draw on a graph, it would look like an ecg machine with peaks and troughs depending on what the laptop is doing. So as long as the charger is 19.5v, and 3.9a or bigger (could be 100amp), it's fine to use, you just can't go smaller or the charger will go pop. Make sense? D

When I say plug, I mean the tip that plugs into the back of the laptop!

Pretty much all AC's for laptops have a dc input rating of 110-240v etc etc, it's the output we are concerned with. 19v 3.9a is the most common version of the Sony unit too. If your unit has a metal barrel, with a small pin in the centre (The plug on the end of the charger), search google for a "PCGA-AC19v6" and you'll turn up some reputable listings. If for any reason your tip doesn't match that description, get back to m e on here and I'll double check everything (and eat my shoe ) Regards David

I hear a lot of good things about the samsung & Dell netbooks JoBos, but then I here positive things about CP Ltd too so leaning toward their Dells might be worth considering. D

Hi Cooper Trooper Is it a 19.5v 4.74a unit? If not post the spec here and I'll get you a part number that will find you what you need. I'd like to be able to help in an official capacity but I'm having trouble getting hold of the Forum owners to get our Sponsorship turned on. I'm confident I can offer an Alt code that will turn up something on the web for you though. Most of the Sony's use similar PSU's. Let me know David

Be interested to see what the outcome of this is. I have been getting this issue on and off on my work machine. I don't use Zimbra, I do occasionally pick my mail up using OWA. It did it a few weeks ago, then stopped and then started again a couple weeks after that. It seemed to rectify itself about the same time it did it's auto windows update (running XP), so not sure if it is OS related? I think the problem initally occured after a windows update too but can't be 100% It would happen mainly after logging into the network in the mornings but would occasionally pop up during the day at random intervalls but it's not uncommon to see my machine drop and pick up it's network connection during the day.

I feel your pain. Cars are expensive but IMO, although a lot of money it's not terrible. I often buy my own bits for servicing as my golf PD engine needs a special oil to maintain the engine. cost's me £40 for oil and filter and my local charge me 1/2 hour labour so it's abotu £75 total for my oil change. Based on what you've said, I'd think you might have saved a bit by doing that but not much. I'd think plugs from camberly auto factors would be about £5 each (£20), oil filter between £7 and £15 so say £10 for example. 5 litres of oil costs me £35. If it had HT leads that's going to be about £30-£40 if bought yourself, hoses tend to be silly money if they are preformed as often it's main dealer only unless it's a generic piece of pipe (not often) You can assume they'll charge a bit on the parts too but you are over £100 already. I'd be gutted to have to spend the money but I wouldn't feel robbed. In my experience, a recommended garage is a good thing if you trust the referer. My MOT on friday was £450!! It broke down as £48 for the MOT, £120 for a new CAT (pleasantly surprised, was expecting £300+), £30 worth of CV boots, £27.50 for the oil change and a couple of hours labour to change the boots and CAT. Can't really grumble at any of that for a car with 197,500 miles on the clock and another years motoring but certainly made my butt twitch when I handed over the reddies just insurance in Jan to look forward too now :( Happy trucking D

For coin cell type batteries, for my watch, head torch etc I always use "The Small Battery Company". not sure if they have the pre-shrunk wrapped units on the shelf though. Highly reliable and quick postal delivery though. I found them on Google 4 or 5 years ago. D

oh yeah, and that. My bad