RobG

Well it's not going on as yet, I need to come up with a rough costing so we can put it forward Current machines where bought back in 2005, pentium4 3ghz (not HT) socket 478 ram I upgraded so currently on 1gb DDR 400mhz IDE 150gb hard drives Network space is an issue for use atm and some of the music files get very large esp when they are being actively worked on (like video do, in fact one of the projects they've done is to make audio tacks for video clips so you've got both) for this reason we set up a folder on the local hard drive which gets mapped as X: when a student logs on, to make a "working drive" so they don't fill up the network. what are the "M-Audio USB fast track devices" like? I'm really not up on this side of pc's normally I just listen to stuff with onboard.

Our old music room pc's are still alive but really are a bit long in the tooth. (old p4's) Putting in a bid for new pc's is not a problem, however I'm really not that up on sound stuff esp as it connects to actual music production. Cubase essentials 5 is the main bit of sftware used, with keyboards hooked in via midi to a sound card (cannot remember the exact make but they are C-media chips and have ASIO drivers To get around the issue of the cubase usb licence dongles, or them going walkabout, I fitted a USB pci card which has 3 usb sockets at the back and one internal socket, so the dongle can get plugged in inside the case so people cannot get to it. We had some custom front audio panels made up, it sits in a 5.25" bay with 3 standard 1/4" sockets these are just wired through the case, out the back and connect into the sound card via standard 1/8" jacks (two go to a single speaker output, so two people can plug in head phones from the front, and a 3rd socket goes to the microphone in socket on the sound card, so a powered microphone or even a guitar can be plugged in) The setup is not perfect but works, other than the general slowness of the pc's ideally we'd like to keep both the USB cards and custom audio connectors looking at a basic i3 2100, 4gb ddr 1333mhz, 250gb 7200rpm hard drive in a chifetec mATX tower But I'm really not sure what sort of sound card we should be looking at? There's potential we could reuse the current cards but I'm not sure if there's drivers for window7 64bit for them and even if there is 2 pci slots on the new motherboard (one for sound card one for usb card). The teacher has also asked about phantom power, which I understand is a powered 1/4" socket so you can plug a standard microphone in. I know most sound cards now don't come with midi ports, but we could use USB to midi adaptors, but which are good ones? which are reasonable cost? which are junk? What's a good sound card for ASIO drivers and performance?

Ahh ok I missed that, have you looked at the coolermaster elite 360? it can actually take a full atx motherboard in a smaller form factor, it's done by moving the psu to the front, does reduce hard drive bay spaces but do you need ore than one in a school pc/ heck most home p's don't ether. Elite 360 - Cooler Master We've got a load of the viglen genie ultra small's that cases are really quite nice, I've poked around in them, the stands that hold both case and screen are nice, you can get them without the stand, but I don't think they sell the cases separately We've also got a load of pc's built in the HEC/compucase 8K07's 8K Series mini-ITX Chassis::HEC COMPUCASE Enterprise Co., Ltd mini-ITX not mATX but they are good for small form factor cases. PS the fractal design 1000 is great as long as you don't want it for gaming it's just too small to fit 120mm fan based tower cooling in it and long graphics cards cause issues with the hard drive mounting system, look at the Fractal design ARC mini or silverstone TJ08e instead those are probably the best two cases on the market for packing a ton of stuff into an mATX case. the 300 is a Full ATX mid tower gamer 300, 458mm high, 465mm long, 205mm wide core 1000, 355mm high, 420mm, long, 175mm wide

I really must start checking edugeek more. mATX cases to look at Chieftec Uni series CHIEFTEC | UNI series they've changed the design recently they are not quite as solid as they used to be. you can stand on the older ones without doing any serious damage, they are all 0.8mm steel separate internal frame and panels. The newer ones have gone down the route many case manufactures do thinner steel, 0.6mm, folded construction to return some of the strength lost through thinner steel used. They are still pretty good and robust, just more flex in the panels don't think I'd trust one enough to stand on it, on the plus side they are much lighter, easier to work in and take stnadard ATX psu's now (the older ones used slightly shorter than normal ATX psu's) InWin EM series, this has been replaced by the Z series, but the EM is definitely a better case ::::::::::IN WIN:::::::::: all the different model are just different front bezels, internal frame is the same on all the EM series. Have a look at the fractal design core 1000 Core 1000 - Fractal Design not sure how solid they'd be for a school environment but they are one of the best low cost retail mATX cases around atm. quietpchas got some in at £21.84 ex vat http://www.quietpc.com/products/pc-cases/fd-core-1000

I'm a bit late here, But I agree with Arthur, check TFT Central amazingly good resource for monitor information. Problem with many makes is that they don't make the actual panels so just because model "A" of brand "X" is good, doesn't mean the model "B" from brand "X" will be as good. And because you can get model revisions, sometimes the panel can change as well as the other internal components. We've got a load of old CTX monitors still happily working, but other later models from them have mostly died. I've had good experience with iiyama so far, we've got a great old BenQ (MVA panel) but at the same time we had a couple of different model BenQ that both died shortly after they went out of warranty. I do like HannsG as a lower cost brand, (note HannsG is a subsidiary of Hanns Star which is one of the few companies that actually make the panels, the big three being LG, Samsung and Sharp)

Desktop side Core 2 Duo E4300 = 1.8ghz Core 2 Duo E6300 = 1.87ghz Laptop side (the low voltage core2duo are far slower) Core 2 Duo SL7100 = 1.2ghz Core 2 Duo U7600 = 1.2ghz in fact it goes as low as 1.07ghz for the Core 2 Duo U7500

Yes that's very true as well, you'll lose from the 4gb roughly 250mb (due to motherboard addressable resources) +video card ram, so with a graphics card with 1gb of vram you're generally down to around 2.75gb system ram with only a 32bit OS. Nice to here the gt240 is doing well for you. That's sort of my exact point, not having had experience of this before and they themselves don't seem to know, so I came here to ask others, esp on the point of workstation vs consumer card.

It's a joke because c2d covers a rather large range of cpu's, go back and try using one of the old low end 1.8ghz c2d or one of the laptop 1.2ghz ones, there's a massive difference between those and a c2d running at 2.6ghz or higher And it's nothing to do with "expecting" the card to work, I don't expect the card to work, but listing "A separate graphics card." (and yes that is the exact wording on the documentation I got for the technical spec.) they don't say dx9 minimum. So yes is a TOTAL JOKE, is like listing the minimum requirement to enter a Formula 1 race as "a car" I'll also point out that sme of the top end onboard/ondie gpu's are actually better than some bottom end graphics cards.

I'd like to drag this back to the original question from synaesthesia about hardware. Our data manager/exams officer went for training/demo on this and due to the fact that the laptop they demoed it on struggled, he's asked for a new pc for it. His pc is getting on a bit, it's a 3ghz PentiumD (the original dual core pre-c2d, just a pair of p4's jamed onto the substrate under the IHS) 2gb of ram and agp x4 ATi Radeon 7200 (yes the original radeon which is DX7) the great info given to him about minimum spec was as a technical spec that is a total joke. Going by that it should work, it's a dual core cpu, 2gb of ram is a bit low but should work and it has got a separate graphics card. I called up the Captia "help desk" about this and they could tell me nothing more than that. So we going to overspec, spoken to our main supplier and we looking at getting him a SB i5 2400, 8gb ddr3 1333mhz and . . . I was thinking gts250 for cost, cores and raw performance it's great value for money, they've suggested a Quadro FX380 instead It's a far weaker card (they are just 9500gt) however being a workstation card the drivers and support do make a major difference in most non-gaming applications (a quadro will perform around 2x-4x better than a gaming card with CAD or 3d rendering software) Anyone know if there's any advantage to a workstation card over a consumer card with discover?

Interesting, nice to know I'm not the only one to use marker & tippex We do have asset tag stickers we put on the bottom of every laptop, but that's more for inventory purposes not computer naming and locating it on the server. A few years back one of our science technicians did etch the school name into a set of laptops, well melted it in with a soldering iron. When one of the back lights died (inverter failed) HP refused to repair it under warranty, even though it was not near the inverter, however I don't blame them that much. Self etching paint does sound ideal, I'll have to look into that. On a totally separate issue, one thing that's currently annoying me, we've just got a load of nice mini-ITX systems in, however due to the size the only place the windows License sticker can go is on the side and already we've lost some of those to little fingers.

I've taken to putting an identifying number on the lid of each laptop, not teacher laptops but trolley sets. Help a lot as teachers/pupils often don't put things back in the correct place, also for fault reporting, renaming after ghosting and locating a particular laptop. Normally these are just hand written in ether permanent marker or tippex (nice and visible on black laptops) only issue is the numbers getting worn off, esp on a new batch of toshiba's, the permanent marker doesn't hold too well. I did try stickers once, however the "little darlings" seem to love peeling stickers off any bit IT equipment. I'm just wondering what others do and if they do how do you number them? Any suggestions for a good hard waring/picking proof solution?