Hoggy

There is 'one off' licence fee and then an annual maintenance cost for Sims Learning Gateway (SLG2). It can either be deployed by individual schools or the Local Authority can host it for a group of schools. The latter option works out cheaper and should save on lots of technical hassle for the schools. It might be worth asking your LA if they have any plans for it.

Taking the bigger picture into account I'd recommend you went for Learning Gateway. The government expect schools to provide access to parents for online reporting by 2010 (Secondary) 2012 (Primary). LG will provide this and some. Might be worth asking if your LA is considering purchasing it and hosting it on behalf of schools. If they are it will save you a considerable amount of money and time.

Looking to implement SIMS Learning Gateway as most teaching staff only require read/write access to Assessment Manager and Profiles modules . As you probably know SLG will also allow parents and pupils read access to various data items. We will probably also recommend VPN but only for the minority of users who need full access.

some really useful examples, however I would find it useful to have an example of how Primary schools use it (other than for the FSP, KS1 & KS2 statutory returns).

Hi Rob, as an LSU, we have 3 secondary schools very interested in taking on learning gateway. Their main requirement for them is to be able to access both Assessment Manager and Profiles on a read/write basis. The new version will allow them to do this. There are other benefits as well, in respect of allowing read only access for parents and pupils. Also as an LSU if we host LG, then not only does it mean it's easier to support but the price is reduced significantly for the schools. I also saw a presentation by a school who were using LG as 'watered down' version of a VLE. This is something that we are investigating for our Primary schools instead of an over-complicated VLE. In terms of having 'full rights' we are looking at alternative solutions for the admin staff who require full acces. However from discussions with the schools the number of staff this applies to is minimal. They certainly don't want all staff to have full access rights.

Does this offer extend to PC's for home use, I'm about to order from elswhere but I would be interested in a comparison with yourselves?

I used Smarter Solutions a few months ago, they purchased a smartboard (SB660i) and they did all the installation. Not without it's problems but that was the smartboard being a brand new product. Smarter resolved all my issues eventually and were very competitive pricewise. I'd use them again.

So many options to choose from, no wonder it's taken me ages to choose - I used to be decisive but now I'm not so sure!?! - Have more or less decided to by an Eclipse for £750, good graphics card and processor, support a bit stingy but I might upgrade that. Anyone got experiences of Eclipse PC's, PC Advisor seems to like them. Cheers.

Thanks for all the replies, I'm beginning to agree with 'mrforgetful' about the cost and being out of date. Probably too old to be playing games now anyway! I think I'll lower my budget, I'll still have to buy one though cause I don't trust myself to build one without blowing my house up!! Cheers

I need to replace my ageing Evesham PC (6/7 yrs old!) and wondered if anyone to could recommend a specific PC or company. I've a max budget of £1000 and will use the PC for web browsing & downloads, gaming, storing Photos/videos etc. Also will need to use it for work occaisonally so need Micrsoft office (which version should I go for?) I was tempted to buy from Evesham again but I understand they are about to be bought out. Heard Mesh PC's are good but the support is rubbish. Starting to favour Chillblast but don't know much about the company. Any help would be appreciated. :?