Jollity

Adobe say they are no longer going to be providing versions of Flash for Android. Flash support seems to me one of the main advantages of Android to a school, so removal makes it a lot less likely we would go for Android if we ventured into tablets.

I am shopping for laptop trolleys. I have been looking at ones that hold the laptops vertically because they take up less space. However it occurred to me that storing laptops on their side might risk damaging them in some way. I could not find anyone on the web who says it does apart from this article: The second paragraph make sense, but I do not understand why charging a laptop battery on its side would make a difference. Has anyone destroyed their laptop by a perilous tip to the vertical?

Thank you very much for coming back to update, Enjay. I'm sorry your wife had her shape matching interrupted. I am a little concerned that the E-450 could not handle a Flash web game. However when I had a look at Bejeweled Blitz it does seem to use a remarkable amount of processing for what it is apparently doing. In what way did it not cope? Stuttering animation?

Yet another question on this board's favourite topic. I am interested in whether people think the benefits of EES of being able to keep your software up to date and consistent are worth the lock in, if there is not a significant cost saving. As a small primary school, with a relatively high ratio of FTEs to computers, EES is not nearly as favourable financially to us as to some. However we will be needing Office 2010 licenses for nearly all our computers and upgrades to Windows Pro from Home on a new batch of computers. With EES we could switch Anti-virus from Symantec to Forefront Endpoint Protection. We could also save a bit on being able to upgrade a few computers to Windows 7 and keep them going a bit longer, when it would not be cost effective to do so if we had to buy Windows 7 licenses. In my estimates, all this adds up to EES giving us a slight saving over the next five years, nothing that significant. The real boon of EES would be the ability to upgrade the whole school to Windows 8 and Office 2012 whenever we felt the time was right rather than waiting for a hardware refresh - though I have to say the direction Windows 8 seems to be going does not make me think we will be early adopters. It would also be good to avoid the license accounting: our license records are not very good at the moment. Getting enterprise editions would be nice too - though I've not got anything to bitlocker at the moment. However the lock in of the hefty EES buyout cost gives me cold feet. Anyone any thoughts?

Something like the 305U? They seem to have a range of them actually. Actually, might be worth me giving PC world a visit, to do some window shopping.

I am certainly not opposed in principle to getting Macs in. There would be value in offering the students experience of a different environment. I would have been supportive if we were getting a batch of 5 or so to do music or video editing, etc. Unfortunately, the head decided on an unhappy compromise of slotting a couple into an existing Windows suite, which I think will result in them running Windows most of the time. Thank you for the list of links Arther, that should keep me busy for a while.

The Head declared there shall be Macs, so lo there shall be Macs. Only a few of them to start with fortunately and no school iDevices as yet. Can anyone recommend any training resources for technicians with experience on Windows, but little on Macs? Websites, books, training, etc.

Are you sure? From the code, it looks like it is supposed to make logs for the removals as well. See this bit: 'Create MSIEXEC uninstall string. strUninstallString = "MSIEXEC.EXE /X " & strUninstallKey & " /qn /norestart" 'Check and add the logfile to the uninstaller string. If (strLogFilePath <> "") Then strUninstallString = strUninstallString & " /l*v """ & strLogFilePath & strDisplayName & "_Uninstall.txt""" End If But I have not actually used the script!

Thank you for the recommendation, that does sound promising. I remember Duke5A was recommending that model in my other thread. I note that unlike the N2600, the older Atom N550 in the Latitude 2120, does seem to support Windows x64. Do you use a 64-bit version? Do you use the Latitude 2120s on a domain?

Thanks for your thoughts all. I have made up my mind that the Minibook is out. RM say there is no way I can put an SSD or extra memory in without voiding the warranty. With your comments, this really makes me doubtful it will be good enough. The other factor that tipped the balance is that the Intel N2600 apparently does not actually support x64, despite what the Intel website says. This would mess up our plans for going 64-bit only with Windows 7. My current plan is to order one X130e, give it a good look over, and then order the rest provided it looks okay. I will have another trawl for 11" laptops for fallback - I will certainly look at the 11" Vaio E Series. If anyone near Kent happens to have an X130e, or one of its predecessors in that line, that I could look at, I'd love to hear from you.

Does a log file appear in "C:\Software-Deployment-Logs\" or whatever directory you specified on the command line when running the script?

Have you tried uninstalling manually to see if that gives the same error?

The issue of finding a compromise between netbooks and laptops continues to trouble me, and I would appreciate any more views on my current thinking. Main question is whether the performance of current Atom based netbooks is good enough for the main computer for year 1-4 children. We are going for a proper 14" laptop for one of our laptop suites (mainly for year 5 and 6), but for the year 1-4s I have been looking at 11". When we tried laptops out with children, we realised the size and weight of laptops were going to be a significant problem for children that age to handle. The small screens would be problematic for some things the year 3s and 4s do, like graphs, but the teachers should be able to arrange to use the older student's laptops for some lessons. My main concern now is computing speed. I have been looking at the Lenovo X130e recommended by 3s-gtech, and they definitely seem like they would be up to the job, but Lenovo have been completely hopeless and have no demo units for us to try (something they took weeks to tell us). As I felt we must have a try of an 11" laptop before purchase, I got a trial of an RM minibook. Almost all of the teachers concerned really liked the Minibook. We tried it out with children. The case and screen seem very robust indeed, though the keys seem a little flimsy and prone to picking out. Best of all it has a handle, something which seems to be pretty much unique at the moment. It has an atom processor, though it is an N2600 dual core one. The demo machine had 1GB of RAM, though we would get 2GB. 5400rpm hard drives. I found it quite usable, but noticeably less responsive than a new laptop, it seemed about as responsive as our current aging computer suite. Several of the teachers concerned said they would accept lower performance for portability - especially the handle. So my dilemma is whether to go for a Minibook or similar atom-based netbook or insist we get something better. I might be able to get an SSD and more RAM fitted - is that worth doing with an atom-based device?

Anyone got any of the latest RM Minibook and willing to share their experience?

They would need to be a local admin as well, wouldn't they?

Do you get the problem if you just type the link directly into the URL bar?

Why aren't there more laptops with built in handles? This seems like such an obviously useful thing to have, but barely anyone seems to do it, apart from RM.

Thank you for your tips everyone. I will certainly give the Toshiba c660 a look. That does sound like a good idea. Things do get sticky... Unless a laptop is specifically described as being wipeable, what features do you think would help with the wipeability? The island style keyboards would probably be easier in that regard. Are there are screens that are more easily cleanable than others?

Thanks 3s-gtech. This is just the kind of advice I am looking for. I probably should not have mentioned models - that was just in case anyone had had a particularly stand out experience with one recently. The island style keyboard is the style where each key has its own hole in the case, as opposed to the kind where the keys are right up against each other, correct?

Primary. General purpose use - internet browsing, Office, educational software, probably some graphics work, maybe even some video work one day, though nothing very processing intensive I do not think. They are instead of a fixed ICT Suite due to space limitations. Each suite might be used in any classroom within the building where it is based.

We have the funding agreed for two suites of 20 student laptops, budget around £400 (ex VAT) each. I am now looking through models, trying to work out exactly what to buy and wondered if I could get any tips from around here. Does anyone have any particular laptop brands or models that they would recommend or warn against? Something it is difficult to judge from spec sheets is the robustness of the case and keyboard. Anyone have any recommendations on models that are particularly child resistant? The love for SSDs in the air makes me quite dizzy and I am very interested in using them, even it means cutting back on other aspects.

Interesting to hear what could be done. Definitely heading into overkill in our case - relatively small primary. I am not aiming for much in the way of protection from a human hacker with a direct physical connection to the LAN, but I would like to stop anything easily exploitable. It seems to me that a man-in-the-middle attack on windows traffic would be pretty difficult to get right and would likely involve luck or planning in finding an exploitable connection, but maybe someone has automated the process... Which measure does that refer to?

Unfortunately, the issue does not seem to be confined to the one printer. I found pretty much the same issue occurred when printing from a Windows 7 64-bit machine to our main printers - this time I could print from both word and excel without triggering the print detection. Upgrading the driver did not help in this case. I ran out of time to work on the issue and have not spoken to Impero support yet - I am planning to tomorrow. I will update this thread with the result. Anyone else out there using Impero for print management?

PsLoggedOn lets you check whether anyone is logged on to a particular computer or search the network to see whether a particular user is logged on. Not quite what you are looking for, but it seemed worth adding to the list.

That's the kind of thing I am worried about. We do not have any linux machines, and no NASes at the moment. Network printers seem likely thing to break and perhaps the couple of Macbooks on the network. The fact that no one has come forward to support tightening the settings rather cools my heels. I was worried it was an area our security was slack, but it seems that we would be going above and beyond. I might have a go at tightening up the anonymous access settings - it seems less likely anything is using that, and I can't see how it could affect performance.