boomish

ASM is being updated in July I think, it was in a keynote last week. Yep we use Apple Classroom its fab, we know what an MDM is, apologies I didn't make it clear, I mean as far as setting up a new MDM in ASM to manage all existing and new units. Spoke to Lightspeed who said no need for a setup fee, they would do it remotely for free.

I think as GrahamB put well there are success stories for both , simply no point having the endless discussion this one is better than the other discussion, both have great benefits. I've also seen schools where the iPads are used as browsers. But you get out what you put in, we use the iPad apps extensively, documents, ebooks, music, video editing, animation, the list goes on & on, pretty much all are fast and simple to use, we can save to each pupils google drive or the school iCloud & with Apple Classroom it's simple to control a whole class, display their screen or lock down or mute all devices instantly. We also use Google Classroom to post all their homework the combination of the iPads & Chromebooks work well but you it's difficult to compare the two if either of them are not fully utilised. As for kids not liking iPads..well half the kids in our school know them inside out because they have them at home and they love them.

Thanks Dom & CHSGM, I did wonder how hard can it be, Meraki was easy enough, I've heard Apple's new School manager has also been simplified so seems straightforward enough.

Thanks I shall, I'd never heard of it..I don't think we mind having a separate MDM for each as long as they work

Ahh ok fair enough..thanks for the quick reply, funny Meraki was relatively simple to do by ourselves. A rep I spoke to said Apple suggest Jamf but thats got even higher setup costs. Out budget is minimal and were only buying 15 more iPads , so it's seems a bit ott but we have 60 existing mini's. Maybe it's best to keep Meraki for a bit longer.

We are going to be expanding our iPads (and chromebooks before anyone mentions) but will move from Meraki (free) to Lightspeed or JamF , I have no experience of either but we need something that works, I got a quote for some new iPads and license's to combine our existing units to the new ones but they want £650 setup fee for 1 day with an MDM engineer thats not optional, is this correct?

With respect I agree with AlanD, our experience is much the same, mjk's anti iPad post is typical of someone that hasn't seen iPads working in a school, they have and continue to be loved by students and teachers, apps work well, they are fast and make the lesson move so much faster. Chromebooks are cheap and thats important to us but the experience is not the same, it's a glorified browser with basic apps and the kids don't respond the same because of that. I'm not saying one is better than the other or iPads have no faults, but you can't compare and running down iPads seems ignorant and simply anti-apple which I'm so tired of hearing, I don't care what it is if it works.

Thanks again for the reply, we use Classroom but minimal use & only for 1 year group..thats taken 2 years. I feel the priority is Fast boot times, easy login, quick apps, battery life and a rugged machine, but even with that I doubt the teachers will like the change, they don't understand the cloud & learning new apps is an uphill struggle. If they perform quickly on our network then that will be a huge benefit, the laptops are continually installing updates 24/7..(win 7). I'll have to grab a machine & test it..

Many thanks for the tip off, that would be good to see, my fear is there are so many apps that will be lost and the teachers aren't tech savvy at all, just getting them to save to Google drive was tough, also I have heard of Chromebooks becoming obsolete after a few years. Mind you anything is better than our current laptops 2 mins + to boot is ridiculous. My PC at home is 30 secs and my Mac is under ten!

Thanks for the quick reply, we have G-suite yep we've been running Classroom & calendar apps for about 2 years, we use G drive on all the iPad's etc. We would have to replace older software that won't run on Chromebooks but I think thats probably overdue especially all the old flash software. CPU heavy apps are a concern however but we have been doing things like video editing on the iPads and thats much simpler. Can you tell me where you got the licenses from? & what problems you've had changing over? I know there are lot of advantages & disadvantages I'm just wondering if the Chromebooks are the same money as the new Windows 10 machines whats the point. Are they really so much faster because it's all in a browser? what happens if there is a network problem ours is dreadfully slow at times.

We are a small school running old Lenovo Thinkpad's, they have got to the point where they are so slow it's almost unusable, (2 min boot times) we are talking to our IT supplier who are suggesting replacing them with Chromebooks we could do a trial but we still have to buy a license for £19 per laptop. I've looked at possible SSD upgrades and battery refurb options & we should move to Windows 10 next year but it would be good to see what options there are for new machines. Currently our thinking is running a mixed system of 30 or so of each, new Laptops & Chromebook and our existing iPad's, the new low cost MS/ Lenovo 300E (sub £300) looks good but no idea on the Chromebooks. Any suggestions from people that have done this already? I'm concerned at all the downsides & limitations to Chromebooks, if these new Win10 low cost Lenovo's are going to be good for the same price why bother risking it. I presume the Chrome license is a one off Device management fee. Appreciate any advice..

we had a passcode on ours, we may have restored ours, it's far simpler than trying to get Meraki to work sometimes.

We used lost mode for a missing iPad, it turned up 6 months later when a teacher discovered it in her desk and quietly slipped it back into the charging station, I found it with the lost notice on the screen, followed the instructions on Meraki and disabled the lost mode & it updated fine. Took no more than a few mins to sort. I know this doesn't help much but it does work. I'm sure it's recoverable, it's Meraki thats a law unto itself!

Thats exactly what I did..

Bit of an old thread but I fixed this today, the offline files had reached it's max limit so wasn't syncing the Smart home folder, once I increased the cache size and cleared the conflicts the smart custom tools error went away..