speckytecky

Done. Can we vote daily?

Airserver works fine for us and at a one off cost of under £50 for a site licence has proven to be excellent value for the year or so we have had it in use. Initially we were going the Apple TV HDMI / VGA converter route and bought in 3 sets but they weren't running reliably plus there was the problem of where to put the converter and TV box so it worked but was a bit more protected from thieving.

Probably unconnected but hopefully useful I found on my Windows 7 home network that my printers were showing up as offline after they had been switched off then on again. It wasn't until I rebooted the router that they were picked up as online again. I wonder if something similar is happening here?

I gained the similar opinion, most probably based on the OS when test driving a brand new Toshiba Encore to compare and contrast with an iPad - the whole experience reminded me of the Volkswagen Advertisement on TV! I'm now wondering what use to put the Toshiba to?

Having unsuccessfully tried using Apple TV in school I'm left wondering why anyone bothers with it when Air Server is available on a site licence for a fraction of the cost of one complete Apple TV set up?

Congratulations to the both of you. Good to see some common sense being accepted and applied. Sadly that seems so lacking in many establishment nowadays.

It totally amazed me yesterday to visit a customer services desk in a Sainsbury's store and find they subsequently carried out my product look up request on a XP driven donkey slow PC!

Feeling bad for you @abillybob it's a horrid feeling when things go wrong. Hopefully one of our more experienced Edugeekers will spot this thread and look upon it with a fresh pair of eyes and spot a solution to your problem. I can see that the last thing you need now is advice on how you should have done things but genuine help at resolving your current issue. Not sure what part of the world you hail from but if you are in the Swindon area I use a chap based there who has come in a couple of times to sort out issues that are beyond my skill set.

As ever @SYNACK can be relied upon to answer my frequent questions - thanks buddy. In this case I'd thought of that and have tried it at work behind the proxy and now at home without. Just Getz hat same darned irritating message. My Google of it brought up another exact same querying but sadly with not even a hint of an answer. Can't say I'm in the least impressed with my first tentative step down the tablets route and having been an initially reluctant convert to iPads side by side comparisum of the two devices puts the iPad light years ahead in my opinion. The tablet just feels clunky and the fact that there doesn't seem to be any half decent cases about for it rather seems to confirm the opinion.

I'm trial using a Toshiba Encore that has Windows 8 on it. When I try to log in with a Microsoft Account I get a message telling me 'you must be online when logging in for the first time' the flipping thing is online and the Internet is working fine with my on the ground account. Any suggestions please - I have tried two MS accounts both work fine on proper computers running Windows 7 - come to think of it no problems on a Mac either!

How cope there's no Thanks button on this thread. Thanks anyhow @Arthur

I'm at the Western Computers presentation at Combe Lodge at Blagdon today any fellow Edugeekers here with me?

Fair enough as far as I'm concerned. Worth every penny and at least unlike another favorite of mine (Logmein) they are offering decent notification and a deal. Anyhow for us in schools we should have been paying for it for, I think it's about the past 12 months anyhow.

Sounds like a great company. Pity they don't expand to a National coverage.

Ironic that it's threepenny bit shaped - here in 2014 it's probably worth about the same in actual buying power as the genuine article was at it's demise in 1973!

Any recommendation on a durable case for these please. Heaps of excellent cases out here for iPads - particularly the Survivor but nothing like it seems to be available for the Encore?

Hi Colin, Tell me more about this in the PM you are sending me as well please. I'm particularly interested in the student and teacher proof ability of any device - having had teaching staff break 3 of our 20 iPads already!

Methinks teachers get paid a shed load of dosh for what they do - why should school budgets have to shell out for kit that they are in reality going to spend at least 80% of their time on surfing the net, social networking and shopping on Amazon et al!

What size school are you and in which County. I'm not keen on seeing school IT support outsourced and feel in house is a far better option for all concerned.

Thanks for this thread - very useful. One of my SMT has sold the package to our management and governors that iPads are he way for us to go as well. I'm extremely interested in finding a solution prior to it happening as well. To my mind as a Windows Tech iPads seem to be a complete PITA and I would much rather the money that's planned to be spent on them was redirected to replacing a few of my seven year old Fujitsu Siemens workstations!

Thanks @visioN That's not only what I mean - I thought it's what I said!

Good posting @Yeo695 However, I don't think all your 'free' are actually free for use in Education etc. Certainly MalwareBytes needs paying for if used in a school, I have a feeling that CC Cleaner falls into the same category as I believe so does MS Security Essentials.

Software Asset Management | Software Licensing | Infrastructure Solutions | Phoenix Software recommended to me on here and I also can highly recommend them. Excellent value.

What superbly useful and very welcome replies @seawolf and @SYNACK thank you very much. Very useful ideas to get me moving forward. My prejudices have been built up by my a mix of my own inexperience and the largely negative sentiment I have picked up toward use of iPads in education on Windows domains from various Forums. You both bring out some very positive points which I find very encouraging. Additionally my experience of the staff member driving the concept has been somewhat tainted by past history where I have battled against their desire for change only to find myself harassed by unreasonable timescales and in small number of instances wasted resource when the change hasn't been generally welcome or indeed used / judged useful by either staff nor students. I have one local school lined up for a visit where they can be fairly said to be enthusiastically embracing iPad integration specifically toward Special Needs but I'd like to visit others as well. On the other hand with such positive, full and clear feedback as the two of you have given me I have already made a huge leap forward. Thanks again to the both of you. Now I wonder if my school would be kind enough to fund me a visit to you?

I'm trying to find a local school to me here in Wiltshire where iPad integration has gone well so I can beg a look at how it has been achieved please. I believe the Secondary School at Keynsham has cracked this particular nut so I'm guessing it would be ideal if anyone from there is on Edugeek and could let me visit or talk me through their experience please? One of our Assistant Heads is very enthusiastic to see us move in this direction. The chap seems to think our Special Needs KS3 boys (Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties) will greatly benefit from being able to run up integrated pieces of work in say Pages and print it out there and then and ideally save it as well. I have tried to point out the major difficulties this would present on Windows Domain but so far I seem to be batting into the wind.