StuartC

lol, I've used email/forum with EA and it is doing my head in. As was said earlier, yes they responded within 2 hours to my query, but haven't responded in 3 days to my reply. Phones, sometimes dodgy, I just spent a few minutes on the phone to a guy in India who hosts a system I manage. I hate doing this and only do it in an emergency because I can't understand them, they can't understand me (I've lived all over the UK and don't have a ¨normal¨ english accent, more a mixture).

I was just thinking (this isn't serious or official) about how we contact tech support. This is because I obviously work in tech support, plus I'm having a bit of a mare with ea tech support for Fifa 08. I wondered how you would prefer to contact technical support. couldn't think of any other forum to put this in :s

If you are unsure of how the AB+2 has been installed, please call our tech support guys. If I was to pick an opinion from this thread, I would agree with this:

There has been an update on the Knowledgebase, please take a look at the Vista article in the newest articles list: http://www.prometheankb.com/ The driver may not be perfect but it works, and yes it currently requires UAC be switched off as mentioned elsewhere in this forum.

you'll have a debug version of as3 in the programs folder (AS3PED.EXE) run this, it will pause when you get that error, the item it freezes on may be what is causing the problem.

http://www.urladex.com Just signed up for this game, it used to be called alexadex. Basically you just trade shares in web urls, and the value changes based on how many visits they get. It's a play once a day kind of game so not too taxing. I started playing last week and it's quite addictive. another one that's similar is http://www.alexashare.com just thought I'd tell you about that.

The runtime error 429 can be caused by corrupt vb runtimes: http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/a/d/5ad868a0-8ecd-4bb0-a882-fe53eb7ef348/VB6.0-KB290887-X86.exe However I suspect this isn't the problem. Can you break down for me what you are doing with the msi in wininstall? I want to try and replicate this here and run through possible solutions with our installer engineers. Until we can get an idea of why this is happening I can't offer a solution. The joys of finding new problems. What does the VC++ error dialog on the client machine say?

This is a new one, can you try deploying manually with a log (/L switch) and let me have a copy of that?

I think that's the problem tbh. I'm upgrading the thing to a dual core mobo/cpu this month, and it has 1Gig or memory, but still, it's titanically slower than xp was on it. I heard today that MS have released a performance patch for Vista that includes fixing slowdown in folder navigation that I mentioned, so I'm giving that a whirl when I get home. I'll let you know if it helps (or if it borks my machine)

I can only really confirm what I said last month. The current driver 4.1.10 does support Vista. However Prometheans engineers are aware of problems with the software in Vista, basically you can install it but you're on your own This isn't being mean but officially Vista isn't supported, Promethean know there are problems and will fix these in the next month or two. A lot of other software has been in the same situation with Vista. On a completely personal note, I've had Vista installed at home for a couple of months and I hate it. My HD video playback is terrible, file navigation is slower, more crashes etc. I'm thinking of blatting that machine, putting XP back on and giving Ubuntu a whirl on a seperate partition.

I think (don't hold me to this) that if you had an install on the BECTA spec then we had to use serial, but those installs aren't done anymore. we now try to keep USB to 5m where possible, if you want a longer distance then it's a possible extender cable or a serial cable with a keyspan.

Yup, older boards (ones without lights in the top left corner, and the ones with the black oval window there) have serial numbers on the pen pots or on the side of the electronics box behind the top left corner (put your head to the left side of the board and you may see it). Newer boards will just have the number on the side of the electronics box, boards made after Jan 2006 will have the tag that russ mentioned behind the bottom left corner.

actually version 3 of Activstudio can open notebook 9.5 files and older. Future updates to 3 should be able to open newer notebook files too. It's always worth keeping your software up to date

http://www.innerllama.com/blog/?p=48 *cough* unofficial *cough*

yes, in as2.5 open a flipchart, in the filetype choose the smart notebook type. If you are opening in as3, just open flicphart and you should just be able to choose the smart xbk file. http://uk.prometheankb.com/article.asp?article=222384&p=10121

buy widescreen whiteboards too

I use business hosting for my "other" job. it has to be quite sturdy because traffic can go up to 10GB a day. I use hagiohost.com and hostgator.com.

*rewrote the article and it's back online* in other news, Activdriver 4.1.10 was release yesterday. No real reason for anyone to upgrade, however 1 thing I noticed is that it now supports left handed users, so if you have your mouse buttons switched around it won't affect the pen.

just noticed my link in the first post ain't working. My web host lovingly decided to roll to a backup from yesterday morning for no reason without telling me. idiots. so I'm relocating to another host later.

up to you, I know how sensitive the chips on our electronics are, and I wouldnt risk it. definately not with a board that's in warranty. if it's in warranty and we see another kind of psu dangling from the system during a repair then there may be a hefty bill involved.

I'll run through the procedure *cough* All Activpens are covered by a 12 month warranty, if any have developed cracks or faults in that period they can be replaced after confirmation with tech support. *sigh* Anyway, the Activpen 3's (the ones with the shorter nib and no click) were redesigned to try and eliminate cracks, but most of the time it's caused by teachers dropping them on the floor. If you think you have it bad think about the poor guys we have in the middle east with tiled floors in every classroom. If you have an Activpen 3, look at the end (without the nib) and there should be a number. From my memory I think that its month/year of manufacture. not sure but it's 5pm so I'm thinking about getting home, and the fact that it's peeing down outside.

I would like the pens to be a bit more, erm, "grippy". But apart from that I've no complaints.

Just an FYI really, promethean are releasing some new gadgets soon. I've put some pics on my blog and hope to have some more info to release soon. Basically new voting/multiple pens on one Activboard. http://www.innerllama.com/blog/?p=33

http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/Batteries+&+Power+Supplies/AC+to+DC/FRIWO/1812117/displayProduct.jsp?sku=PW01412 this is very close to the psus for Activboards (same company, unbranded etc), but don't order it because the output voltage is too high and the amps are off too, but it's a good example because these are £20 without packaging. Ours are £25+£5 P&P. That's not bad when you compare to some companies.

officially our driver has basic vista 32-bit support, however it has a couple of problems with power saving and the built in tablet support. Also our software hasn't been fully tested and bugfixed for vista yet (As vista isn't really that common in schools right now + our engineering bods are working on some pretty sweet new products due for release soon). the unofficial news is that the next release of the driver (that I have installed) will be released this week or next, and will have a much nicer 32bit vista support, I'm unsure about 64-bit support but the presence of a "ActivControl2x64.exe" suggestst that it's there. The software though is unlikely to be fully patched until the end of the summer at the earliest. I would be very suprised if anyone is rolling out a vista network over the summer but let me know if you are. I've heard that anyone being supplied by HP is being messed around and they are insisting that customers use vista or they won't be supported.