Actually, he was right, and you are wrong. You read like a typical person who has never used any tablet, much less an iPad. I can assure you that they can be, and are, used for far more complex work that you seem to be aware that they can do. Or want to believe that they can do.
While it's the mfgt responsibility to deliver a working product, I'd blame the schools' IT guys. They should've tested this thoroughly, which obviously wasn't the case.
Well you can't be sure. The IT guys might have been given test models with different quality than the "roll out models". Or when they rolled it out, they tested with installed software, and in production they were "distributing" software. So my guess they were promised by an HP salesman that their "distribution was just as good as iTunes for a local intranet installing apps."
In reality, there was no way they weren't going to be the guinea pigs, as probably nobody else in their country has tried HP tablets as a platform. So it could even have been messed up by installing a Finnish instead of an English language pack.
Why would a language pack cause a tablet to go to sleep and never wake up? I don't know, because I don't use a Win 8 / HP tablet and I probably never will.
Why didn't they just get Surface RT tablets? It's ARM so you have none of the cruft of the x86 version and it comes with Office as part of the package.
Yes, there is one advantage of web browsing on an iPad than on a PC that every body should know: if you encounter a word that you have not learned you can easily get its definition by touching it longer. I am thrilled by this feature.
The same feature exists in Windows 8, you can even add a broader definition search by adding sites like Wikipedia to the function. Windows 8 isn't such a bad OS for education, the amount of software available for Windows is quite vast. I know the iPad has a lot as well, just saying that the opinion of Windows 8 not being up for for this task is just biased crap.
"refusing to power on, going to sleep unexpectedly, and experiencing hardware failures involving the devices' logic boards" sounds like a h/w and potentially a s/w issue. And they aren't blaming anyone? Really? If had bought a bunch of tablets or computers and they won't turn on, go to sleep unexpectedly and have logic boards fail, I can think of at least one or two companies to blame.
Now, if the students aren't plugging the devices in to charge the battery, i can understand why they might not power on or go do sleep due to lack of enough battery power, but logic boards failing?
And these are HP? I would expect this happening on the lower end cheaper products on the market, but I always thought HP was to have at least decent products from a standpoint of at least turning on and working reliably.
Oh well.
The tablet market is a totally different beast. A lot of these "just as good as iPad" Android-based and Win based tablets just aren't up to snuff. To get the specs right, they either run too hot or the batter starts fading in a few months so that the 6 hour run-time gets significantly shortened. The iPad took a lot of research and is an engineering marvel. The Android and Win tablets on the other hand are being produced by mass-market manufacturers trying to fulfill a laundry list of "features" and specs such as RAM or CPU speed, without regard to reality. It's really a tough situation to be in and I'm betting there isn't a lot of room for R&D after Google or Microsoft helps create the reference devices and software.
So Apple is 94% of the market and the other 6% have buyers remorse. That just happens to be the unavoidable conclusion in 2013. It might change -- and COMPETITION IS GOOD! But unless someone has deep pockets to design better OS, better backend, and a better tablet -- buying anything non-Apple for this platform is a mistake.
As a person who works in two K-12 school districts as a technician, and runs the entire Apple Department in one of them, I'm confused by their choice of tablet. I do agree with some. Its like the districts IT department and/or administration staff wanted to keep it all Windows based and felt like the HP tablet was the best offer for the price paid and stay in a Windows environment.
In my experience, you really need to test things out way in advance of doing something of this scale, even if you have to push the rollout date back. When you're spending $1.4 Million (2000 students x $700), you better damn well make sure you have your ducks in a row before placing any formal order. This means not only testing hardware, but also software to manage these devices. So get different hardware vendors involved (Apple, HP, Microsoft, Samsung, etc), then get different MDM solutions involved and see what works best. Not, whats more convenient for IT, what works best in the environment its placed in. Too many times, IT people are lazy bastards and always do what is best for them, and creates less work for them. I say this as an IT person myself.
That being said, like Melgross said, education is different from everyday life in an IT world, even business life to some extent. You buy things based on what works for your curriculum for the price. Some people don't understand how things in Education work and they try to compare it to the business they supported, or home use, etc. They don't see how things have to work behind the scenes. Sometimes things are purchased based on grants that have specific directions of what to buy, how many, and what you can pay for it. Its not always what runs MS Office best or something like that. These days, virtually anything can do this using one program or another either on the device itself, or cloud based. Thats not what important. Whats most important is, does it consistently and appropriately serve the purpose of the curriculum it was meant for? This is not a one sized fits all thing either. What works for one district doesn't mean its always going to work for any other district. Different districts have different needs, different student body types, different budgets, and different curriculums.
It's interesting too that in the USA and Canada, at least, 95% of the tablets in education are iPads. This leads to the old Windows is Best concept, because there is one OS, and better, with just a few different devices to program to.
I'm now seeing Microsoft Tv Ads that have this guy who's pretending to be a teacher, lauding Windows Pro tablets for his students. I'd be very surprised if there were more than a handful of students using that machine anywhere. There's no educational software available for it. And for those who don't know better, software that qualifies for a classic laptop or tower won't qualify for student use on a small tablet screen. And boy, are they going to lose those styluses and keyboard covers!
The largest PC manufacturer in the world and what do they make? Crappy tablets! The largest software company in the world and what do they make? Crappy software!
Fools? How does one purchased a iPad for $699 in Ireland
A lot of people don't realize how much more we pay for stuff in Europe, it's almost worth just flying to New York for a day to do your yearly clothing and gadget shopping and of course visit a decent Sushi restraunt.
It's interesting too that in the USA and Canada, at least, 95% of the tablets in education are iPads. This leads to the old Windows is Best concept, because there is one OS, and better, with just a few different devices to program to.
I'm now seeing Microsoft Tv Ads that have this guy who's pretending to be a teacher, lauding Windows Pro tablets for his students. I'd be very surprised if there were more than a handful of students using that machine anywhere. There's no educational software available for it. And for those who don't know better, software that qualifies for a classic laptop or tower won't qualify for student use on a small tablet screen. And boy, are they going to lose those styluses and keyboard covers!
Yeah and the fact that the Surface Tablet isn't any cheaper, and in some cases, its MORE expensive than an iPad which has hundreds of thousands of apps. Just because the Surface Tablet runs Windows, doesn't mean its great for educational use with any Windows Education app. As Microsoft are finding out the hard way, people don't want to use desktop apps on a tablet because it runs like crap and its just not a good user experience.
Buying a Windows based tablet just to stay on a Windows platform is just plain silly.
A lot of people don't realize how much more we pay for stuff in Europe, it's almost worth just flying to New York for a day to do your yearly clothing and gadget shopping and of course visit a decent Sushi restraunt.
It's funny, on this site, when you say that Apple over charges for stuff outside the US there is every excuse in the book to explain why, but now they are happy to use it to say these paid too much compared to the US price, which excuse it is?
Yeah and the fact that the Surface Tablet isn't any cheaper, and in some cases, its MORE expensive than an iPad which has hundreds of thousands of apps. Just because the Surface Tablet runs Windows, doesn't mean its great for educational use with any Windows Education app. As Microsoft are finding out the hard way, people don't want to use desktop apps on a tablet because it runs like crap and its just not a good user experience.
Buying a Windows based tablet just to stay on a Windows platform is just plain silly.
Huh, I use and enjoy many desktop apps on my Win8 tablet. Must have a special one or you've never used one, I think the latter.
Well you can't be sure. The IT guys might have been given test models with different quality than the "roll out models". Or when they rolled it out, they tested with installed software, and in production they were "distributing" software. So my guess they were promised by an HP salesman that their "distribution was just as good as iTunes for a local intranet installing apps."
In reality, there was no way they weren't going to be the guinea pigs, as probably nobody else in their country has tried HP tablets as a platform. So it could even have been messed up by installing a Finnish instead of an English language pack.
Why would a language pack cause a tablet to go to sleep and never wake up? I don't know, because I don't use a Win 8 / HP tablet and I probably never will.
Well, I'll tell you something. There's a big difference between giving something out for use with adults, or children, or even school age young adults, and high school or lower grade students. Students are the most difficult group of people to let use a product that has any chance of breaking in any way whatsoever!
There is a law in physics that states: If something is possible, it WILL happen. Same thing with students and anything at all. If it can go wrong, in any way, it will.
I know of cases where a students iPad ceased working. When asked about what they had done with it that was unusual, it was said that "well, maybe I left it on under my pillow when I went to bed—every night for a month, with a game that controlled the screen so that it never went off!
The same feature exists in Windows 8, you can even add a broader definition search by adding sites like Wikipedia to the function. Windows 8 isn't such a bad OS for education, the amount of software available for Windows is quite vast. I know the iPad has a lot as well, just saying that the opinion of Windows 8 not being up for for this task is just biased crap.
But that software isn't qualified for use in a tablet with a small screen, a stylus, and the not so hot typing covers. All that software needs to be requalified for that use, which means extensive rewriting of the UI.
It was €438.00 -- you can get it for less or more depending on specs. Not sure what that translates to in $. Could be $50,000 with the exchange rate. /s
Ireland is one of the major places they assemble Apple devices for Europe -- or at least on paper for tax purposes ;-)
It's funny, on this site, when you say that Apple over charges for stuff outside the US there is every excuse in the book to explain why, but now they are happy to use it to say these paid too much compared to the US price, which excuse it is?
Never said they overcharge, just that it's cheaper to buy them In the US. Personally, I actually think all these gadgets are cheap, I used to pay 3000 dollars for a Sony Picturebook and that was before I was making real money. I'm not really sure what your trying to prove.
But that software isn't qualified for use in a tablet with a small screen, a stylus, and the not so hot typing covers. All that software needs to be requalified for that use, which means extensive rewriting of the UI.
That person was also mentioning "there's a lot of software for Windows." Right, but is that Windows RT, Win 8, Win 7, Win Mobile, WebOS, and does it allow for FINGERS once you click on some happy icon in that Metro interface designed for the XBox?
And I'm sure that Win 8 has a dictionary search, but someone has to have a working model to verify this. ;-)
Well, I'll tell you something. There's a big difference between giving something out for use with adults, or children, or even school age young adults, and high school or lower grade students. Students are the most difficult group of people to let use a product that has any chance of breaking in any way whatsoever!
There is a law in physics that states: If something is possible, it WILL happen. Same thing with students and anything at all. If it can go wrong, in any way, it will.
I know of cases where a students iPad ceased working. When asked about what they had done with it that was unusual, it was said that "well, maybe I left it on under my pillow when I went to bed—every night for a month, with a game that controlled the screen so that it never went off!
That isn't even the oddest thing that's happened.
I worked in a computer lab at a University once, and I passed by a lady who's baby was in at the next computer to her, feeding the Floppy Port a cookie because it seemed hungry.
And people thought Jobs was foolish for not adding a keyboard to the iPad. Heck -- it's in hospitals and schools for the very reason it IS NOT JUST LIKE A regular computer. The Fins need to learn that they don't want an all purpose device.
It's funny, on this site, when you say that Apple over charges for stuff outside the US there is every excuse in the book to explain why, but now they are happy to use it to say these paid too much compared to the US price, which excuse it is?
I'm sure there is pricey stuff out there. But at least Europeans don't have to panic to pay for school, healthcare and retirement like we do.
And you are for sure paying less than the poor Australians with all the kapitalists marking up every import!
I'm sure there is pricey stuff out there. But at least Europeans don't have to panic to pay for school, healthcare and retirement like we do.
And you are for sure paying less than the poor Australians with all the kapitalists marking up every import!
The POINT I'm making here is that there is a significant import tax Europeans pay -- but they are better off because it means lower trade deficits and the government redistributes that money to TAKE CARE OF PEOPLE. In the US you get a discount on everything, but you can't afford to eat.
Comments
Actually, he was right, and you are wrong. You read like a typical person who has never used any tablet, much less an iPad. I can assure you that they can be, and are, used for far more complex work that you seem to be aware that they can do. Or want to believe that they can do.
While it's the mfgt responsibility to deliver a working product, I'd blame the schools' IT guys. They should've tested this thoroughly, which obviously wasn't the case.
Well you can't be sure. The IT guys might have been given test models with different quality than the "roll out models". Or when they rolled it out, they tested with installed software, and in production they were "distributing" software. So my guess they were promised by an HP salesman that their "distribution was just as good as iTunes for a local intranet installing apps."
In reality, there was no way they weren't going to be the guinea pigs, as probably nobody else in their country has tried HP tablets as a platform. So it could even have been messed up by installing a Finnish instead of an English language pack.
Why would a language pack cause a tablet to go to sleep and never wake up? I don't know, because I don't use a Win 8 / HP tablet and I probably never will.
Why didn't they just get Surface RT tablets? It's ARM so you have none of the cruft of the x86 version and it comes with Office as part of the package.
I can see the advertisement now.
Fools? How does one purchased a iPad for $699 in Ireland
The same feature exists in Windows 8, you can even add a broader definition search by adding sites like Wikipedia to the function. Windows 8 isn't such a bad OS for education, the amount of software available for Windows is quite vast. I know the iPad has a lot as well, just saying that the opinion of Windows 8 not being up for for this task is just biased crap.
"refusing to power on, going to sleep unexpectedly, and experiencing hardware failures involving the devices' logic boards" sounds like a h/w and potentially a s/w issue. And they aren't blaming anyone? Really? If had bought a bunch of tablets or computers and they won't turn on, go to sleep unexpectedly and have logic boards fail, I can think of at least one or two companies to blame.
Now, if the students aren't plugging the devices in to charge the battery, i can understand why they might not power on or go do sleep due to lack of enough battery power, but logic boards failing?
And these are HP? I would expect this happening on the lower end cheaper products on the market, but I always thought HP was to have at least decent products from a standpoint of at least turning on and working reliably.
Oh well.
The tablet market is a totally different beast. A lot of these "just as good as iPad" Android-based and Win based tablets just aren't up to snuff. To get the specs right, they either run too hot or the batter starts fading in a few months so that the 6 hour run-time gets significantly shortened. The iPad took a lot of research and is an engineering marvel. The Android and Win tablets on the other hand are being produced by mass-market manufacturers trying to fulfill a laundry list of "features" and specs such as RAM or CPU speed, without regard to reality. It's really a tough situation to be in and I'm betting there isn't a lot of room for R&D after Google or Microsoft helps create the reference devices and software.
So Apple is 94% of the market and the other 6% have buyers remorse. That just happens to be the unavoidable conclusion in 2013. It might change -- and COMPETITION IS GOOD! But unless someone has deep pockets to design better OS, better backend, and a better tablet -- buying anything non-Apple for this platform is a mistake.
It's interesting too that in the USA and Canada, at least, 95% of the tablets in education are iPads. This leads to the old Windows is Best concept, because there is one OS, and better, with just a few different devices to program to.
I'm now seeing Microsoft Tv Ads that have this guy who's pretending to be a teacher, lauding Windows Pro tablets for his students. I'd be very surprised if there were more than a handful of students using that machine anywhere. There's no educational software available for it. And for those who don't know better, software that qualifies for a classic laptop or tower won't qualify for student use on a small tablet screen. And boy, are they going to lose those styluses and keyboard covers!
Why are you bringing Leveno into this discussion?
It's interesting too that in the USA and Canada, at least, 95% of the tablets in education are iPads. This leads to the old Windows is Best concept, because there is one OS, and better, with just a few different devices to program to.
I'm now seeing Microsoft Tv Ads that have this guy who's pretending to be a teacher, lauding Windows Pro tablets for his students. I'd be very surprised if there were more than a handful of students using that machine anywhere. There's no educational software available for it. And for those who don't know better, software that qualifies for a classic laptop or tower won't qualify for student use on a small tablet screen. And boy, are they going to lose those styluses and keyboard covers!
Yeah and the fact that the Surface Tablet isn't any cheaper, and in some cases, its MORE expensive than an iPad which has hundreds of thousands of apps. Just because the Surface Tablet runs Windows, doesn't mean its great for educational use with any Windows Education app. As Microsoft are finding out the hard way, people don't want to use desktop apps on a tablet because it runs like crap and its just not a good user experience.
Buying a Windows based tablet just to stay on a Windows platform is just plain silly.
It's funny, on this site, when you say that Apple over charges for stuff outside the US there is every excuse in the book to explain why, but now they are happy to use it to say these paid too much compared to the US price, which excuse it is?
Huh, I use and enjoy many desktop apps on my Win8 tablet. Must have a special one or you've never used one, I think the latter.
Well, I'll tell you something. There's a big difference between giving something out for use with adults, or children, or even school age young adults, and high school or lower grade students. Students are the most difficult group of people to let use a product that has any chance of breaking in any way whatsoever!
There is a law in physics that states: If something is possible, it WILL happen. Same thing with students and anything at all. If it can go wrong, in any way, it will.
I know of cases where a students iPad ceased working. When asked about what they had done with it that was unusual, it was said that "well, maybe I left it on under my pillow when I went to bed—every night for a month, with a game that controlled the screen so that it never went off!
That isn't even the oddest thing that's happened.
But that software isn't qualified for use in a tablet with a small screen, a stylus, and the not so hot typing covers. All that software needs to be requalified for that use, which means extensive rewriting of the UI.
Fools? How does one purchased a iPad for $699 in Ireland
I'm not sure how a fool does this but I googled; "buy iPad in Ireland" and got;
http://www.vikingdirect.ie/a/pb/Apple-iPad-mini-64GB-WiFi-Black-Slate/pr=QDN&id=6387489/;jsessionid=000020bI9veOK8Ylt_0AsIUrMOz:130mf1637
It was €438.00 -- you can get it for less or more depending on specs. Not sure what that translates to in $. Could be $50,000 with the exchange rate. /s
Ireland is one of the major places they assemble Apple devices for Europe -- or at least on paper for tax purposes ;-)
Never said they overcharge, just that it's cheaper to buy them In the US. Personally, I actually think all these gadgets are cheap, I used to pay 3000 dollars for a Sony Picturebook and that was before I was making real money. I'm not really sure what your trying to prove.
But that software isn't qualified for use in a tablet with a small screen, a stylus, and the not so hot typing covers. All that software needs to be requalified for that use, which means extensive rewriting of the UI.
That person was also mentioning "there's a lot of software for Windows." Right, but is that Windows RT, Win 8, Win 7, Win Mobile, WebOS, and does it allow for FINGERS once you click on some happy icon in that Metro interface designed for the XBox?
And I'm sure that Win 8 has a dictionary search, but someone has to have a working model to verify this. ;-)
Well, I'll tell you something. There's a big difference between giving something out for use with adults, or children, or even school age young adults, and high school or lower grade students. Students are the most difficult group of people to let use a product that has any chance of breaking in any way whatsoever!
There is a law in physics that states: If something is possible, it WILL happen. Same thing with students and anything at all. If it can go wrong, in any way, it will.
I know of cases where a students iPad ceased working. When asked about what they had done with it that was unusual, it was said that "well, maybe I left it on under my pillow when I went to bed—every night for a month, with a game that controlled the screen so that it never went off!
That isn't even the oddest thing that's happened.
I worked in a computer lab at a University once, and I passed by a lady who's baby was in at the next computer to her, feeding the Floppy Port a cookie because it seemed hungry.
And people thought Jobs was foolish for not adding a keyboard to the iPad. Heck -- it's in hospitals and schools for the very reason it IS NOT JUST LIKE A regular computer. The Fins need to learn that they don't want an all purpose device.
It's funny, on this site, when you say that Apple over charges for stuff outside the US there is every excuse in the book to explain why, but now they are happy to use it to say these paid too much compared to the US price, which excuse it is?
I'm sure there is pricey stuff out there. But at least Europeans don't have to panic to pay for school, healthcare and retirement like we do.
And you are for sure paying less than the poor Australians with all the kapitalists marking up every import!
I'm sure there is pricey stuff out there. But at least Europeans don't have to panic to pay for school, healthcare and retirement like we do.
And you are for sure paying less than the poor Australians with all the kapitalists marking up every import!
The POINT I'm making here is that there is a significant import tax Europeans pay -- but they are better off because it means lower trade deficits and the government redistributes that money to TAKE CARE OF PEOPLE. In the US you get a discount on everything, but you can't afford to eat.