Just sayin'

Okay, I don't want to start a fight!

But I am going to draw an Apple / Microsoft comparison here so if you're the sort of person who's head is likely to explode as a result, taking this post down the same road as these guys, then look away now!

Microsoft have started producing some ads that compare Windows 8 tablets to the iPad.  Some of the ads are a little tongue-in-cheek, and some are bizarre (unless there's a cultural thing I don't get).  But this simple one actually cuts through to a couple of truths that speak to why we and our teachers couldn't bring ourselves to adopt the iPad as a platform.  There's more to it than just these few features (it's quite a complex issue actually).  But these are some of the things people struggle with initially when considering an iPad anywhere where they might need to do work, and these are some of the stumbling blocks our iPad trial kept on hitting.  So, here it is, make of it what you will:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/zgu9uo2UpPg]

... Oh, and there's a third side to this comparison, which is Android tablets.  That's another similarly complicated thing altogether.  All I'll say on that is, always remember it's at least a three-horse race! ;)

1:1 Program Device

http://youtu.be/BXb4m7ZeiTw

It's a little late but I can reveal that the device selected for our 1:1 program for this year is the HP Envy x2 (as shown above).  The device was clearly the most robust and solidly built of the three on our shortlist.  We're quite confident that it'll be the best way to get started with Windows 8, and Tablet devices.  The combination of sturdy and attractive design with long battery life and a few other bonus features meant the Envy was a great all-round performer with no considerable flaws.

As I mentioned, the unit sports some bonus features that helped convince us of it's worth.  The inclusion of an NFC chip opens up some interesting possibilities with tap-to-share and other things such as smart posters.  The use of Beats Audio in the device appeared to be a gimmick at first, but it certainly helped it punch out sound that was much more clear and audible than it's competitors.  The keyboard dock sports a full-size HDMI port, which is a welcome addition as well, micro ports are okay, but the heavy cable attached by such a small connector seems like it could break easily (and it's easier and cheaper to source a full-size cable).

So, we push on with our program, and thank HP and Anittel for supplying us with this cute little machine.

Battery tests and a battery of tests.

So, we're about done with testing all of our three candidate devices (see previous post), and it's been an interesting time to say the least.

Our testing consists of several parts.  There are several layers of technical evaluation these machines go through such as hardware performance, battery life and suitability for our imaging systems (Symantec Ghost currently, but increasingly this will be Microsoft SCCM).  Then there are the more subjective tests such as staff reaction and feedback and our own take on durability and functionality (such as connectivity options and other hardware features).  I can honestly say that I don't know of a school who puts their candidate machines through such a series of tests.  I also don't know how those schools manage to make informed decisions without it.

So, the results of our tests are below but before we move on to them, a quick word about the problems we've encountered with these devices so far.  Particularly the HP.
None of the three devices is without fault.  The biggest problems with the Samsung are the poor design of the mechanism that holds the tablet into the keyboard and it's video drivers.  Sometimes the Tablet comes loose from the keyboard when it's being transported and the video drivers seem to have real trouble playing back video with effects and transitions in Movie Maker.  The Acer had issues connecting to our wireless network and staying connected, and it's tablet flaps about in the keyboard dock like the sail of a Tall Ship.  The HP doesn't have any noticeable design or software faults (except for maybe being too top-heavy, but they all suffer from that), it's problems come from HP being HP.  After a lot of painful to and fro with our reseller HP have finally confirmed that they will be able to repair the device for the 3 years we'll be using it.  We asked all resellers to provide pricing on parts for out-of-warranty repairs, and only HP failed to do this.  They've now come through with this information but it was incredibly difficult to get a response out of them.  At one point the reseller was preparing to withdraw their quote because even they'd lost faith in HP.  The reason for this is probably because HP no longer have a representative in our state, instead they've split the role between three states.

Finally, I also should note that all three machines are very difficult from an SOE (image) deployment and maintenance standpoint.  They all use a 32-bit pure UEFI BIOS, which is inherently difficult to work with to boot off the network or manage the HDD partitions, but it's also quite new, meaning there's not a lot of good information out there on dealing with it.

Anyway, enough with the waffle.  Our test results for the three machines are below:

[caption id="attachment_297" align="aligncenter" width="604"] Not a lot of difference here, HP using slightly faster chips for their eMMC (not to be confused with a genuine SSD) drive. Nowhere near as fast as a 'proper' solid-state drive.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_295" align="aligncenter" width="604"] The light weight of the Acer seems to come at a cost of build-quality, and the surprise here is the Samsung, being the most 'plastic' of the lot but still the heaviest. The HP falls in the middle despite being the most solidly built.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_296" align="aligncenter" width="604"] This is definitely the strength of the Acer, it's near 20 hour battery is the best we've ever seen. It carries the problem of taking an eternity to fully charge though. We tend to find the 'real-world' battery life falls between the times in the two tests we've run here. The Samsung is the only one with a single battery, which let it down a little.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_294" align="aligncenter" width="604"] This test is quite subjective. The scores represent an interpretation of our reactions and those of other staff, and show the Acer's main failing being it's general appearance of cheapness vs the HP's more pleasing aesthetic. In my opinion, the only thing keeping the Samsung from falling further down the list was brand-recognition.[/caption]

The tests probably show the HP as the leader overall, not failing any test and excelling in the user-reaction portion of the tests.  I should point out that more tests were done on video-encoding speed, CPU benchmarking, software-imaging compatibility and wifi reception.  These results were either uninteresting or in the case of CPU and video-encoding, almost identical results.  We've not shown them here to keep the length of the article short(er).

Lies and Damn Lies Not Included

Recently, we've been gathering some information on the progress of our BYOD program, which reminded me of some research we did last year when planning for our 1:1 program.

We'd been keen to know what other schools were planning for their computing fleet, particularly given the recent changes to the I.T. landscape (I'm speaking specifically of the iPad, Android and touch-enabled devices).  Using connections I had with networks of I.T. Managers and E-Learning people I put together a survey.  The survey was constructed with the intention of finding out what the future computing device plans were for schools in general.  It received over 100 replies and helped dispel a few myths that were emanating throughout our College and other's.  Below are the pretty graphical results of that survey, with my take on what the statistics (lies, damn lies not included) mean.  I figure 15 years experience with Education I.T. puts me in a good place to interpret the responses:

[caption id="attachment_267" align="aligncenter" width="604"] This represents the way things are now. The Windows platform accounts for the large majority, but that’s less than the 90% or so it accounts for outside of education.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_268" align="aligncenter" width="549"] Schools were asked whether they intended to change from their answer in the previous question. Interestingly, over half of schools have no plans to move away from what they’re doing now.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_269" align="aligncenter" width="547"] Here we see what those changing are switching to. Investigating multiple platforms or just Windows 8 seems to be the theme. Note the interest in BYOD.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_270" align="aligncenter" width="548"] This essentially combines those two situations in the previous graph.  It shows all responses that indicate a change to one platform, or multiple including that platform. Note again, the BYOD.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_271" align="aligncenter" width="604"] Most of the schools changing are doing it on what they consider to be a large scale, few seem to be small-scale changes.  This gives the data on proposed changes more credibility.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_273" align="aligncenter" width="545"] This shows which grade-groups schools are targeting with the change in their fleet.
Very few primary-only schools responded, so they aren’t well represented here.
This probably indicates that most schools are changing school-wide (note middle-school grades weren't an option, this may have yielded more information).[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_274" align="aligncenter" width="546"] No surprises here, this may just mimic the wider installed base of systems. It may also indicate those involved in laptop computing on more mature platforms seeing little need to change.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_266" align="aligncenter" width="545"] NSW respondents number the highest, with Tasmania well represented.
Many thanks to the TISIT and MITIE forums for providing the responses.[/caption]

To sum up.  The information gathered shows few schools diverging massively from what they were doing before.  This is apparent when you take into account that most moving to Windows 8 are probably using a previous Windows already, which is more of a logical upgrade path than a sweeping change.  Schools changing to iOS aren't nearly as widespread as some may have thought and poor old Linux an Android lag behind the rest.  With respect to the latter, that story is far from over, particularly if Google can sort out a few interoperability issues.  Time will tell.

I hope you found this as interesting as I did.

Too big for your boots!

Okay, so Microsoft produced a great product in Windows 7, and a good, but rough product with Windows 8. Windows 8 feels like early Windows XP in some ways, given a few updates to the OS, it could be great.  In fact if you factor in what they're trying to achieve with Win 8, it's pretty darn good.  Nobody else has even come close to being able to unify a desktop and mobile OS yet.

Anyway, so one of the quirks of Windows 8 is the App Store, which bears a few problems that stem from Microsoft's apparent need to be more 'Apple-like' (for reasons known only to them). The Apple App Store model is primarily an online retail beast, designed to sell software to individuals, rather than entities like corporations so it baffles me when I try to understand why Microsoft have decided to replicate that at the expense of the large installations (like businesses and schools, for example) that they've gone to great lengths to help over the years.
One might think that if your modus operandi was to develop software with these organisations in mind that you might build in some features appropriate to them. Failing that, one might think that you'd at least try not to make it IMPOSSIBLE to use!

If you're not following, what I'm referring to is the complete inability to purchase apps from the app store on any basis other than a purely individual one. Something that schools in particular, require. Currently the only way to buy an app in the Windows Store is to use a credit card or Paypal. So if you're a teacher who's identified a paid app you'd like your students to use, you might find that few of your cohort of 12 year-olds have their AmEx handy!
Microsoft have in their organisation a division (business unit, or whatever they call them) called Volume Licensing whose concern is to help people purchase, access and deploy their software en masse.  So you could be forgiven for thinking that maybe, if you were setting up a store to sell software (en masse), you might include the expertise of this division.
But if you did think that you'd be wrong, because if you're a business, school or some other group and you want to buy an app for all in your organisation you have absolutely no way of doing so. None. I know you can side-load apps from the store, but only if the app developer creates a specific type of package and sells it to you using some method other than the store. I somehow don't think that makers of simple educational apps are going to be bothered with doing that.

Have Microsoft thought about what this does to their App ecosystem at all I wonder? If I put myself in the shoes of a developer of a popular Windows 8 Store App targeted at education I have two choices when putting my app in the store. I can a) release it for free, taking the kudos and no money, or b) put it up as a paid app that students can't buy, have no-one download it and still not make any money.
Forget distributing it as an appx package, no one is going to do that apart from the big software houses, and why should they have to? Have Apple beaten Microsoft at their own game by having a Volume Licensing scheme for their own apps?

In trying to research this problem we've spoken to Microsoft employees at the App Store, and Volume Licensing (two divisions which in true MS style, don't appear to talk to each other). Our question to the app store about this problem was met with a bemused "we'd never thought of that" response. Moreover, the person at the App Store helpfully suggested that a way to purchase apps for a group of students might be to purchase them all under one account, then you can just install a copy on each machine from that account. Great, until we mentioned the device-limit of 5 installs per app (yes, believe it or not we had to tell them about their own limit). So the app store people failed us, and the volume licensing people told us it wasn't their problem.

It turns out there might be a solution on the horizon, albeit a bad one. But frustratingly the people at the app store didn't know that literally days after asking them the question "can we give students some sort of voucher to buy their apps with" and being told "no", that we soon will be able to. Pending reliability of The Verge and its sources, we've discovered there will be a voucher available soon that works across all Microsoft stores that we can give to kids to buy apps. It's still not the most elegant solution, but at least it's something (albeit essentially where the Apple store was at 3 years ago).

[caption id="attachment_158" align="aligncenter" width="423"] Real or fantasy? The unconfirmed Microsoft giftcard, according to The Verge.[/caption]

So, I'll finish this off by inviting Apple and Google fanbois a rare opportunity. I know you love to laugh at Microsoft when you get the chance, so pull up a seat and poke some fun at the Redmond clowns with me over this insulting oversight.

UPDATE: - No more news on the gift-card concept.  Either it's planned for release alongside Windows 8.1 or The Verge were merely peddling their usual quality of rumour.

UPDATE 2: - This feature of Microsoft SCCM 2012 SP1 looks quite promising.  No indication that it can handle paid apps at this stage but I'd bet that's in the works.

 

And then there were three.

Okay, so let's start by skipping to the end.  We have our quotes in for the Year 7 1:1 program devices and the three candidate machines are:

The Samsung Ativ Smart PC 500t

[caption id="attachment_287" align="aligncenter" width="543"] A tablet that unlike the others features an active stylus. It's the best equipped with connectivity options. It's also the same as the machine I've been using to test this form-factor and the hardware platform in general.[/caption]

The Acer Iconia w510

[caption id="attachment_285" align="aligncenter" width="543"] The cheap and cheerful one in the bunch. At first it seems like a slightly tacky unit but as soon as you witness the insanely good battery life it becomes apparent that this unit is a about function over form.[/caption]

The HP Envy x2

[caption id="attachment_286" align="aligncenter" width="522"] The pretty-boy of the bunch. If the Acer or the Samsung are function first, this one is probably form first, but it shouldn't be assumed that it's build quality is any less because of it. First impressions are that HP have the most robust contender.[/caption]

 

Choosing between these three will be a difficult process.  Presumably, it'll be more about the form, robustness and connectivity than it will the performance.  All three machines are based on the Intel Atom platform, which is quite tightly controlled specification wise.  The similarity is likely due to the price cap we'd been given for the program.  An Intel Core i series chip would've been too expensive, and that only leaves ARM-based hardware or the Atom, and ARM would mean running Windows RT, which we've no interest in.  The other reason resellers have picked the Atom platform is for its exceptional battery life.  All three tablets boast 10+ hours on battery (and many times more in sleep mode).  The Atoms also have the 'connected standby' feature, which is particularly interesting, plus allow for the lightest ant thinnest designs of any chipset out there.

We received quotes from seven resellers, two of which failed to submit a quote and another two submitted quotes for machines that didn't meet our specifications.  In both cases the sub-spec hardware was the Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2, another Atom tablet, which lacked a suitable pointing device in its Bluetooth keyboard and only had one USB port.

So, we have three to choose from.  It'll be interesting to see how they stack up, particularly from the teachers' point of view.

Bring it!

So, we've had our BYOD program running for a couple of months now, and I recently felt it was time turn our attention back to it, and it's users.  We firstly needed to catch up and fix a few things we'd promised to do for the students, and secondly we needed an update from them and their teachers on how it's going overall.

In our "setup sessions" (run at the start of the year to get BYO students connected) we alluded to a few more services we'll be putting at their disposal, and that we'll be keeping them informed with some help and documentation.

An example of such a service is the Terminal Server we've recently given the students access to.  The idea here is to allow them to use software and network services they can't get at from their own computer.  For example, some students have a Mac, but some subjects use Windows packages that don't have a Mac alternative.  The Mac users can use the Remote Desktop client for Mac to access those incompatible programs.  Another advantage provided by the Terminal Server is access to a standard Windows print environment.  The students currently access printers from our Papercut installation, they upload a document to a web-interface and it's printed for them.  It works well, but doesn't allow them to access the more advanced printer features provided by the native driver.  This means they can't select double-sided as an option, select different weight or size of paper, or easily print only a selection of pages from a document.  By logging on to the Terminal Server  they get access to all the features supported by the printer.
The Terminal Server is a good solution to these problems, but it's a little more difficult than I'd like.  A serious VDI solution is definitely the best way to go here, but that sort of thing is far too pricey at the moment, sadly.  If the price comes down we'll be very keen to move to something like that though.

When we set our BYOD students up at the beginning of the year we asked them to keep an eye on their e-mail for new developments, and we've made use of that several times now.  Recently we've started sending out a bit more documentation.  How to access the Terminal Server mentioned above was one example, but we've also followed up on our setup sessions with reference documentation on the topics we covered.
We're not content to stop there though, while we've got an audience we figure it's best to offer them some help and tips where we can.  So, given the surprising number of Windows 8 PC's we've seen students using, we emailed them a cheat-sheet of Windows 8 shortcut keys.  Many students have a non-touch Windows 8 computer, which isn't the ideal device for that OS, but it can be much better if you know the keyboard shortcuts.  We've also mailed out little helpers for configuring Internet Explorer to work best on our LAN and a few other little tips too.

I think all of this is very important, so that the students know they're not being left to their own devices (excuse the pun).  We need to convey that they're a welcome guest on our network, and that they can still expect a level of service from the I.T. Department.  And in speaking to teachers and students, they certainly seem happy enough with everything so far.  There's probably not enough access to power for charging, but the feeling was generally positive.  I'd like to get a more solid measurement of that feeling sometime, so we might look into that later in the year.  But for now, all seems well.