Weird Week Of Newly Learnt Facts about large IT Companies.

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Tockly

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#1254243 9-Mar-2015 18:19

Fact 5 - The Education Dept in its rush to implement the New Learning Environment, is being ably assisted by Apple to get iPads into the hands of the children for them to do their homework. Unfortunately it seems that many schools are using Sum dog and a range of similar sites which require Flash. Pity the iPads don't do flash.

Have to disagree with this. Just about every school I have had dealings with are pushing ChromeBooks. They have found iPads to be far to limiting. Not just that they don't run flash, but more that half the screen disappears when you want to type something.

The school that I am on the board of have a number of iPads, but when asked for our BYOD classes we recommended against them. We have ended up using the iPads for the younger children, before they move up onto ChromeBooks or laptops.

Also schools get a very small discount on Apple products, but not enough to sway any decision to purchase equipment in their favour. We get the same discount, if not more, from other suppliers.

alasta

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#1254298 9-Mar-2015 19:21

MadEngineer: yeah there's no longer any need for iTunes unless you're syncing offline music, don't trust cloud services or fixing a failed iOS update

I would love to ditch iTunes but unfortunately I need it to transfer photos from my Aperture library onto my iPad. Hopefully the new Photos apps will allow cloud syncing of this content.

alasta

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#1262409 19-Mar-2015 13:52

Just as a follow up for those wondering about alternatives to Excel/Access;

Someone last week suggested that I try something called Tableau. I've been playing around with the trial version this week and whilst it's early days I'd have to say that it looks promising. It connects directly to a range of different data sources and allows a lot of flexibility to manipulate data and produce attractive visual presentations with minimal maintenance. It also seems stable from what I've seen so far.

nunz

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#1262438 19-Mar-2015 14:17

Athlonite:
wasabi2k: I too am interested as to what you use instead of excel.

here take your pick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spreadsheet_software

We lets knock out theonline sheets for starters - crippleware at best.

Forget the specialist sheets - we are talking aobut excel for business here.

Forget linux sheets - we are talking aoubt business here who is still 90% windows based.

Forget aobut stuff that hasn't been developered in years ie Lotus / IMB.

That pretty much leaves Excel and OpenOffice (or variants there of).

Excels charting capabilities, Pivotsheet capabilities, formulae lists for accounting and statistical purposes, formatting and interoperability with Word, OLE, COM, ODBC, not to mention VBA etc leave sit miles ahead.

and that dear readers is from someone who is regularly accused of being anti Microsoft.

nunz

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#1262439 19-Mar-2015 14:18

MadEngineer: That's a list, not what he uses.

Also, flash is dead. Shame on those that still use it.

Really ? what's replaced it? cant be HTML5 as that's still very very buggy and non-backwards complient. I see more and more requirements for Silverlight and a few other alternatives but what has taken over from Flash?

nunz

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#1262447 19-Mar-2015 14:22

MadEngineer: yeah there's no longer any need for iTunes unless you're syncing offline music, don't trust cloud services or fixing a failed iOS update

Resetting iPhones?
Avoiding have to download the same 1.5GB update for multiple phones
Testing why in hades your apple ID wont work

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nunz

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#1262451 19-Mar-2015 14:24

rhy7s:
nunz:

Fact 6 - If you rebuild a PC with Windows XP, (yes there are good reasons to do so sometimes), you cannot get it onto the internet to download updates, the latest version of internet explorer or to download firefox, chrome, flash and a raft of other items needed to get it updated and working on the internet. All those sites now use https, of a type not supported by WinXP, SP1 or possibly SP2.

You could have an up to date, as far as that can be said for XP, installation disc by slipstreaming SP3 and an update pack. You could also use VLK to OEM to use one disc/image and set it up for the correct OEM license post-install.

its the ability to upgrade or download Web browsers. Cant download IE to update it without updating it first. Cant download Firefox or chrome, without downloading them first.

The Your browser needs updating message, go here opps we didn't really think that one through syndrome is at play.

nunz

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#1262466 19-Mar-2015 14:38

Tockly:

Fact 5 - The Education Dept in its rush to implement the New Learning Environment, is being ably assisted by Apple to get iPads into the hands of the children for them to do their homework. Unfortunately it seems that many schools are using Sum dog and a range of similar sites which require Flash. Pity the iPads don't do flash.

Have to disagree with this. Just about every school I have had dealings with are pushing ChromeBooks. They have found iPads to be far to limiting. Not just that they don't run flash, but more that half the screen disappears when you want to type something.

The school that I am on the board of have a number of iPads, but when asked for our BYOD classes we recommended against them. We have ended up using the iPads for the younger children, before they move up onto ChromeBooks or laptops.

Also schools get a very small discount on Apple products, but not enough to sway any decision to purchase equipment in their favour. We get the same discount, if not more, from other suppliers.

I had a Chrome book then realised exactly how crippled it is. it is just a screen to log onto Google and Google apps.

I couldn't ssh with it, use an app to download mail without running it through gmail, run any software, use a decent word processor or spreadhseet (googles crippleware doesn't count). etc etc. Printing support failed on three printers (all less than 3 years old), it has no delete button, cant refresh a webpage as F5 is gone - along with all other other function keys, ....

I am highly against children being sold to the worlds largest advertiser - and chrome books in school is another way of making that happen. I did love the 9 second start up and long battery life, it felt nice, was easy to use but as a tool to work with - not on your life.
I see it as another gimmick like the first netbook / 8-10'' laptops that came out. I tried working with it for a month, gave it a fair trial and gave up. Its another form of dumbed down crippleware - just like most of the cloud systems being used.

No mindmaps, mockups, pivot tables, decent charting, ssh / putty / winscp / thirdparty email, ERP / DTD type software, no Dev IDEs worth mentioning, no decent tools for versioning, no logmein, no cubby, etc etc etc.
Nice to have for quick typing, quick web lookups but functionally useless for anything else. They are toys - eCrayons for kids and this who want to play.

IMHO schools should be running things like OwnCloud inside schools. allow the students to help manage it, teach them about how to be sys admins, teach them how to set up networks, servers, file systems, ACLs, teach them to be responsible, give them truckloads of data space, show them how to backup and run things - then I will believe there is some sense to IT education in Schools. Teach them to actually search properly, filter results, source multiple sources, use a word processor, use a spreadsheet, touch type, etc etc - useful skills. Dont just put them on games - even in the name of education - it is breeding a generation of users with no skills to be creators and inventors. iPads, Chromebooks are play toys - not work machines. Overseas businesses are realising they have been sold a crock by thinking they can use tablets for work. They cant. They are one trick wonders. social media portals, play toys and entertainment portals. not much else.

To properly teach them let them loose with laptops, Pcs. Let them have Windows , Apple OS, Linux, and others where they aren't tied to one vendor. whooops </rant>

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