Category Archives: Business Division

The next Jobs, Gates, Hewlett or Packard?

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We all know that engineers like to take things apart to see how they work and learn most when putting them back together. The inquiring minds of children are really no different.

So when several old PCs were donated to West Hill Park School, head of IT John Adam, saw it as the perfect opportunity to develop real life skills for his students. He decided to run a project whereby a number of year 8 pupils would focus on dismantling and re-building the machines, and bring them up-to-date.

 

 

Letting Imaginations Run Riot.

Due to the popularity of the scheme, Mr Adam developed the idea further still. The students chose their own components; costed them out on a spreadsheet; purchased them from the Novatech website and built the computers at school before taking them home. The children’s enthusiasm and creativity was evident from the garish and fantastical selection of colours, neon lights and outlandish designs. However the technical quality of the machines was not in doubt and the schools’ DT department even commissioned the pupils to build a bespoke PC for their classroom too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Driven by the students.

The project has now become a permanent part of the IT curriculum at West Hill Park and they are considering extending it to other year groups due to the level of interest.

John Adam said, “The success of this project has not only been driven by the students’ predictable enthusiasm for building their own computers, but also by their appetite to learn how the components work on a deeper level”.

Who knows with this level of enthusiasm for IT at such a young age West Hill Park School could even give us the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates!

 

 

 

 

Intel Promise To Keep You Going Faster For Longer

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Two things which bother laptop computer users more than anything else are speed and battery life. If you want your laptop to last a whole hour on one charge you’ll have to adjust your settings to the lowest power usage modes meaning video and music are virtually unwatch/listenable and any programmes you have which are clunky when connected to the mains will grind more painfully than sand in your ice cream. If you bought a laptop you probably got it so that you could compute on the move then found that was fine for a few minutes then had to carry around a useless block of technology until you could find another power outlet. Funny, they never told you that in the adverts.

But perhaps all that’s coming to an end. Cloud computing’s supposed to be a great power saver as you’re not running any more than one programme but I’m not going to talk about that today. I wanted to talk about the new processors that Intel is developing with their partners over at Acer, Samsung, Lenovo and Asutek.

Intel Logo

Intel forecast that by December this year they should be producing laptops with fast, battery saving processors which will mean that their laptops can run all day on a single charge without compromising speed or efficiency.

Navin Shenoy, VP and GM for Intel Asia Pacific said that: “We’ve briefed just about everybody in that category of original equipment manufacturing and original design manufacturing. We want to reinvent the PC.”

Shenoy asserts that the partners that they‘ve hooked up with will produce an “incredibly sleek, powerful notebook” that can be always on.

As far as design goes, they are promising ‘sliders’ where sections of the machine itself slide to reveal the keyboard or ‘convertibles’ where the screen flips open and rotates so that it can be used as a normal laptop or tablet, depending on the user’s needs.

Intel say the laptops featuring their latest processors will be available between Christmas this year or 2013 and that as well as being thinner and faster, their production methods should be quicker too, meaning that they should be cheaper than 1st gen new tech usually is upon initial release.

 

Novatech launches specialist education division

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Award-winning, Hampshire IT company Novatech, has launched a dedicated education division, and showcased the latest in specialist school technology at an event for leadership teams in Winchester on Wednesday 1st December.  Despite the uncertainty facing schools about future budgets, the company believes that the time is right to offer its considerable expertise to the education sector.

Head of Novatech Education, James Durrant says, “Novatech has been working with schools for over twenty years and we are ideally positioned to use the specialist knowledge that our team has accumulated to help schools get the most out of constrained budgets.

In some ways, the economic climate has given school leaders the chance to look at new ways to buy and support their ICT infrastructure; from the kind of hardware students and staff use, to out-sourcing the management of the networks and servers that link it all together. The government has made it clear that schools need to innovate rather than just cutting essential equipment.”

The event on Wednesday showed that there is now a wealth of technology available that not only can simplify schools’ ICT operations, reducing installation and running costs but also ensuring that both students and teachers get the best out of state-of-the-art systems.

The event featured seminars from major technology companies including Intel, interactive whiteboard manufacturer Smart, wireless network specialists Meru, Hampshire Council’s Hosted Schools Service and Novatech themselves.

The advent of developments like touch-screen tablets and more powerful wifi networks are radically changing teaching and learning, but technology in the classroom is only half the story.  Novatech are also working with other providers to change the way that schools manage their ICT.

James Durrant added “So much of a school’s ICT budget is consumed on the nuts and bolts that link the administration and the pupils, so we now aim to offer a full range of services where we take care of, and support, a school’s technology, from pupils’ laptops to the new generation of virtualized servers that can radically reduce running costs.”

Novatech have recently added to their impressive list of accolades, by winning another prestigious award, The E-learning Foundation’s ‘Most Supportive Supplier’. The Foundation’s ‘Home Access Awards’ 2010 recognise those schools that demonstrate excellence in the implementation and development of “Home Access” initiatives. These awards are open to all schools across the country who have instigated successful e-learning projects to provide children with home access to technology for their studies.

Novatech’s Top Tips to saving money on ICT for schools.

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Novatech’s Top Tips to saving money on ICT for schools.

1 Strategy & Planning

Make a detailed plan and calendar of what equipment you will need and when. Most schools refresh a lot of equipment every three years, but this is not always the most cost-effective use of budgets– savings can be negotiated with suppliers if you can show them a long-term purchasing plan.

2 Know the real cost

The price of the actual hardware is only part of the cost.  What does each machine cost in power use, extended warranties, support, external and internal maintenance, staff wages and upgrades?  Cheap products can be more expensive when factoring all the other areas.

3 Buy direct & buy local

Go direct to a UK manufacturer who will always be able to offer bigger discounts and better warranties and support than any middle men or purchasing contractor.  Most are members of approved purchasing frameworks and their components are identical to big brand name suppliers’.  You’re far more important to a local company than a foreign giant so they will go to greater lengths to look after you.

4 Question why you use a middleman

What do you really get from a specialist purchasing company and do the perceived discounts really add up as a long-term advantage? Middle men work on small margins and are unlikely to be able to offer the comprehensive and reliable support of a UK manufacturer.

5 Invest in infrastructure

The expert consensus is that wifi is the future and your networks will need to be strong to cope with so many mobile devices.  A robust system that can handle multiple logons and heavy video-streaming loads is a must. This does open opportunities to reduce cabling and other hardware costs with parental contributions and grants for ‘a device for every child’ projects.

6 Finance & leasing

Why buy machines outright? Schools have perfect credit rating and huge savings can be made by leasing or even renting hardware.  Manufacturers like Novatech now offer machines on a monthly payment plan that includes comprehensive warranties and support – Hardware can be factored as a monthly cost rather than a capital cost.

7 Collaborative and Federation buying

Buying in bulk increases discounts and by teaming up with other schools in clusters, as a group of secondary feeder schools or as informal federations gives radically increased purchasing power.  If you’re not sure who you could team with, use online forums – they don’t have to be local.

8 Refresh

You don’t buy a new car if all it needs is an oil change and new brake pads. Think the same with PCs.  Would a new graphics card or motherboard extend the useful life of your hardware?

9 Bespoke machines

Think what the machines will be used for – do all your machines need huge memory space, high-def screens and high-powered graphics cards?  Manufacturers like Novatech can build bespoke machines that cut out unnecessary components to reduce unit cost.

10 Harness technology changes

The new generation of hardware has energy reduction technologies that can reduce power consumption by up to a third.  Utilise energy saving software to ensure idle machines are powered down automatically and laptop charging trolleys don’t run unnecessarily.

www.novatecheducation.co.uk

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