After the success of the Surface Pro series, Microsoft have developed their first ever laptop, the Surface Book. When I received the email from Microsoft asking me to review a Surface Book, the excitement was a bit like the one of a child on Christmas eve! Since the Surface Book was released I had been eager to get my hands on one. When agreeing to trial a Surface Book I was given the opportunity to trial one for 4 weeks;…
When your school spends a lot of money on mobile technology in the classroom what is your worse fear? The device breaking from either a student dropping it or it being knocked off a desk. As a teacher you are always worried about students taking care when using a device; when a student suddenly stands up and walks around the classroom with one, you find yourself nervously telling the student to sit down with it. I often visit schools and…
When working in schools I’m always asked the question “We want to buy some new devices for our students but what should we get?” Before I even consider answering that question I ask how much they would like to spend and what they want that device to do. Going back a few years, this would have been a major problem because schools didn’t have many options as to what they purchased in the way of hardware. They could either buy…
I recently had this blog post featured on Microsoft UK School Blogs. I have been a keen user of a Microsoft Surface for a while and I think they are great devices. The style and design are far superior to its competitors and Microsoft keeps improving the Surface with every release. It is only very recently that I have realised how good the Surface Pen is. On my Surface Pro, I used the pen a handful of times but it was…
Today I was able to get my hands on a new Linx 1010 thanks to Simon de Senlis Primary School. This is a 10″ tablet, which is the company’s second release. The first edition of the Linx 10 seemed like a great tablet with great specs. The thing that let it down was the origami keyboard design and the cheap feel of it’s case. The Device: So have they overcome this and made the Linx 1010 better than its predecessor?…
Ultra-thin, meticulously crafted, with incredible screen resolution. This is the ultimate laptop. The quote above is taken from Microsoft’s website and as you can see they are calling it the ‘Ultimate Laptop’. But is it really as good as they say? On the 9th October, I was invited to London for Microsoft’s #RedefineLearn conference. It was here that I was shown just how good Microsoft are saying the Surface Book will be. I was privileged by seeing the only Surface…
Today Apple announced the release of the iPad Pro and people are already saying its a competitor for the Surface Pro 3. The specs of the new iPad Pro do sound good but why would you want an iPad that big and at that price. Apple now do give you the option of using a stylus and a keyboard so you could become more productive using one. The biggest flaw for me is that its still running an iOS. For…
Had to buy it! A couple of weeks ago I was told about an offer that the Microsoft store had. They were selling a HP Stream 7″ tablet for £49.99. I couldn’t miss out on this so had to purchase one my self. Bing Edition: The tablet comes with Windows 8.1 Bing edition. Some people might wonder what the Bing edition of Windows 8.1 is? Well there is no real difference between the core version of Windows 8.1 and the…
Last week I was on an installation job where I was installing a Microsoft server 2012 R2 along with 25 Lenovo Yoga 11’s. Prior to the school buying these Yoga 11’s I was a bit unsure if the 11″ screen would be big enough. Once I opened up one of the boxes and got my hands on one I saw that the screen was a good size and should be perfect for the schools needs. They seemed very hard wearing…