In my attempts to stay on top of the current issues facing our public school systems I have found myself reading many articles that are focused on a similar theme, if we don’t reform our teaching instruction, the U.S. will fail. The reports, articles and firsthand accounts all speak to the need to help students garner the skills that they will need to enable them to remain competitive in a 21st-century workplace.

 

Michael King, vice president of IBM’s global education industry, states that in order to accomplish true individualized learning, schools have to move beyond textbooks… “and the PC as it stands today is the wrong model for that”. “King points to the complexity of having thousands of computers throughout a school district. Between administering patches and software upgrades, implementing security updates, manually installing new applications, and simply managing the upkeep of those computers, the IT staff hours can mount sky high.” One possible solution is software virtualization and virtual desktops.

 

Having recently received an Intuos 3 Tablet for my birthday, installing it and Corel Painter Essentials 4 on my laptop, and then having to spend upwards to 16 hours; installing service packs, upgrading drivers, uninstalling and reinstalling software, upgrading software, doubling the amount of RAM on my laptop, only to continue to have difficulties opening and using some of my software programs (Grrrrrr Vista!); I completely understand where King is coming from!

 

To read more about software virtualization and virtual desktops the article mentioned above can be found at: http://www.eschoolnews.com/media/files/May08SprRpt.pdf

 

And if anyone has some insight as to why I may be having problems running Corel Painter Essentials 4, on a 2 gig laptop, running Vista Home Premium, please drop me a line!

Updated 09/17/08 – Someone from Corel – PR – contacted me to say that someone else would contact me with the contact information of a technical person who could help me with this problem. While I never did hear from that someone else with the contact information for the technical person I did, however, manage to fix the problem.

Given that I: updated all my drivers and software, added additional RAM, cleaned my disks and registry, defragged my computer, and followed the advice of a poster in a forum discussing similar issues, I can’t say for sure how I solved the problem. It only took 24 hours or so but my computer is running better than ever and Corel opens in 10 seconds versus the 5 minutes it took to start up previously.  Now imagine being the only technology support person in a school with hundreds of computers to manage. YIKES!