Waterloo schools Promethean problems

A letter to Promethean Inc. from the Waterloo Community Schools Technology Coordinator includes information on the problems encountered with Promethean Boards and the additional comments shown below. The full text of the letter was obtained by the WCFCourier investigation of the Waterloo Community Schools purchase of hundreds of Promethean Boards.

...Additionally, we have not been pleased with the responsiveness Promethean technical support has provided. It is common for us to see substantial delays in receiving replacement parts. Obviously when a board is disabled awaiting a part, frustrations amongst our teachers and students ensue. Finally, we have been overwhelmed with issues related to Promethean softwareand firmware. It seems Promethean doesn’t have a robust testing process in place and simply continually releases critical bug-fix updates with no reliable release roadmap. We have wasted thousands of man hours updating software and device firmware to correct software bugs. Our efforts to leverage other technology to push updates to our computers have been thwarted by further bugs in not being able to install driver updates without first uninstalling the older driver. Obviously, the issues with activInspire, drivers, and firmware have further taxed our technology resources and caused additional frustrations amongst our users...