back to article PC addict RM finally quits its building habit, plans to axe 300 jobs

Under-fire education tech specialist RM has finally admitted what the rest of the industry already knew: that it can't make money building PCs and will instead concentrate on developing software and services. It has been a rocky three years for RM, starting with the government's gradual closure of the Building Schools for the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'Education Specialist'?

    Sorry, reg, you seem to have spelt 'extortion' with a 'D' there...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Amazing RM has continued in the hardware business as long as it has considering the generations of politicians and bankers telling us we aren't supposed to make tangible artefacts in the UK.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      RM might have made the odd good PC back in 1987 but recently their products have mainly been rebadged from the usual far Eastern OEMs. The hillarious one was their take in the eePC. Stick an RM sticker over ASUS, stick some RM software on it and stick 50%+ on the price

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "RM might have made the odd good PC back in 1987"

        Yeh, like the expensive 186 based PC they produced when everyone else was making cheaper 286's that actually worked.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          I remember those. We had a row in the back of the maths class for no apparent reason (this was in the late 90s)

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Don't knock those 186 machines, they let us play PC Elite at school with only one legit copy. The copy protection didn't work and it always asked you the same question... The answer was "incoming" IIRC.

          1. stucs201

            re:186 machines

            Are we talking about the Nimbus here? That wasn't even properly IBM compatible, though there was an emulator that worked for some games.

            For some reason my school used to hide the 5.25" floppy drive that I needed to read disks from my 1512 at home (a problem with became much less of an issue when I got a 3.5" drive at home)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe they will sort out Classroom Connect to actually work now?

    Great in a virtual lab, awful in practice.

    Stopping building RM One's will now at least mean schools can *possibly* start to purchase better / cheaper machines. Sure it wont work out that way though, never seems to.

    Awful company through and through.

    Anon, coz, u know...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The schools I used to work with (Local Authority in Wales) stuck with Dell/HP or similar for PCs and used MS Server and Open source as needed.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Awful company through and through."

      In their defence, school IT is very, very hard to do well. I implemented a medium sized school once and tried to apply best practices, and gradually removed every single one for good reasons as RM explained their experience. School IT is hard because:

      1. Children are evil and will destroy/steal/hack whatever you do without serious consequences for them.

      2. Children keep the IT staff busy by "forgetting" passwords or locking accounts to get out of class.

      3. IT staff consists of 2 people to cover a 2000 user network.

      4. Those 2 poor souls are not paid very much.

      5. There is a surprisingly low budget for kit.

      6. The IT people don't choose what that budget is spent on.

      7. Art teachers like Macs. Art is trendy so they are given loads of Macs.

      8. Head teachers like to look trendy. Tablets are trendy. They buy tablets.

      9. Teachers are told they must "use IT in the classroom". Even home ec. Even in the cookery class :o\

      10. Teachers need to be able to stop kids using the computer and concentrate. A whole room at a time.

      11. Half the budget is blown replacing money and registers with child scanning/fingerprint/barcode/NFC to stop bullying and protect the children.

      12. Children are evil...

      I don't work in a school and I don't work at RM but I have a lot of respect for both considering what they have to work with. I'm not aware of a better system than what RM do (happy to hear examples) despite the obvious "quirks"

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Take it from someone who used to work at RM, you should NEVER feel sorry for them.

        Ive worked in schools with RM and in schools that are supported through a 3rd party, who handle corporate IT.

        You can do things properly, while i agree all of your points are valid, there are ways round all of them.

        Its just as much about having the senior leadership team on board as the staff and the kids.

        Children arent evil, some act up, but you deal with those seperately, you dont tarnish the rest!

        RM are solely in business to make money of school contracts, at no point is there service looking out for anyone but them. They are in a position to do great things, but they dont, In fact they actively discourage being helpful, and will push you down the mine shaft and then charge you to help you out, after a new 5 year contract has been signed of course.

        School IT doesnt have to be hard, it just needs planning more than your average SMB network cause as you say, if you leave a door open, they will walk through it.

        Case in point, instead of fix the inherant security problems with their RM Tutor (Net Support originally) software they just hire contractors to remove the step by step "hacking rm tutor" and "hacking CC4" videos off youtube. Great move guys.

        Or maybe when RM wanted to charge £100 per iPad to put them onto the network (without support) after school got a better price from Apple direct. Crooks.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe they could learn something from the Raspberry Pi back-to-basics approach

    And start knocking out 480Zs again...

    1. GlenP Silver badge

      Re: Maybe they could learn something from the Raspberry Pi back-to-basics approach

      480Z - we'll have none of that new-fangled stuff. What was wrong with the 380Z?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What was wrong with the 380Z?

        You can't get the keyboards any more. What do you think they were culling all those badgers with?

      2. Peter Mount

        Re: Maybe they could learn something from the Raspberry Pi back-to-basics approach

        380Z? what was wrong with the 380? (if you're wondering it was White & Blue rather than the Black case of the 380Z. That and it was cassette only.)

        I've not powered up my old 380 in years, think it just needed a couple of wires resoldering but a good machine

    2. deshepherd

      Re: Maybe they could learn something from the Raspberry Pi back-to-basics approach

      480Z? Back to basics would be 280Z's with the 380Z luxury option reserved for those who wanted a floppy disk drive!

      Anyway, I can see I'm now doomed to an afternoon of reminiscing to myself of the good old days when we programmed in assembler and 12kB program was massive!

      1. Linker3000

        Re: Maybe they could learn something from the Raspberry Pi back-to-basics approach

        Luxury!

        I started off in secondary school with a Commodore Pet 3016

        1. Steve Todd

          Re: Maybe they could learn something from the Raspberry Pi back-to-basics approach

          A 16k 3000 series PET? Luxury! We had a 4K 2000 series, complete with calculator keyboard and cassette drive nailed into the case (and hence no space for a full keyboard). You tell that to young people of today and they won't believe you.

          1. Quentin North

            Re: Maybe they could learn something from the Raspberry Pi back-to-basics approach

            You had a Pet 2001?! Such luxury, I had an ICL 1904 and punch cards when I was at school. It used to take a week to get back a printout that said "Syntax error in line 10"

            1. jonathanb Silver badge

              Re: Maybe they could learn something from the Raspberry Pi back-to-basics approach

              I was quite happy with the BBC Masters (and Acorn Electon at home) back in the days.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is good news for schools

    see title

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Schools can do better

    Starting by telling anyone claiming to be an education IT specialist to sod off. This has been true as long as PCs and networking kit have been commodities. Any IT outfit capable of providing value to SMEs should be able to do the same for schools. The software might sometimes be different, but the infrastructure is fundamentally the same.

    1. Just_this_guy

      Re: Schools can do better

      Not entirely. Student-facing kit is subject to constant low-level vandalism, just as rocks are subject to erosion. RM's toughened laptops were designed with that in mind, though still not perfect. (Kids love to remove the keys from laptop keyboards, and the more creative vandals will rearrange them to spell out profanities.)

      A simple example of a useful innovation that an education specialist could supply (though no one seems to): moulded legs on desktop keyboards. Kids break the legs off. Dunno why, never happens to me; but simply moulding them on instead of making them as fragile moving parts would result in far less uncomfortably flattened keyboards in the nation's classrooms, at the cost merely of slightly thicker packaging.

      A more significant example is that in schools a thousand logons might happen simultaneously, several times each day, and the back-end needs to be designed to support this. Any good supplier can do this, of course, but specialist knowledge of school environments is important. (I can't speak as to whether RM displayed this knowledge or used it well...)

      1. Just_this_guy
        Facepalm

        Re: Schools can do better

        "far less uncomfortably flattened keyboards"

        Of course I meant far FEWER...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Schools can do better

          There's a difference between an "Educational IT Specialist" and "Someone who specialises in educational IT".

          Your average Ed IT 'Specialist' will:

          Roll up with a load of brochures from RM/Captia-SIMS/BromCom

          Ask for £wedge to put it in

          Sod off at the first sign of trouble

          Whereas someone who specialises in educational IT will:

          Work out what combination of proprietary, paid for and open source software is best for the site

          Order good quality PCs (with LOTS of spares)

          Get it working

          And be able to support it

    2. qwarty

      Re: Schools can do better

      I disagree. Consider a comprehensive secondary with 2000 pupils and staff. Various devices in the school for educational and admin functions. Thousands more home PCs used by students and thousands more personal phones and portable PCs and tablets in use by members of the school (and parents). Making all this gear work together in a way that supports learning in a pleasing way is very different to the usual SME business situation where separation of home and personal interests and assets from the business dimension is crucial.

      An education IT specialist could bring a lot to that party. Sure the wiring and basic hardware may be commodity but the natures of schools and SME businesses are very different.

      If RM aren't addressing that wider context with their education offerings then they are missing an opportunity. Doesn't make the notion of education IT specialist pointless.

  7. Alan Bourke

    Is the RM of Nimbus fame?

    Like the Amstrad kit, looked and worked tantalisingly like a PC, yet ran little actual PC software.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is the RM of Nimbus fame?

      Nimbus 186 was designed in 1983, around the same time Apple, Amstrad, Apricot, Acorn, Atari, Sinclair and the rest were making custom designs as well. This was before 'IBM PC compatible' hardware took over the world with its positive and negative effects on the evolution of personal computing.

      1. stucs201

        Re: Is the RM of Nimbus fame?

        The only compatibility problem I recall with my 1512 were with the nearly but not quite MS compatible mouse (mostly affected flight simulator as I recall) and very few games recognising the digital joystick. Neither of which actually stopped anything running, the core machine itself was really rather decent in terms of software compatibility (flight simulator ran fine using the keyboard, which I recall being the de-facto test at the time). Or are you talking about the PCW, which I didn't think had anything in common with PC hardware?

  8. MrMur

    If stuff was being bought at an inflated price, then surely that's the buyer's fault, not the seller?

    1. Tridac

      Not exactly, I was the governor responsible for IT when the local primary school was being rebuilt. I got two quotes for the new server and infrastructure, from RM and one other. The other was cheaper by several thousand pounds, for what was essentially the same hardware config, but RM got the business because they had a monopoly on the software (sub licensed from a US company, iirc) and they got the business. There were various issues which I felt showed at least lack of due diligence, or worst. For example, an upgrade quote that included a fibre optic network card (500.00 ukp), when the whole network was copper and in fact, there was already such a card in the server lying unused. All efforts to query this were swept under the carpet by a bedazzled headmaster, at a time when we had to get rid of a teacher due to budget pressures. (I was on the budget committee as well) In at least one school that my OH worked in, there was an RM "advisor" governor, which I saw as a clear confict of interest, but apparently not uncommon, at least in the Oxford area. I would add that i've worked in IT and electronic design at various levels for 3 decades, do understand h/w and s/w, don't like flannel, which is what we seemed to get much of the time.

      My overall take on it is that they only stayed in the h/w business for so long by charging top $ for everything and other thoughts that are better not voiced in a public forum.

      Ymmv, of course....

      Chris

  9. Lottie

    *shudder*

    Having spent my teenage years in Didcot, I was one of the many, many folk that worked at RM between college and uni and during the summer holidays.

    Given the standards I saw there, I'm quite astounded that they're still going. Rework and rebuilding were one of the biggest teams in the place.

  10. Jim 59

    Sad day

    For those of a certain age, it is a sad day, whatever your opinion of RM. The 380Z showed us what a computer programme was.

    Today you can get a GSCE in IT without knowing what a computer programme is. Grade A of course.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sad day

      Yeah sad to see RM out of the business, I've not seen any of their products for decades but at least they were trying to so something, better than this 'why bother when we can buy cheap gear from China' mentality.

      My son is taking the new Computing GCSE and this seems far better that the IT curriculum (despite the fact they are using Visual Basic for most programming!).

      1. Tridac

        Re: Sad day

        No, i've not seen any of their products for ages either, but let's not get too misty eyed. Their products were underwhelming and overpriced. I used to buy cmos ic's from their Cowley Rd shop long before they started building computers. I thought their early Z80 boxes were quite good for those wanting to learn about hardware and asm programming, even if they were expensive and stuff like the ribbon cable bus system was a bit of a cheap hack. Suddenly though, it seemed like they were supplying all the schools in the county, when there were loads of other uk vendors building competent and cost effective machines. How did this happen ?. Dunno, but just felt they were in no way working for the common good at any time, despite all the pleasantries...

        Again, ymmv of course...

        Chris

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Good

    I'm amazed they've been able to punt their overpriced shite for so long. Says a lot about the incompetence of local education authorities really, as they're the ones who sign up for the same crap year after year....

    Bad news for the 300 people, good news for everyone else.

  12. wolfetone Silver badge

    I'm quite saddened by this really, only because the first computer I ever used was an RM machine running Windows 3.1 in Reception class. I was 4 at the time, so it'd be about 1991/1992. It had this fantastic painting program where you could fill the screen with streams of shapes. Squares, circles, stars! And once you had finished, you would press a button at the top of the screen which then made all the individually placed shapes in the stream display random colours in an animation.

    My fondness of RM was then destroyed in Matthew Boulton College in 2005 when we had to use them. Totally crap computers. The biggest joke was the network which RM also worked on. Their tech support was awful, the network was awful, it was just awful. And MBC were paying them £3,000,000 for a 3 year deal (I'm not even making it up) for the privilege of RM supplying the computers and network etc. If MBC kicked them out then RM would've/could've taken everything with them.

    1. Linker3000

      My son's primary school wanted a student file/print server. I think the quote from RM for a Windows-based 'solution' was somewhere around £6K, including all their 'management' software.

      I installed a Linux-based server with caddy-based mirrored disks AND supplied a second, fully functional chassis (without disks, as a cold spare) for around £850 all-in, then installed the whole lot and gave some basic admin training as a parent volunteer. The system included full/diff D2D backups to a remote (in other building) server they already owned rather than the overkill 'tape backup solution' proposed for even more dosh by the aforementioned company.

      Oh, and those all-in-one screen+PC monstrosities...ugh!

  13. Skier Boris

    Actually sad to read this - I am aware there are plenty of RM haters but I worked for them for 11 years and was very proud of the products and services that we provided. As my role involved a lot of contact with LEAs and schools I also know a lot of people liked what we did as well.

    Sure there were alternatives, but to many schools the ease of use and support were appreciated.

    The RM One was designed in consultation with schools and was incredibly popular at the time.

    Expecting numerous downvotes for daring to say this

  14. Dave K
    Thumb Up

    Won't be sad

    My two main beefs with RM came firstly after the Core 2 Duo came out. For several months, they persisted in only shipping Pentium 4 based systems. Basically, you had the Core 2 Duo, Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 and the only ones you could get from RM were the worst of the bunch. Thankfully, I was able to persuade my boss where I worked to buy some much better Core 2 Duo systems from elsewhere for a lab we were fitting out.

    My second beef came when the warranty on a lab of 24 RM PCs expired. They sent us an extension offer for ONE year at a price of around £2,000. They even seemed unfazed when I pointed out that I could buy 4-5 complete replacement systems for that price. Of course the tradegy was that they were quoting such extortionate prices because other schools/unis were coughing up.

    So yes, I won't be sad to see the back of RM PCs.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Won't be sad

      Not the only company slow to update models but they lost the sale when you bought from elsewhere so whats your problem?

      They asked for £80 per PC to extend warranty for a year, again not so unusual and you didn't have to take the option, you could take the risk and get someone else to fix if any failed. Whats your beef here?

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Dave K

        Re: Won't be sad

        Hang on, a key supplier rips us off and only stocks outdated kit and I'm not allowed to have a dig at RM for it?

        The fact that I was leant on considerably to buy them from RM (our preferred supplier, after all, we were an educational establishment and they specialised in education!). It took a lot of discussions with RM (no, we definitely don't ship those), discussions with other suppliers (yep, here's some shiny Core 2 Duo systems that are cheaper and much faster than your RM systems), followed by lots of wrangling with my boss who was reluctant to change suppliers. Either way, it was a lot more work than it would have been if RM had simply bothered to update the specs of their systems. Still, I was happy with the eventual outcome (and RM lost a willing customer at the same time).

        As for the warranties, £80 for a one year extension per PC is a complete rip-off. Especially worsened by the fact that they wouldn't group the PCs together and give us a group-warranty coverage. £2,000 for one year of warranty for a small lab of PCs is daylight robbery. Even for 3 years it's be quite steep. We told RM where to go and our new supplier (Stone) shipped us better systems with a free 5-year on-site warranty. Much better! If you rip off your customers, eventually some of them will move elsewhere.

        RM PCs were expensive for what they were, had dated specs, and outrageously expensive warranties.

        1. rhydian

          Re: Won't be sad

          Of course RM could always depend on the "boss who was reluctant to change suppliers" because a lot of education types had been brainwashed in to believing RM was better than decently specced commodity hardware/software "because it's education".

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Won't be sad

      Everyone at school knew they were a pile of crap.

      I still don't know why we had to use bloody RM 480z machines instead of computers that were available in the real world. C64s, Speccies and Beebs. Such machines would have been cheaper and useful skills developed for the post-school world.

      1. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

        Re: Won't be sad

        At the time, the 480Z with the network and file/print server option appeared good (though expensive), because it ran a CP/NOS (a network capable CP/M compatible - OS the industry standard when the 480Z came out), and allowed files to be stored centrally so students did not need personal media or to work on a specific machine all the time.

        Unfortunately, CP/M completely dropped out of favour when the IBM PC was launched.

        I actually preferred the BBC Micro with Econet and a Econet Level 2 hard-disk server. Back in about 1983, the Poly. I worked at built 2 similar computing labs, one by the Computer Unit, and one by the academic Computing School. There were similar bugets, and both were installing 16 seats, networked with a file-server and printer.

        The 480Z lab (Computer Unit) had 16 computers, with screens, a fileserver and printer, and a basic productivity package. And that was pretty much it.

        The BBC Micro lab (mine) had 16 computers with screens, a fileserver and printer. It also had basic productivity packages, but it also had light pens for all computers, and a selection of other hardware items including CAD software and hardware (BitStik and 2 different digitizers), teletext and speech synthesis hardware, speech recognition hardware, 2 types of digital camera, robot arms, touch screens, and a pen-plotter. And on the software side, it had a full ISO pascal compiler for all of the systems, together with a selection of other languages including Forth and Lisp.

        My BBC Lab was built to teach people who did not know what a computer was the vast range of things they were cabpable of, in an affordable way. It could als be used for the computing students to teach programming, networking (sticking an oscillascope onto the Econet was a great way of demonstrating what a network was) and it was great fun building it.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ouch...

    ... That's going to leave a dent in Milton Park... and plenty more new employment seekers in the area. :-/

  16. bigfoot780

    Vanilla is the way forward

    The amount of school, colleges etc that are moving away from LA and/rm is quite high. I hope rm die a quick death.

  17. returnmyjedi

    Martello Tower HD

    They need to do a HD remake of Martello Tower, so I can get past the room with the stained glass window.

  18. The Godfather
    Pint

    Time RM please...

    Long time overdue move...gluttons for punishment in recent years...

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