Exam Soft malfunction during first and last 1L finals Forum

[laxbrah420]

Also brand matters far less than which line you buy. Generally business/enterprise lines are what you want. They're built for durability (read: less heat/dust) and easy repairs. The dell latitude series is pretty much the standard here but you may find a few other options.

[suralin]

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Asus -> Toshiba -> Sony -> Apple -> Dell -> Lenovo -> Acer -> Gateway -> HP

Source

Irony galore.

I'd take a sample size of 30k over the experiences of a few random law students any day.

Of course, I'm just skeptical that the results of that study are as representative as a simple linear comparison like that. It seemed like they only tested the brands on a single metric (a particular warranty's failure rate) and it's conceivable that some brands had outliers that destroyed their reliability score.

[shepdawg]

The lagging on your last 4-hour test was not the fault of your computer, and Exam Soft is to blame. Your characters are transferred wirelessly to a server as you type. When students with 3, or 3.5 hour exams are finished, the entire exam is uploaded in a big package, which usually is a large load for whatever sever your school has exam soft installed on. Your exam was longer, so while you were typing, other students were uploading their tests, and the server was bogged down.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Isn't the point of ExamSoft that it disables your wireless connection while you're taking the exam? (At least, that's how it was installed at my school - you had to reboot to access the internet and upload your exam.)

[laxbrah420]

Isn't the point of ExamSoft that it disables your wireless connection while you're taking the exam? (At least, that's how it was installed at my school - you had to reboot to access the internet and upload your exam.)

No

[Shmoopy]

Fwiw, ive had excellent experiences with Lenovo. I love Sony for most electronics, but I had a vaio and it was just junk. The power input jack was very poorly designed, with two small prongs that touched the male end of the plug on each side. The prongs got bent with use, and the plug couldn't maintain contact. The normal design for the female end is a cylinder that wraps around the male plug on all sides, and the awfulness of this two prong design turned me off Sony computers for good.

[A. Nony Mouse]

Isn't the point of ExamSoft that it disables your wireless connection while you're taking the exam? (At least, that's how it was installed at my school - you had to reboot to access the internet and upload your exam.)

No

Well, that's how it was set up at my school (I know it's an option because a couple of profs didn't disable the wireless and did let us look at the internet if we wanted, but most didn't). I realize it's not the *only* point of ExamSoft.

[ShitLawOrBust]

FWIW, my friend took a final on her Mac in Exam Soft. It froze with 20 minutes to go, and an IT guy was never able to retrieve the exam. She basically turned in 10% of the exam on paper and was missing the rest.

so what happens to someone like this? retake, i would imagine?

[Gorki]

FWIW, my friend took a final on her Mac in Exam Soft. It froze with 20 minutes to go, and an IT guy was never able to retrieve the exam. She basically turned in 10% of the exam on paper and was missing the rest.

so what happens to someone like this? retake, i would imagine?

God I would hope so in that case. Our school recently allowed students to take Exams in the computer lab if they had ANY computer issues (they dont even ask to see if your computer is in fact messed up). There is always an IT person in the lab anyway, so if I have any ExamSoft tests in the future I am totally just using their computers.

But shit like this is why schools should just turn off routers and trust their honor codes imo. ExamSoft can ruin a student's entire exam, and put the student into a deep depression for the rest of the exam period, and for what? If someone seriously needs to cheat on an issue spotter they are gonna run the clock and miss hella issues. The problem will solve itself. FFS its not freshmen year of college, its a 'professional' school where presumably all the students will be swearing oaths and testifying to truthfulness in 3 or so years.

[NotMyRealName09]

The lagging on your last 4-hour test was not the fault of your computer, and Exam Soft is to blame. Your characters are transferred wirelessly to a server as you type. When students with 3, or 3.5 hour exams are finished, the entire exam is uploaded in a big package, which usually is a large load for whatever sever your school has exam soft installed on. Your exam was longer, so while you were typing, other students were uploading their tests, and the server was bogged down.

I don't think this is right. Exam Soft autosaves to a file on your computer as you type. You then click "done" or whatever, the computer reboots, then that file is uploaded online. This way, if Exam Soft quits working, you can switch to a bluebook and, so long as your harddrive didn't fail, you can recover what you had typed thus far.