Hi Agent_Steal,

Sorry for the delay in replying.

I cannot recommend any particular brand of tower or screen as I am in England and you are in North America. These items are relatively low cost, so I would expect them to be manufactured locally, as they would hardly carry the shipping costs and import duties?

I can say that the screen needs to be big enough for the largest room and number of viewers you will have. You didn't tell me the size of the hall or number of people. It might be more convenient to get a second screen for the smaller room....they are not that expensive for the standard sized ones.

The best ones have a surface studded with microscopic glass beads or prisms. This distributes the light evenly, the principle being the same as that of the Fresnel screen in an overhead projector or in the viewfinder of an SLR camera.

Next best are the ones with an aluminised surface.

As for the stand/tower/table: It should be tall enough to have the centre of the projector level with the centre of the screen and be sturdy. The ones I like best have lockable castors/wheels, as this makes setting up and adjusting much easier.

As for a laptop, I do not feel qualified to recommend any particular brand. I can only comment that in the past I have had considerable compatibility issues with Dells, and that the HP powersaver is a real pain as it forces a re-boot My advice is that you get the projector and select a laptop to go with it...........usually you would do things the other way round, but we are not looking for computing power for this requirement? Try the laptop with the projector before you buy the laptop.

I would have thought that virtually any processor would do the job.............I have had no problems with a PI/166MHz

I think that 512Mb of RAM and a 60Gb hard drive would be adequate. What I would really look for is the best quality video card. Obviously the screen size is unimportant, but may have a bearing on the video card that is in there.

PROJECTORS:

These are generally reliable manufacturers:
EPSON
HITACHI
IN FOCUS
MITSUBISHI
NEC
OPTOMA
PHILIPS
PROXIMA
SANYO
SHARP
SONY

[Yes, we had no projector purchasing policy...they all did their own thing and expected IT to support the result ]

I guess that the criteria should be:

1. Brightness: Over 2000lumens depending on the size of your largest room.
2. Contrast Ratio: Over 400:1
3. Resolution: SXGA is better than XGA which is better than SVGA........make sure the laptop supports it!!!
4. Lamp life and cost
5. Warranty period

Hope that this helps