psydii

I am concerned that getting reliable 6Ghz coverage moves us back to 1 AP per classroom as a "rule of thumb", and unreliable 6Ghz might be worse than "only" 5Ghz. Back in the 11a/b/g/n days you could end up with lower (perceived) performance/reliability for some users who were at the edge of viable 5Ghz, but the laptop next to them was fine on 2.4. Does anyone have experience of a network that has good 5Ghz converge (e.g. -63dB everywhere with SNR of >25dB), but only patchy 6Ghz coverage? How well/seamlessly do devices transition between them? Also, does anyone have any data or "anecdata" on whether 7 has any actually performance benefit over 6 (or 5!) in real-world use cases (e.g. classroom full of laptops throwing photos/videos up and down, syncing to the cloud). Here's my anecdata: 11ac (Wifi 5) single laptop (2x2 80Mhz) doing the work, after school (so few users on the LAN/WLAN and ISP) - up to 900MBit/s but usually much less because cloud sync has its own overheads/throttling; but with 30 laptops all doing the same during the day on the same (single) AP (4x4), the aggregate throughput tends to max out at about 250MBit/sec; Impact on users from it being 'slow' during the day? None. Nobody notices or complains, and the feedback was the experience is better than the 100Mb/sec lan, 10Gb backhaul to 10Gb servers with fibre channel it relaced. (secret: working on files cached on the local ssd is faster than any affordable lan/server set up, and in fact performance has very little to do with the wireless) I'm beginning to think that wifi 5 (done right) was fast enough, and for anything much beyond that, the price performance doesn't really stack up. (see also: how expensive/fussy classroom screens are with cabling now 20Gbit/sec+ transfer rates are the standard on new kit). Of course wifi 5 kit is old now, and needs to be replaced, but adequate 6Ghz coverage might be a huge expense to do right, and ultimately of insufficient benefit in the lifetime of any kit bought in 2026 to be worth the expense.

@DrBeaker Just out of interest, how many classrooms, how many periods per day, and how many calls per day are you getting? Desktop PC's done properly result in <1 per day call across 1000 lesons. But laptops (with all their connections etc) even when done well, you are looking at between 2 and 5 calls per day. This is an acceptable trade-off for some schools, that *want* the flexibility of laptops, but not so for others. Higher than that* indicates hardware problems, either with the cables or the laptops/docks. *except driver/firmware updates, which can really mess things up, but that impacts desktops too these days.

Blatantly AI. What res/refresh rate is the screen? All our boards are 4k, so are quite fussy.

a 4.5m usb c cable is not going to support usb 3.2 or DP Alt mode.

I wonder if its a crypto/cert thing. Can they do TLS1.3 or handle modern certificates?

A dedicated system that is different from all other drilled emergency procedures is one that is likely to fail in unexpected ways. Look to existing procedures where the central team are notified as a matter of urgency, and re-use that. I expect it would look something like: A nominated member of the SIRT for each site phone's (and email's) it in. With multiple deputies for this role with a robust method for identifying whether the expected member of the sirt has/is able to complete this task and how it cascades if they are unavailable. You should probably not use a dedicated number, but one that is, in fact, used frequently (therefore well known and manned/monitored the most), and the team who might receive that call/email are trained on how to handle the initial report.

@cheaptonersucks fi you haven't already you will need to turn on some advanced auditing options to be sure the event logs are getting the info you need.

I've known about and used sysinternals suite at least monthly since the early 00's. How did I not know about that tool?

lol. Yeah, actually we do. I could pivot to on prem exchange or gmail in about 24hrs. And the MIS syncs so many different ways that any one service outage has minimal impact.

It's the DfE saying: a school should take reasonable steps to ensure it never lose it's internet connection. Even on the best SLA you're looking at hours of down time when someone cuts through the your fibre. They also say that each switch should have redundant paths back to the network core, and the core switches should have hardware redundancy/ resiliency. I'm actually having a hard time persuading people we need to replace our (nearly 20 year old) switches because the resilient design has masked hardware failures from the end users time and time again. They think it is reliable, despite (these days) multiple failures switches per term (which is getting to the point its going to cause a problem). These days, with reliable, resilient infrastructure, IT problems impacting teaching and learning are all (mostly) the fault of the teachers, never the network: "didn't actually connect thier laptop to HDMI or power cable" "let the kids rip the keys off", "after using it 5 times a day for the last five years, forget how to use windows+p", "classcharts is down" "I deleted my work and I don't know how to use the SharePoint recycle bin" (TBF that last one is a training issue, we don't actively teach that in advance because nobody will remember anyway, but when they do, the fear/relief etches the new skill into their soul) Having the network connectivity never be the problem is truly transformational.

That's where we've landed a few years ago. That said, the USB-C docks with true DP-ALT Mode support, with AOC (fiber) HDMI->Board and USB Certified cables spec'd for 20Gb/s 100W cables (with length <1m) have proven, in the small trial (10% of classrooms) we've been running this year, almost as reliable as HDMI. While I'm not ready to risk a large-scale deployment for now, we plan do a few room each year until we have the site back to the usb-c lifestyle. (why? because 15m AOC fibre is needed for reliable HDMI, and that is expensive and prone to damage - replacing USB-C is quicker, easier and cheaper, so it's a trade off, but if the helpdesk numbers start to swing the wrong way, we'll back-off sharpish) Also pre 2022 USB C hardware remains a little hit and miss. Pre 2019 (intel/thinkpad) hardware had software weaknesses that made it prone to damage/failure, and this failure could be contagious. Post 2021 hardware seems to be resilient to the contagion. It's 2026, so the older hardware is getting retired and a few years ago we made conscious efforts to move the older devices out from classroom teachers, or those likely to be using docks. One thing that remains (and HDMI has this problem too) is that ports can become loose after a few thousand disconnect/reconnects. However with USB C (on "good" laptops) you've got at least two ports available. Looking to the future. Those mac book neo's might change the landscape. It will be interesting to see their compatibility.

Would be kind of funny if Valve stealth dropped HL3 the day before.

Last time I checked, if your reset/re-image an autopilot device, it picks a new random name. Might be worth checking that interaction doesn't break when you've renamed the account in AD.

Yeah its the upsell to "enterprise" customer. That said, its bonkers how many 3rd party services offer an end-user-initiated SSO flow. Most weeks there's a dozen random services in the enable sso request queue!

Yup that tracks. It can be done, but not by normal people. You need an odd sort of brain to correctly follow instructions that say "don't do anything until you've read the next three pages, then do exactly what these pages say, not what the instructions on the screen say, even though you think they are the same, they are not, everything that you think your should click on you should not, apart from in these three specific places, no not that one"

There is actually a flow you can follow that sets up the user without setting up a separate account first. I've written a six page document describing the process precisely. ...and precisely no-one (apart from me) has been able to complete the flow without clicking the wrong thing and messing it up. I now step through it with each teacher individually. I'm very happy that it can be done. But wow does it needs a UX re-work.

DJAY is a windows store app so might/should be deployable via the usual tools. It's way closer, than the patronising/condescending looks the armchair pro's on the internet will tell you, but it isn't in the same league as Rekordbox or Serato. But, given that it works with Pioneer/Alpha Theta controllers, the leap between them isn't all that much. And the Pioneer Recordbox combo is the industry standard, it isn't quite like the grip Excel and Photoshop have - plenty of DJs and venues use / offer some combinations of other platforms (heath allen, vestax, etc). Really the pro dj non-negotiables are the the Pioneer CDJs. I don't think I've ever seen alternatives* to them at a venue, but the UI on those is quite different to the UI on any of the software listed. And so, since you'd not mentioned them, actual alignment with industry standards is perhaps moot? That said, for something like this I might be tempted to just hand install their preferred software on the machines. "We teach Recordbox" is a better sell to parents with certain backgrounds than "we teach DJAY". As for direct access to the C drive. I'd relax that constraint for those machines. (There are plenty of threads on here about that practice) *Well, apart from Technic 1210's

Yes. How did it go? Well let's just say that I am glad the current guidance from the DfE is that SSO should be used. However I fear the "SSO" platform TES have built is their answer to that: "well its SSO. It's the school's IT Team who are being non compliant by refusing to migrate to us and instead continuing to use their legacy not-bespoke-for-education Entra/Google Identity platforms."

I'm surprised that the DfE or Cabinet Office haven't yet mandated a clause like "you are required to offer a reasonably priced single-user, read-only access to your platform/software and customer's data for a period of five years after the end of any customer contract, regardless of whether the software/platform was procured through this agreement" in the framework agreements. Perhaps they'll do it next time as a condition of entry.

the basic iPad and mac mini continue to exists, so unless they lose money on this hand over fist, I'd expect the future upsell to be minimal. But no school should be spending £10,000's without understanding what they are buying, and today, you'd need to understand that your are trailblazing by purchasing a class set of these. If you've already got MDM and authentication set up, the risk is close to zero - I mean at the very worst they can be re-imagined into faux mac-mini's. But if you've got all that, you've probably ordered at least one to check it out, reducing risk even further.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/microsoft-publisher-will-no-longer-be-supported-after-october-2026-ee6302a2-4bc7-4841-babf-8e9be3acbfd7

Aldus Pagemaker was what we had. (copy got written in word 6 (for DOS)) None of this graphics none sense. I've just explored the worst migration option - teaching staff how to use InDesign. We've actually got enough Adobe competency on staff that this might actually be viable. But right now InDesign is barfing on the new version of Times New Roman and Calibri that were updated in Windows. If anyone has InDesign, it might be worth voting on this Adobe Customer Voice, and you have some things in publisher that you need to try to keep editable in the future: [ID-4272938] After installing a Windows 11 update, InDesign is unable to find the Times New Roman and Calibri fonts – Adobe InDesign

Yeah. I'm feeling this is about to be a bigger problem than I was anticipating.

I just had a poke at my start menu and was astonished to find publisher installed. Version 2602 no less. Very surprised there wasn't a warning in the app about its impending demise.

In my experience, rationalising the cabling is way, way more expensive that having a few extra switches. It costs the sort of money you only get with a specific grant or project coming from central government. You are absolutely correct about the benefit of such work though.