synaesthesia

Good point well made Although with my mind in it's current state, anything that happens to those schools is fully their fault if they can't hire or use a decent MSP. Actions & consequences, and everyone else will be pointing fingers when they get ransomwared.

So, "Vtech/Tomy My First Intune". Not at all surprising. Market though? MSPs would/should use more powerful tools and no school in this country should be in the position where the IT person is the same person paying people's wages, wiping bottoms in nursery and scraping gum off the underside of the desks (which is pretty much where CC3 & 4 were aimed) Not in 2025. So what's the market for this?

Would love to see it action. However, you'd pretty much be forced to install new cabling & new switching to get it past most business continuity cases, not something I'd want to see on the same physical infrastructure as everything else. Or am I being old fashioned? I assume you can still use the legacy Net2 app and aren't being forced into the new subscription base with paxton?

Used both, MyConcern was worse, reliability wise. Better usability IMHO, but they made some howlers. Imagine trying to make people jump through MFA hoops before even being able to just log a concern for example

Worth checking if the ACU is battery backed up - if it isn't, get it done, it's a cheap upgrade. If it is, power cycle it being sure to remove the battery when you do

If it isn't, they won't be getting our renewal this year for sure.

Almost a straight no, even with a USB straight into mains, if something goes wrong it can't come back to us. However it depends - if it's a student with a medical monitoring device piggybacking to their phone, absolutely.

Kids want to be treated like adults, but their parents very often behave like kids too. So if the parents behave like kids, their kids who want to be like what they perceive as an adult, end up behaving like kids pretending to be adults. And then you've the whole chain of consequence and discipline, and 2 sets of kids adamant that the younger kid shouldn't be responsible for nuking the science lab, destroying the chromebook, ripping the cistern off the wall or urinating into the hand dryer. You start trying to make the kids face up to those consequences, the older kids (aka "parent") kicks off a stink then wants to "home educate" their child whilst denouncing the education system as the part that is failing.

Not sure accounts come into it! We have 2 box shifters we use for odds and ends depending on best price and both do Hik kit, although neither are CCTV specialist. That may be the reason for not having issues, so as long as you're happy to iron out any issues yourself then it shouldn't be a problem!

You shouldn't be worrying as much about the device specs as you are the wifi capabilities of the school. The chromebooks themselves will generally be OK regardless of the spec unless you're spending under 200 a unit. Storage, don't worry about it unless there's any large 3rd party android apps you're installing because you should be *entirely* in the cloud. Is your internet up to it?

Christ. Maybe time to make EWP available as a webapp

How much is Trelson roughly? I have a deep dislike for anyone that hides behind a "CALL FOR PRICING!" thing!

Don't apologise, not a problem As you say it's quite nuanced and I don't fully understand the setup; in an actual emergency there should be no or very limited movement between evacuation points, and one or more of those points might not even be available. I wonder if therefore it doesn't need to be a technological thing? For example, there isn't wifi in the areas but SIA will provide an evacation list & report for printing immediately upon pressing the evacuate button, could this then be printed and handed out? Or keeping it tech related, you don't actually need wifi access I believe - so could you have let's say 3 ipads for this purpose, all kept charged and running with the sign in app installed. They don't need connectivity to run or sign people in or out, they will re-sync when a connection happens again. Might be worth testing. (I'm following this closely as we've a far simplier setup with one single evac point, and we've just fitted external wifi for this very purpose).

That's getting very specific and certainly going to be "strange" according to an off the shelf product. It's worth getting in touch with their support as they're receptive to making changes or helping out with things like this, but staff evacuation points should only ever differ with their current location and not down to their job title surely?

Interesting - I think they "worked" with the notable and important exception of the trackpad. I might have another play, the BIOS had about as much option as a vegan butcher shop!

Now this is news! None of this marvel stuff! Bring on the tracks!

Libre should be absolutely fine, that's something I'll be using here for publisher files too (just personally though for ID badge printing, saves using the diabolical software that most printers use for it! )

This is why modern IT is sh....ockingly bad. (see my recent blog post!). Long gone are the days of "Ah yes, I can use this bit of software I've tucked away since 1988 that Just Ruddy Works" - it has to be updateable, compliant with silly laws and part of a system designed purely to keep a load of overpaid consultants in well pressed trousers and posh coffee.

If they don't consent, they shouldn't be on your school site (premises), period.

Ah the poor rubber keys, perished beyond saving

Probably best stick it on Facebook these days as you might find some localish collectors, or advertise on specific forums like Amibay. eBay is such a hole (at least here, I can't imagine it's much better in the States) that it's just no longer worth using. It's hilarious how quickly it can grow out of control - I've spent the last week clearing out my workshop as the floor was rotten and needs replacing, and my god it's unreal! I've a huge box full of random PCB's, not relating to vintage hardware but just in case there's bits I might need - caps, resistors, sometimes some ICs. I've got a couple of original Bromcom wireless stations just in case the Z80 processors come in handy!

Yes, massively - I prefer home computers but there's certainly a fair few consoles however I might be going a little older - PS1 is the most modern, but NES, SNES, Master System & Megadrive. I've done a few fixes on PS4s and XB1's for friends but wouldn't do it professionally, I'm getting too old and parts are getting too small My workshop is full of various consoles but Commodores, Amigas, Ataris, BBC/Acorn, Spectrums etc is where it's at for me

Not had any issues with the lack of Play store, but it just isn't used that heavily. One caveat is to never assume Flex will work on all machines. Flex does not work on the DFE supplied Dynabooks for example.

We have recently decommissioned a batch of Hikvision 16 and 24 port CCTV switches. They're dumb switches, managed by the IVMS software if needed but management is pretty much limited to turning ports on or off or enabling "long range" mode. They're barely even smart hubs, so entirely VLAN unaware. However they're less than 3 years old and it's a shame to see them go to waste. If anyone is interested, we're looking to offload 7 of them for £600 in total but offers welcomed. They're DS-3E1318P-EI x 5 and DS-3E1326P-EI x 2 and would consider splitting as long as it's for a few rather than just singles. Also includes a Hikvision fiber transceiver for each switch. Collection from mid Northants, not far from the A14 or A45.

They're ESS'ing it. Overcharging for old,nackered and bodged together systems and people are quite rightly taking flight as soon as they can. It still irked me that as recently as a couple of years ago it was standard practice for them to have plain text passwords stored unencrypted on those machines which all shared the same master passwords across any installation.