synaesthesia

I think at this point we can spot the troll.

It's 2024, surely you're already using 365 or Google and therefore your bases are covered with correct use. It is likely better to concentrate efforts on using what you already have.

Photoshop is very common, macs not so much (because they're just not fit for purpose nor can the "industry standard" rubbish be thrown around any more). Plus there's a lot of other capable image editing apps in use in edu including some online ones.

Massive shame From an outside perspective it's not the best look for something providing security and safeguarding.

Are there any plans for Smoothwall to implement MFA on their VPN solutions? In 2024, that might be a big tick to cover what's easily it's weakest point. The documentation says "at the time of writing.... doesn't support 2FA" which gives a slight glimmer of hope!

The laptop itself isn't anything particularly exciting, the card sold recently on Ebay - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266424590801 The laptop is https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46565/Amstrad-ALT-286-Laptop-Computer/

Blimey, that's a bit lucky - the controller must be integrated in which case. Makes Dell seem VERY stingy! Good job on the soldering, wouldn't want to do it in bulk though

As above, you can do this in Google itself. GDPR has no bearing on the management of devices "outside of hours", unless perhaps your policies are particularly lax and students/parents are unaware of the controls in place on the devices.

Yeah, all the same and logs just say the latest version has been downloaded and applied. I haven't gone digging in too far though. It's no major issue, just one of those little things that I might not have otherwise noticed. Thanks though

No, that's coming direct from Windows Update with nothing interfering.

Yeah I'm aware of that, I just don't quite get why two identical servers would differ and according to windows update "no further updates are available"

Ryzen's with the APUs will remove the need for the graphics cards and more than grunty enough for that purpose. Frankly any modern CPU even with the awful intel HD/Xe graphics will run it well enough for a school.

Having spent a bit of time recently auditing updates & security etc, I've noticed that our servers like to differ the version build numbers slightly. For example, they're all 2019 Standard, all fully up to date and in some cases absolutely identical, yet some are 10.0.17763.5458 and some .5329. Any checks for updates direct from MS don't make any difference, nor do restarts. Never noticed this before, is this normal?

At that price point, it's worthless. You won't be able to buy a lamp for it from 2026, so it would be wise to invest in a new projector now if you wish to keep with the bulbs, and as it's a really old projector, you'll be able to get a far better spec second hand for half the cost on fleabay or facebay.

From experience, Ubiquiti kit is great and can make all the difference in certain situations. For a primary school as an example, the difference in cost between them is large enough to warrant keeping a spare to hand just in case and replace all staff laptops. The early batches of PoE switches had dodgy power supplies which have now been fixed. In a secondary however it's going to be down to risk management/mitigation and the big thing for Aruba (or other enterprise grade kit) is going to be lifetime warranties and support. You can middle ground for smaller schools with the likes of Cambium as has been mentioned, but it's really worth the greater investment especially with the features mentioned that provide redundancy, performance and peace of mind. I still highly recommend not going near Aruba Central for switch management, even several years in it's just not even close to being suitable IMHO. Stick to Netedit for basic management and keep it "in house" and leave Central for it's original purpose, the wifi.

Once - and it meant any future issues with those devices get written off and a replacement ordered. They're simply awful.

The only real way ESS can salvage anything from this would be to put their hands up and say "You know what, our migration procedure would appear not to be as solid as it should, so we've developed something to remove the apparently IP protected queries to leave an SQL database ready to be migrated with all fields and other properties intact." It's not a difficult task, no doubt there's an automation to do exactly that without even needing an expert near it. Failing that, here's a tool which may help them.

Whats the ballpark cost for Cloudpath? With BYOD getting more and more difficult, 3rd party solutions like this might be a necessity. Even with the best out of the box solutions from the usuals (firewalls, wifi's captive portals, NPS, radius etc) it's being made so much harder by increasing security requirements, particularly whilst privacy rights increase and your average person is only just capable of connecting to a wifi let alone downloading a certificate, installing the certificate, trusting the certificate; all on a myriad of devices which are impossible to document for because the settings/procedure differs from OS to OS and version to version

Not something I'd really want to see, IMO you always need to stick with a known quantity. In your scenario I'd suggest something along the lines of UniFi or even the FS.com switches which are both far more suitable.

Sorry, slight hijack but "full of cope"? Am I getting old?

Since when has there been any sort of encryption on the SIMS SQL database other than what's provided with the SA password? What makes the tables in a standard SQL database proprietary enough to be considered IP? have we all been naughty people for diving straight into said database because in the time it takes SIMS to run a report, we could extract the data ourselves and leave enough time for breakfast, second breakfast and brunch?

Just makes me think of this!

ESS/SIMS couldn't set a story straight if they were reading from a book with a ruler. They reek of desperation.

This is a thing of beauty. It's not far off the ability of some mid 2000 laptops - most of them could have pretty much anything added/removed including dedicated GPUs, but mmmmm. Best they won't be cheap!

V series here, just absolutely shoddy. The chargers supplied (large wall-warts) are too short and easily damaged, and the laptops themselves are built of the shoddiest quality plastic I've seen in a device. They're upgradable-ish other than the soldered in 4GB of ram. Their attitude to supporting them however has been dire. I would hope the higher end ones fare better!