synaesthesia

Pretty much just the higher end Latitudes or Lenovos (L/T series, not the V series) as nearly all other devices have the keyboards part of the upper chassis, and I wouldn't recommend anything Lenovo these days based on their utterly awful support/service/aftercare/poor recent build quality.

I can't see that being feasibly possible short of Amazonian levels of staffing & infrastructure!

Not sure - there's no chance all hits are human vetted, that's too much work even for one school!

If it helps, one thing Monitor is very capable of is contextual decision making. So for us, as mentioned we have an on site appliance which is not capable of this (yet, hint hint smoothie guys! ). So for example, our onsite picks up hits for drugs, reports to DSL and myself as per design and then we need to manually check the context. By which time the DSL may have already spoken to the student. However Monitor has seen the same thing, seen the context around it, for example it's just one of many hits on a google image search for "mushrooms" and therefore does not need to report it.

Yes, used here in combination with an onsite appliance

Yeah, it's really intuitive to set up & use, extremely popular so support is easy as pie and generally just works! Easy to self-host if you don't mind farting around with the SIP setup (which isn't difficult) and equally easy to find a provider that will host and support you with it too.

Worth keeping an eye out on refurb outlets for ryzen bazed laptops - might be a little pushed at that budget but might find a 3 series with an iGPU more than grunty enough for those games. Might even be worth dropping ICT Direct a line!

I don't think I'd ever be happy using Bromcom just on what they've pulled, however it's good to recognise what they (and Arbor) have achieved in a comparatively short time when SIMS has had the monopoly for so long - and SIMS has certainly never had a "stable, fast period" for any of it's "cloud" offerings.

Well, if they can't make money selling an old product, maybe they can do it by suing those 3rd parties and schools...

I (as do most of us, I imagine!) wish! Still, like what a plumber charges - just because what's what you're being paid, doesn't make it what you're worth.

£40 cash for an experienced member of staffs time (an hour) to discuss IT... Pretty much confirms how valued IT and it's staff are within the DfE. I mean, if they were going to pay for an IT suite or even a couple of chromebooks maybe...

Only for accounts accessing sensitive data. You could, with care, run secondary with a single login (under the context of those standards, although it would obviously fail immediately on safeguarding)

Honesty, transparency. "Sorry, we've tried but can't match the price eBuyer/Amazon/Misco are offering" goes a long way.

As it's USB-C you can use any 45w compatible (or higher) charger without issue. Try just going for a reputable brand on Amazon, just don't cheap out!

Yeah, Opencore rings a bell. It's certainly not officially supported, but then again *nothing* apple does that is of any use is officially supported. I needed a newer version to be able to onboard more recent IOS devices.

Understood, unfortunately have been there and done that (with broadband, hence why I used that as an example). Promises didn't live up to reality and as a result 3 years of some of the worst reliability ensued. Transparency screwed the pooch on that occasion

Why wouldn't they have a hope if they have a product that ticks all the boxes at a competitive price? Weighting takes care of all this in the tender process already, I just don't understand why this is any different and why experience can't be a weighted consideration.

IMHO it should still absolutely be allowed, even if it carries less weight. Other people's experiences are allowed to be taken into consideration, and taking out extended members of your own institution's experience is a lot of vital information to lose out on. There should absolutely be transparency at all levels, which is why this is all public information - but if you're doing the same for something like broadband, and a certain broadband provider whos name pops up here very often is part of it and everything other than your own and everyone elses experience puts them as clear leaders for a tender... do you sign up just because "you have to show no bias" ?

No, I mean 2012. And although I thank the suggestion, the idea of paying Apple anything for this is definitely not on the cards I gave up in the end and just did it locally.

There's financial reasons too, they may have just taken onboard those schools with Arbor or have only just bought the service and at the start of a 3 year contract - that could be tens of thousands of pounds tied up and ultimately "lost", which is just as important to the tax payer.

But some of the process *is* unfair. There is no sense in not being able to use your own experiences in a tender process (i.e. they had some schools already using Arbor). They had an overall positive experience in some schools already running that service, it absolutely should count for something but some beancounter somewhere decided that they must do it entirely on a level, unbiased playing field. There isn't ANYONE able to fully do that. I understand why Bromcom did what they did, but still do not agree with it.

Awww come on, SIMS is 3 guys in a summer house...

So they're not correctly using SSL and this is our or smoothwalls issue because?

I think a majority would prefer Excel to FMS. Or maybe even Calc 123 or whatever it was called in the old days on black & orange monitors - it looks more up to date.

That is absolutely bonkers. Someone needs firing.