synaesthesia

Yup, works well for us - we've stuck with Lenovo kit all round and find it reasonably reliable, except when people invariably lose cables despite being told never to unplug them, general vandalism and spilled things! Spend the money and don't buy cheap.

But it's soft, strong and thoroughly absorbent!

If anyone in or around Northants is in need of a server cabinet (well, a comms cabinet) we have one going and thought it may be of use. It's a full height (2m) cab, will take most servers but only has the rails at the front. We used it with long rackmount servers on shelves originally. Collection is from Wellingborough, and we'd hate to see it go to waste - we'll even throw in a couple of boxes of rack nuts and bolts Glass fronted and very solid. Fairly sure we still have the keys too.

Ah, you said PDQ Deploy Looking up PDQ link now, maybe a useful backup.

Sorry in what respect, deployment of the settings?

This has been around for years - just buy any sheet timber from B&Q.

Donald?

Sorry I should have been a little clearer with my initial response. Anything with decent enough performance *and* isn't horribly cheap (unsuitable for student use) generally isn't going to be passively cooled, unless it's something diabolical like a Macbook where longevity & reliability isn't a selling point. There will be plenty of machines passively cooled that are otherwise just fine, but from experience despite less moving parts don't seem to have been as reliable. This is of course a huge shame as with SSD's now mostly a standard fitting it leaves far less mechanical things to go wrong. I'd be happy to be proven wrong if anyone has some particular models they've had good experience with. And re screen size, DVD drives etc - 14" is the largest you typically see around with the larger being flimsy consumer grade, workstation level etc. And optical drives - no, it's 2020.

Worst thing about this is the pure lack of this mentioned in the documentation - this all clearly states there is no additional software to install, it's all browser based. If we'd known that, it'd not have taken long to force install the extension for either Chrome or Edge and test it. But no, we find this out last minute and have 10 minutes to push it out hoping it works

We just have it with the powerpoint viewer on a domain machine using windows 10 ltsc, in it's own OU so it logs automatically onto a specific display user and starts the app. Have folders on the staff shared area where people can upload their powerpoint.

These are lies. It requires a browser extension and Mettl/CMAT should be ashamed!

No, pure and simple. No longevity, passive cooling does not suffice in that sort of environment on portable devices.

Which requires you to have a license to do so...

Separate here, again as we have our NPS set up for wifi anyway and prefer to keep all remote access gubbins separate from any other server so it's easily isolated in case of issue.

Loads of these available for the off the shelf Pi 3 and 4s - certainly for the Vic20, C64 and Spectrum range. - - - Updated - - - No other means of video output other than HDMI so that would be specialist requirement, and at that point you'd just use the GPIO headers.

These are great to recommend to kids/families who aren't otherwise eligible for help, particularly those doing compsci or similar. Work well with teams, google etc and plug into the same TV as their xbox or PS5 they can however oddly afford!

As said, jumped the gun. Angling is good to go though happily (so far), not many better ways to sit and chill by a lake/riverside - source https://anglingtrust.net/covid-19/ - interestingly they say further guidance will hit on Wednesday which will no doubt be part of a package which may clarify other similar activities.

Oh, I do apologise looks like I may have jumped the gun. I know there were talks about Tennis and Angling both immediately being given the thumbs up from Sunday

Golf, Tennis and Angling have already been confirmed as OK though...

I think it's just an age thing, where people of a certain vintage are far more likely to enjoy the original, anti-Dahl ending or otherwise. (That ending is typical of movies though, keeping things "happily ever after" when the original source is usually much darker. Take any Brothers Grimm as a great example or indeed Lord of the Rings)

As before, it's a shame that economy has to ever be factored in (if it wasn't an issue, we'd not be in lockdown #2) and that it's not out the bounds of reality that education could be pushed back a year rather than forgotten entirely. But this is where we are, and make the best of it we should. Let's not forget we have it easy this time round as regards to remote learning, and let's definitely not forget that even when we were being bombed by the Nazis education continued, albeit having to hide under a desk whenever a siren sounded. We absolutely have it easy. I don't personally think we should be in school, and I have doubts about sending my own in tomorrow, but thankfully it isn't up to me and I trust the schools to continue doing the best they can.

Not sure what's worse, the description overall or the poor use of brackets just about bloody everywhere!

@Fazza if you'd like rescuing, I can send over a couple of these monsters for you? Service pack 3, 512MB of ram and a stunning Pentium M 1.73GHz processor. Guaranteed more reliable than those Geobooks - in fact this picture was taken just a few minutes ago and has only recently been retired from constant service running a laser cutter Battery still works too!

A good question, I can't imagine the DfE would be particularly helpful either unless they'd supply chromebooks in their stead.

I think at this point I'd be inclined to return the lot as unfit for purpose!