synaesthesia

I did have one ropey iPad a while ago, seems otherwise fine but just kept being a twonk with the MDM and SIA. Not sure if they were mutually exclusive. Older one, 9th gen I think. Swapped it out with another one and it didn't drop a beat. I'm sure I tried factory resets and everything on it to no avail, and the software versions were identical so it did confuse the life out of me. Just accepted it was Another Apple Thing. Android version in open beta now though...

Would it be a new fangled, more expensive version of creating FAQs, knowledgebases, wikis, slacks etc? I.e. great intention but has next to zero impact because a) noone has time to pay attention to them and b) humans like a personal touch? From another human of course, rather than a computer trying to behave like one. /me mutters something about young whippersnappers, this was all fields and freddos were only 10p...,

Thunderbird to open the PSTs, ImportExportTools NG extension, export to PDF No limits.

That's a suggested app, top of the list for just about anyone unfortunately.

Just got that - fingers crossed it makes a massive difference. It's not nice always seeing the same problem come up for any supplier and less so when it has such an impact on the operational aspects of a school like an MIS. None of them are perfect, but when only one constantly crops up it doesn't look great.

Is it those adapters? Hundreds of schools using SIA and raving about it, we are one of them and they don't stop a beat, except for Apple related shenanigans like updates and MDM policy inexplicably not working every now and then. We're just on WiFi for ours.

If your printers have readers already and cards aren't on the to-do list you can get sticky mifare tags cheaply from amazon which you can stick to their existing ID badges or something.

Just be careful of who the MSP is. MSP's are not inherently a bad thing as Matt above points out, but some are just diabolical. 2 examples, neither of which I'll name but I'll hint at - one often posts here for jobs and nearly always ends up on the Devalued thread for extremely poor salary. The other has posted here in the past for jobs, have a few trading names one is often part of a car clutch and comes after "Dual Mass" and the other is a popular gaming youtube channel coming after "Gaming Nxxxx". Would run away from both!

That's one of the reason's I'm a little uncomfy with it too - that and it being on personal devices, being used in class by teachers at a time when mobile phone usage is questionable! When everything is back I was going to see if it's possible to limit teacher app usage to the school's public IP to help counter the first part a little.

Someone needs to be held accountable. Bromcom's gaming of the SLA system isn't helping so we're powerless legally but frankly this is a safeguarding issue and should be dealt with properly.

And now even the dashboard & portal won't load. Fantastic.

They're aware, but service status page isn't reflecting anything. Come on Bromcom, do better! *** Note Description: Good morning, We're aware of an issue this morning which is preventing menu items showing via the left menu and via global search. The Team is investigating this urgently and we'll keep you updated ASAP. Teachers are still able to access registers via their dashboard. -Liam J Helpdesk Manager

Anyone else having Bromcom issues already this morning? Logs in and loads, but no menus anywhere for more than one school here!

Ah, so a cycle would be if a laptop was initially at 100%, used half to 50%, put back on charge back to full then used again to 50% charge, that's a cycle. Then I suppose once you take into account the average day for a chromebook - starts at 100%, taken by a student who can't find the B key because someone scratched half off it off, puts it back at 98% but not on charge, picked up by next student when its down to 95%, used for half an hour and put back not on charge, at 70%, used as a frisbee for a while then put back on charge by a teacher who stubbed their toe on it after dragging it out of a urinal, gets up to 80% before the next student decides they want to use it for 5 minutes then puts it back, 75% - rinse and repeat every single period until the laptop thinks it's a fridge-freezer, the battery thinks it's a tesla and elon musk is coming to pardon the klingons! Usage may vary Regardless however the 3100 are edu specific, surely they'd last a bit longer than that

What's a cycle count as in their eyes, full charge & discharge?

Things are definitely different - our last batch of staff laptops from 2023 & 24 are showing noticeable drops in battery life and that irritates the hell out of me. I have a strong preference for the batteries made up of 18650 cells, but that's going back a few years now! 100 cycles though for 6 year old devices is good going, they shouldn't be dropping like that Do you have an account manager at Dell you could try and pull some strings with, or plead poverty? "We're considering replacing 200 desktops in the near future and if this is the level of service or quality we can expect we might have to look elsewhere" would be my preference

To be fair, 6 years is plenty long enough for a battery and I would absolutely expect them to want replacing regardless of how well other batteries do. They may report health statuses differently. However, I'd suggest popping one open and making sure the batteries are physically OK - any sign of any bulging take them all out of service immediately until you replace the batteries. I would not expect any manufacturer to be interested in batteries failing at that age, it's beyond expectancy for lion cells especially those in edu service.

Ooooh - this I did not know. Many thanks for that, I'll have a play and a test, may well tick all the boxes!

DIdn't want to hijack the other active thread on this as it was more geared towards Lightspeed, but have indeed gone through and a lot of my concerns are still there regarding keeping KCSIE compliant when devices are "shared" use. We have very limited use of them at the moment - only a single batch of 5 and they are "manually" managed, it's a good department (Dance) and they track who is using what device manually. Another department is now asking after iPads on a slightly larger scale, and obviously this is raising concerns for me regarding safeguarding. We use Mosyle to manage what we have, and are a Google hybrid school (eww). Smoothwall filtering, hybrid local and cloud. Ages ago I played with smoothwall browsers and never really got it to work reliably, but one of the primary functions of these devices would be recording video so it'd be great therefore if they could be tied to an account allowing access to email, google drive etc. Android would be a neater option for that side of it, but even more of a pain to manage. Any pointers or modern advice on this? I'm trying to steer them towards flippable chromebooks but want to cover all the bases.

Ah, I see. Intriguing, probably not a silver bullet but certainly neither is sticking loads of crud on the walls. Hopefully SLT give the thumbs up soon and we'll see what we're allowed, hopefully for a summer install and a more peaceful September! Doesn't help that our year 11's are, due to the time of year, bouncing off the walls like red-bull soaked power balls!

They're the folk I've been speaking to The specs of the "acoustic" plasterboard definitely suggest improvement due to much higher mass, and along with the extra steps you mention should allow for at least some improvement. It's not a huge amount of money, just a lot of work but we might be able to bear in mind for similarly afflicted rooms in future. I've also looked at masking, assuming you mean the devices which effectively "echo" to sort of cancel out the noise, but I'm not sure how effective that could be against an ever changing cacophany of noise.,

27? christ, could have sworn it was last year! I take that part of it back, but I stand by comments that noone in their right mind should even consider a lamp projector

For existing models only. Anyone buying a lamp projector from this time last year onwards needs sacking.

I don't think it matters that much, as you can no longer buy lamp projectors new, it's not legal to do so. Any lamps being sold are merely old stock - it would be folly to purchase those. I would question why you'd want a projector with exception to large AV installations such as a hall, instead of IWBs?

Ah, cheers. It was the MDM question that made me wonder I don't think we're likely to go down the Neo route any time soon but always good to have options when the next project comes around!