OverWorked

I too benefitted from the SimpleSi lanyard bespoke fitting service, but kept losing my pass over the next two days as a result. May need sticky tape next time. I'm now on the train to Leeds with nothing but a Ginster's pasty, a can of lager, and the open wifi for company. This could be a long edugeek session.

Awww... I was talking to Stone for ages about their products, as a long term customer, giving them useful feedback. I got not a sausage. How did you get it? I'm not brazen enough to just ask for stuff.

Smoothwall will definitely do it. Two years ago we knew we had a problem with social networking sites esp. facebook. Just sitting at the back of the room, the teacher would be waffling away at the front, oblivious that half the laptop screens were showing facebook. Our LA blocked facebook, but they were al using a range of proxies. Smoothwall killed this dead, as well as their webmail and loads of other time wasting stuff. I've said this before. For a few weeks I would get abuse off whole classes of pupils. They would scream things like The teacher and I would stand at the front smiling at them, whilst they calmed down and got on with work. It was entertaining watching them trying whole lists of proxies - all blocked. Staff love it, kids hate it. Just as it should be.

Tried that. It worked for a short while before I was cut off. Weak signal and too many competing APs. I'll try again tomorrow nearer the stand. See you there.

Missed this announcement. Tried to get online all day with the various open wifis but couldn't get a decent signal. Would recommend the network manager's lounge with free tea and coffee, peace and quiet. Thanks to Ramesys for that.

Everything Michael said. Settle is a lovely town in the dales and the school's good too. Almost as good as where I am in Grassington.

I've just arrived at my in-laws in London. I'll be there Weds & Thurs. See you there. I'll try to get bit more prepared and take it steady this time. Last year BETT made my head hurt - just too much to take in.

Thanks everyone! I don't think a vending machine would be the answer. It wasn't a serious consideration anyway. It would be expensive for the school and unpopular with the staff. At present we provide a hot water machine and milk only. Staff pay for the milk and provide their own tea/coffee/chocolate/soup/darjeeling/herb tea/decaff/ whatever. Some staff don't pay for the milk but take it anyway. That's where the problem lies. I was going to threaten them with a vending machine, but it would just makes things worse. It's human nature: what can you do?

Try Cocoa, it has the opposite effect. Slumped over the desk in the afternoons.

The Kingston M-Series are Intel x25-m, but you're right, I can't find any with my usual suppliers. Leave it. I'll stick with disks. Thanks eveyone.

I was thinking more of the low-end, like the Kingston V-Series, but looking at the quoted read/write speeds they don't look too great compared with SATA-II HDDs. I may stick with disks for now. On the other hand, a DC with plenty of RAM shouldn't be accessing the disk much anyway, so the drive performance won't make much difference. I've just got two servers without drives from from ICT-Direct, and was looking at drives for them when I noticed the low cost of some SSDs.

Seeing as how solid state drives are getting really affordable, is anyone putting them in servers? I'm looking to buy SATA drives for a server to use as a Server 2008 DC. Are solid state drives reliable and fast enough? Would I still need RAID? (not needing RAID would make it worthwhile as they're twice the price). I'd have two DCs so would still have redundancy there. Is anyone actually doing this? Thanks.

A fresh chip machine! Wonderful.

I know this isn't IT, but this has fallen to me and EG is the font of all knowledge. We're thinking of a drinks vending machine for the staffroom. Can anyone recommend a company? How are these things financed? Would the school rent the machine, then keep the money it makes, or does it all go to the company? Are they any good or does it taste like dishwater? BTW, we're considering this because at present we have an honesty box, where staff pay for what they use. It's turned out to be naieve .

Thanks. I wouldn't normally thank two post by the same person, but that deserved it. My problem is that I have two DCs, one physical and one virtual (as one should, I think), but both of them do a lot of other stuff as well. Stuff I daren't risk by uninstalling, wiping and reinstalling. I'm going to have to buy another hardware server to replace the DC on the physical server. Another call to ICT-Direct, I think, who's got HP Proliant DL140 1U servers for £199. Should do a DC nicely.

Have I got this right:- ? 1) 2008 R2 is 64-bit only 2) It's impossible to upgrade any windows OS from 32-bit to 64-bit. Clean install only. I'm about to move to Terminal Services. The new TS servers will be 2008 R2. My current domain is all 2003 R2 32-bit. I was wanting to upgrade all my servers, but as R2 is 64-bit it won't be possible. It is OK to leave the member servers on Server 2003 as they are? The DCs could be a problem - both of them host other things including the SQL server for the MIS.

I've have two B2D devices in a device pool, and set my backups to use that device pool. My weekly full backup at the weekend failed when the first device became full. I thought that the main benefit of using a device pool was that when one device became full, the job would switch to the next. I've just manually restarted the job, and it's started using the second device, the one with free space. I've tried Cascaided Drive Pools, which would appear to do exactly what I want, except that it's for tapes drives only, not B2D folders. Have I missed something? Is there a way of getting jobs to auto switch devices as they become full? Thanks.

I'm just in the process of replacing a load of 10 year old PII machines with win98 COA stickers on them. They we're made by Centrex and are indestructible. In the 8 years I've been here not one has died. Boot up and logon can take between 10-30 minutes depending on Windows and antivirus updates.

Thanks. It'll likely run on 2008 TS, then.

David, Believe me it does. The machine has to do a lot of processing, apart from just loading the profile. There's connecting to mapped drives and printers, processing the GPOs, and MS only knows what else. You're welcome to come round here and watch - it's a depressing spectacle.

Actually the hardware maintenance isn't too bad. They're indestructible, or they would have been replaced years ago! The real issue is the performance. They take about 5-10 mins to boot and a further 10 mins for a student to log on. Even worse if they haven't ben run for a while and automatic updates and Sophos start updating after boot. Anyway, I got the bid. My slide presentation to the governors was wrecked by a slow computer, which helped prove the point. By going for a mixture of terminal services, thin clients, remote access, and a load of 2nd hand stuff from ICT-Direct, I cut over £20,000 off the bid which swung it.

Quick question! Is it possible to run Promethean ActiveStudio on Server 2008 TS? We're installing TS and thin clients with remote access soon, and it's important that staff are able to create Whiteboards over RDP from home, or in the school, ready to deliver the lesson in school. I'm not planning on using TC's to actually drive the IWB's, I'll use fat clients for that. Is ActiveStudio compatible with Server 2008 Terminal Services? Thanks.

On Wednesday evening I am to make a presentation to the governors for funding to replace 50 8-10 year old machines. I kid you not. Sorry for veering off topic, but it's grim at our place at the moment. Ric - this is thanks to you BTW. I'm going for a mixture of thin client, remote desktop, and 2nd hand fat clients from ICT-direct. Will save about £20k off the whole thing.

No... I've switched back to Verdana and it all still works - the problem has gone. Other funny things were happening: like the blank box where the EduGeek logo should be was linking to /forums/ instead of the home page. Anyway, it's all working now. It still doesn't explain why is was happening from three locations. If it reappears I'll just change the theme. In my usercp the forum skin is set as forum default, if this is any help.

It's fixed. I was using theme EG: V4.0.0.1. Tabbed - Verdanna at school. I've changed it to Trebuchet MS, the same as at home, and it all works again. I've got the forums page back and can start posting from work again.