Soulfish

Ahhh the lanyard retrofitting service . It was good to finally meet you SimpleSi and as Kim says - we had some fun

After talking to them and getting a mini demo with SimpleSi earlier on the way to getting the pizza order we were told the list price was around £45k. Think I'll be holding off the order for a while

Well since everyone else is...

I'm leaving at 6:45am tomorrow

I'm assuming that this is over and above standard IT expenditure? If so I'd be looking at replacing switches, rolling out a site wide managed WiFi solution, a new phone system and staff training. Possibly some storage stuff in there as well

I've got the contact details of our local Dell technician now. It's great he turns up in the morning, hand him the offending machine and then it's his problem . We generally pay around £450ish for a Dell Latitude E5500 with 3yr NBD warranty depending on configuration

Looking forward to BETT

Personally we buy the Dell Latitude E5500 for staff. The Dell range is pretty easy to get to grips with though: Vostro are small business laptops/computers where as Latitude are business class laptops (Optiplex being business class desktops). Inspiron is for home users. We have purchased vostro's, but try and stick to only Latitude/Optiplex models now since we find they tend to be based on better chipsets. We've had issues imaging some Vostros. Within the Latitude range the main laptops you'll be looking at are the E5400/E5500 and the E6400/E6500. The Ex400's have 14.1" screens and the Ex500's 15". Other then that the main difference between the E5x00 and E6x00 are weight and materials used in construction. E6x00 range is lighter, smaller and slightly better built (IMO) but costs more. The E5x00 isn't bad but it's a little bulky. Other then these there's also the various speciality laptops (XT2 tablet, Latitude 2100 netbook etc). Hope that helps!

Have to say if I didn't have my iPhone I'd be very tempted to get one as well

I'm another person who doesn't see any need for it in Secondary schools. Everything we use either works with MySQL/Postgresql/MS SQL or an access database. I don't think we have any software that's compatible either

Woo!

Personally I opted for a pair of Sennheiser PXC 350's. They work great and feel pretty sturdy. If you want to spend more then there's also the Sennheiser PXC 450's which have a few more features and the audio drivers are supposed to be slightly better

I'll have to pop along - I'd like to start using sharepoint for a lot of things here

Well if you're going to demo it then you really need a no single point of failure config replicating to a secondary array that's also operating with no single point of failure. Then you can go start pulling cables and show how it still works (or not )!

I think we may see much tighter integration between HP and 3Com. Looks like HP really want 3Coms security bits and expertise integrated into their product lines as quickly as possible. Their products are more closely aligned than Cisco and Linksys which tend to compete in different sectors Very true!

Merry Christmas to everyone and I look forward to meeting a lot more of you at BETT

Technically they'll be the same company in the next 6 months or so On a lot of high end switches, particularly HP Procurves, you get a lifetime warranty. Some of the other brands are starting to offer these sorts of warranties as well to compete. I'd suggest making the move to gigabit - even more so if it's a core switch. The Layer 2/Layer 3 management is down to how much control you want and where the switch is going to be placed

Grr just had DNA cancel on me at the last minute. Next collection they can do is 11th Jan which is no good for us! Would have been OK if they'd cancelled a day or two in advance (they don't have enough drivers because of a funeral - which they should have known about!) so that I could try to organise an alternative collection. Need to get this stuff collected as it's sitting on the stage at the moment with no where to go back to Just ringing around at the moment trying to find someone that can collect ASAP

There's just one type of Schools agreement. The difference comes from how long you license for: 1 or 3 years. I'm not 100% clear on what the difference is (having just entered into a schools agreement) but I believe signing up for the longer periods means your license costs stay pretty much the same over those 3 years, whereas single year agreements are subject to cost increases each renewal. What you've licensed for under you schools agreement is the Microsoft Desktop Pack which includes Windows, Office + the Core CAL pack cheaper then licensing them individually. What _Ric was alluding to is the fact that Windows 7 Enterprise is only available to Software Assurance customers. If you purchase your licenses through a standard select agreement you only get the rights to run Windows 7 Business. In order to get access to Enterprise you then need to take out a SA agreement. Which ever way you license if you want access to Enterprise you will have an ongoing cost. One of many reasons we decided to opt for a schools agreement. The fact that we're now going to have a pretty static yearly licensing cost was another reason

Have you seen the new Dell Optiplex 780 USFF? It's got very similar dimensions to the PC you linked to - not sure on how eco-friendly it is though!

Anyone know how well Audacity runs on a thin client?

XXL for me as well please

What you're looking for is a C15/C16 IEC cable. It's the same as the normal C13/C14 IEC cable (commonly referred to as a kettle lead ), but is rated to 120C rather than 70C. I got some very short C15/C16 leads with a HP PDU unit but trying to find others has been a nightmare! If you do find someone that stocks them let me know Have a look at [ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_connector[/ame] for some more info.

Like tmcd35 our figures didn't include the reprographics machines.

If you're running a KMS server you don't need to enter a key. It should be able to detect the KMS server running on your network and activate its self through that. Failing that you could always try one of the KMS keys - Volume Activation Deployment Guide