soveryapt

Yeah, but it's more fun to reel them in a bit first .. lol ..

But that is my day job, I just do the IT as a side thing ..

So, our ICT Coordinator is doing a project about developing a PowerPoint document for use in Food Tech to help the teacher show how to make Pizzas and stuff. When she'd finished explaining the activity, I asked her why she's not making it a festive theme, so she went on a bit about it just being a generic activity, so I explained she could have added the Christmas special pizza on, she asked what I meant, I said the Good King Wenceslas pizza .. paused for effect (and the slightly puzzled face) before revealing "you know, Deep Pan, Crisp and Even" .. ba-dum-tsh!

You mean that's not driven by us educational techs who can then say to staff "I can't rip your DVD in, non of the computers have a DVD drive" ?? lol ..

Depends on the profile of the person .. but shhhh .. don't tell everyone .. lol ..

Yup .. as @Simmy hinted though, it's more the £££ and quality of service as well .. it's just shocking .. when you do get help, it's ok, but not great ..

Definitely not this .. as many have mentioned, just say no .. it's a blanket rule for me in schools that I'm in .. if the school hold the correct license for showing DVDs and such outside of curricular activities then the film must be shown from that DVD (or resource) as appropriate. If they want the film "putting on the network so all classes can watch it" they're told no .. Even with something in writing from the HoD, or even the chair of governors, is not a permissive right for you to break the law .. extreme (and I know it's hugely extreme) example: someone comes to you and says "would you mind killing such and such person for me" .. now, you know this is illegal, so obviously you say no. You don't say "well, it's actually illegal to do so, but if you're insistent about it, please can you put it in writing then it'll be ok?" Like I say, extreme example, but it highlights the invalidity of saying "get it in writing" as it's still you that has committed the punishable offense. If they are persistent about you breaking the law, then they need to be dealt with for that. Just my 2p worth having been there myself (it's a regular question at these times of years I've noticed). EDIT: P.S; when I say I've been there, I don't mean people have approached me as hitman .. I mean, I know it's got IT within the word, but even teachers have their limits .. lol ..

Thanks but *shudders* RM .. I've heard enough bad stories about getting them involved, so don't really fancy taking them for a spin anytime soon .. I mean, I wouldn't mind having the experience of using an RM system and such to "add to my CV" etc, but I just don't fancy working with it day in day out ..

Ooo .. looks good .. ta

Is that more a system wide thing? I'm just after keeping non-mac drives clean really which BlueHarvest seems to do nicely.. it's a shame Onyx doesn't do it as there's an option for Network drives but not "non-mac" drives .. ah well ..

Right, found this >> DS_Store, ._AppleDouble, .Folders. Keep it clean. | zeroonetwenty << which seems to be the only option .. going to download the trial and see how it does .. if it works, then at $14.95 I think I'll get it to save the "heart ache"

Afternoon All Right, ok, so this hasn't really bothered me before, just been a bit annoying when I've used a USB stick or SD card that has been in my Mac on a PC and such, but now I want to try and find a solution to this problem. As Mac users will know, OS X puts a load of hidden files and your drive to help with the indexing of it when in your Mac. It's not something I have a particular issue with, as on a Mac they're hidden, but in any other devices you get all the .FileName and ._Filename type files, as well as the .DS_Store etc. The reason this is annoying me today is that I thought I'd try out putting music on a SD card to use in my wifes car, so you scroll to the folder you want only to be greated with all the "corrupt" dot files first that it skips it's way through until it reaches a playable audio file. With that in mind then, I'm looking to try and find a way in which to stop it putting the dot files onto external devices and such in the first place so that they remain clean. It's actually something that would be good for when checking a clients flash drive etc, to be able to hand it back without all those additional files on too, so does anyone know of any way to go about doing this? When I Googled it, there seemed to be a lot of ways of how to stop SpotLight indexing it, which would remove some, but I wondered if there's a way to stop them all? Thanks Andy

Yeah, I realise the direct thing might be a bit expensive, but we've been looking at their Swordfish product of late (amongst other document management things) and I've basically said "see what you can do for us" .. so they might come up with a nice package deal on it all that whilst initially might be expensive in buying a new license (Lancs kept a hold of them and made schools contractually buy into their services as a result - so we might have to rebuy our SIMS license .. grrr) but will see what comes of it. I've been working with another supplier of mine as well to look at options. I think if we move it will be an independent supplier for both rather than getting tied into another LEA or anything. Will see what comes of it though. Re your leased lines, I'm just checking with a supplier I have in the area to see if they do leased lines. They're called Unique Business Solutions (http://www.ubsol.co.uk) - great team and very helpful, I've worked with them for the past 12 years or so without any issue, but don't know if they do leased line .. I suspect they probably do, or at least can point in a good direction. If I hear back that they can help, I'll PM you over my contacts contact details.

Yeah, just deployed (well in the middle of doing so, installed should perhaps be the word at this stage) a NetGear 4 Bay 1U Unit which is offering 8TB on RAID4 in a school. Works nicely and I like the interface, hence considering the NetGear 102 to replace my buffalo at home. which just seems a little slow and clunky. Tis ok, I'd love to have a bit more cash to throw about on personal projects .. maybe I need to up my hourly rates! lol .. Indeed, I always have a read up on firmware for such devices, make sure there are no major bugs with the latest release that people are moaning about, then patch it up. I was surprised to find my Buffalo was actually on latest firmware when it arrived actually.

Yeah, I've considered it. I do have a Ubuntu Server running at home as well on a Fuji server box which I could RAID within, and that looks after most of my home server requirements in terms of media server, "off grid" testing web platform etc, so I could technically put it into that, but I like the idea of having it in it's own box out of the way instead of all eggs one basket. Lol .. someone obviously didn't see the limited budget comment .. most QNAP NAS that have the 2 drive bays are 3-4 times the cost of the NetGear one .. but thanks anyway ..

Ok, so NAS with RAID (for my home setup). I currently have a Buffalo LinkStation Duo with 3x 3TB Drives in, but it seems to run a bit clunky at times. Mainly used as my central backup point for my 2 Macs as TimeMachine, but also has on it my other general backups of bits and bobs (more archived stuff I guess) since it's RAID to give that bit of redundancy. Anywho, I just wondered, we've just got a rather large Netgear ReadyNAS at school which I quite like the interface of, so I'm considering whether I purchase an empty ReadyNAS 102 (so the equivalent model of my current Buffalo) and just putting drives across. I'm aware I'd have to use a go between drive to make sure things copied over okay with different RAID controllers and such, but I just wondered what peoples thoughts were. Do you have experience with either? Which would you say is better? I don't have a massive budget, and the only reason I'm considering it is I've found a new ReadyNAS 102 for £109, so saving £50 or so. Thanks Andy

Thanks both. I guess this will be the way forward then. Need to get the final yes from the powers that be, but wanted to be sure of the information before I go down that route!

Afternoon all Right, so as part of the migration away from bits and pieces, one thing we're looking to do is move to Office 365 for the e-mail provision. Currently, our mail is hosted on the CLEO Exchange servers with One Connect, so I just wondered if anyone has been through the process, and if so, what they found was the best way of migrating from the CLEO servers. At the moment, the only real way I'm seeing is a user per user basis and using outlook then copying the information over, which could be quite tiresome to say the least. Cheers Andy

Nah, I was logged on as them, but I hadn't fired up Cash Office, so I wonder if that is making a change somewhere .. hmm .. might investigate that further ..

Yup, checked this one .. thanks though

Ask me again in 5 mins and the answer will be yes .. lol .. I'm pretty certain it's all being applied though as other settings match up .. but who knows ..

Morning all Right, I've got a persistent problem at the moment with our bursars PC. All PCs are set to time out (display to sleep, go to lock screen, etc) after a class period of time (45 mins) so that when a member of staff decides they're going to leave their workstation open, it hopefully minimises the risk of someone going on and looking where they shouldn't etc. Now, our Bursars PC has decided of late that actually, it's going to start doing this after 1 minute instead. I've check my GPO settings, I've check local machine settings, and I've even set up a new GPO for the admin machines to say "YOU MUST NOT SLEEP .. SLEEP IS FOR HUMANS" or words to that effect, but it still defies me. The other day, I did wonder whether School Cash Office was causing the issue as this is a new piece of software (for us anyway) which is only on the bursars machine. I have to admit, I sat in front of the machine for a while and it didn't seem to lock when it wasn't open, but I popped in to check today and it's still doing it, so I'm after a list of ideas that you think might cause this that I should be checking over. I'm willing to try anything, including a sacrificial offering of a lamb to the IT gods (I wonder if my neighbours farm would miss a lamb for that?), but seriously, ideas are welcome. Even if you think it's a "he will have tried this already I'm certain" as I just can't fathom it, and she pays my invoices at the end of the day, so between her and the head who signs them off, I want to keep her happy! lol .. Thanks Andy

Afternoon folks Right, a school I work in is now seriously looking at getting other provisions for the facilities that have, historically, been provided by the LEA (CLEO), so I'm just wondering what others have gone to for such things and, where possible, any cost ideas. Just for our sales friends on here, there is nothing guaranteed, this is simply an investigation to see as the school becomes less and less enthused with the service they are being provided with by OCL. My own thoughts are I'll probably move to Office 365 for the e-mails and such as the staff are used to the Outlook interface, so it won't be a massive change. This is probably something that will happen no matter what goes with the rest, but other services would be: Filtering (currently online based with limited interaction from my point of view) SIMS (currently maintained and upgraded via the LEA - will probably approach Capita direct - in fact I already have for a quote) Espresson/ClipBank (currently we only have Espresso in the school, but ClipBank looks like it might be a good resource too - will probably approach direct again for that) Antivirus (currently Sophos is provided as part of the bundle, but they're removing this from the bundle from next year so they can get an appraisal of the license requirements - so time to shop around me thinks - though I quite like Sophos, seems to work well - but open to options) Remote backup for SIMS data (currently done via OCL again, but this doesn't have to be this way, and seems quite expensive for what it is, but other options are more than welcome) Broadband (we're on a radio link as historically, traditional feeds haven't been able to offer the speed we need. For this, I would consider looking at Fibre now FTTC is in the area, but also, I have a working relationship with Boundless Communication over Preston way as I use their service for my farm) I'm sure there are other bits they do that I'm missing somewhere, but I think that's generally it, but please do add to. Will be interested to hear feedback / suggestions on it all. Thanks Andy

Yeah, if they were to be slimmed down, then all sets would be slimmed down the same amount so that all laptops were the same to avoid that.

EVERYTHING .. everything could .. *shudders at the very thought of even trying to make that work* Yeah, that was my thinking behind it, I slimmed all the images right back last time to the bits I knew people used and waited for the onslaught of "oi, where's x y z" but that never came, so the fact it just had to be installed for the previous 4 years I've been here says a lot! lol! The laptops are more than capable of running all the software (in fact some probably more so than a few of the desktops knocking about) and it's that meeting the needs. There are a lot of staff that use them, but only one or two who have complained they think they should have nothing more than office and the internet on them.