TheHyperTechie

No worries, yeah that has always been my thought process. Just dug out the old quote, we actually only paid £129 per unit. NSOptimum were the supplier 🙂

Personally, I have always avoided touchscreen chromebooks for our 1:1 scheme - I see it as another component that can go wrong. However, I can see the benefits of having them. In terms of devices, we purchased a batch of Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3s a while ago and they are performing well. From memory they were about £150 per unit. Can't comment on refurbished models though.

Action1 offer a remote desktop feature as part of their RMM. Might not include all the features you require though... however if you are under 200 endpoints, it would be free.

Thanks, that sounds exactly like what we would be after. @tom_newton are you able to chime in with some of the offerings? it would be greatly appreciated.

Hi all, Probably been asked and answered many times on here before... What ISPs with filtering include a central management platform for all of your schools? We have 16 schools, and the needs (in terms of filtering) are the same, so policies could essentially be cloned, or we could simply use a single policy to cover all of them. Is this something that the popular ISPs offer? We will likely be looking at an SD-WAN in this instance. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated - Thanks!

haha, I was about to type this. Time for schools to start looking at Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals (Free) Chromebooks (Considerably cheaper than Windows devices) and ChromeOS Flex (£30 one off license fee). But in all seriousness, it is scary - and with the constant pressure of meeting certain standards it's definitely a struggle.

A mixture! Chrome OS at home, MacOS when travelling, Windows in the Office (and sometimes at home).

WHSmiths has, and will always be, the 'Magazine Shop' in my head. Even though I know they sell (and have sold) a variety of other things, when I was younger, if you wanted a magazine, you'd go to WHSmiths.

Hi Gareth, unfortunately Google doesn't support the installation of Chrome OS flex onto AUE expired chromebooks. It covers it here in their FAQs.

I had it running on our late 2015 iMac at home. Useless with Mac OS on it due to the hardware specs etc, Chrome OS Flex basically turned it into a fast (now useable) computer again. I would recommend 🙂

Co-connect, Wave9, and Superfast Schools would be my recommendations.

We use Google Calendar for this, add the Chromebooks, iPads etc. as a resource in the admin console. Then when a class requests them, just create an event on the general "All Staff" calendar and invite the teacher of that class. Works well for us.

Hopefully they can change the eligibility and allow more schools to see these upgrades. I missed out on this opportunity with our school last year, we are located within a "education investment" area but due to our Ofsted rating at the time, didn't qualify.

Following... I know there was a setting you could apply to avoid the "Ad services pop up" that users would get. Unsure on this though, but as others have said - it would be useful. Maybe if enough of us submit this is as a feature idea, they will action it?

In my old Trust we used to run the schools SBCs on mid spec (i5/8gb/256) HP laptops that we had spare. In my new Trust, I moved them over to a new VoIP system and purchased 2 x SBC capable Yealink phones to handle the VoIP traffic. This allowed me to avoid having something setup locally. Works really well.

Just an update on this - we went with a Karoq (Sportline). Lots of features, safe, comfy, and spacious.

Following... I am in a similar position to you OP. I have done CompTIA and Cisco stuff... been looking at ITIL for a while. It's just about finding the time!

I used a trial of Sophos Phish a while back, as we use them for our AV. It worked well, and the UI was easy to navigate. I am unsure of the actual cost though, I have also looked into Secure Schools, and Boxphish which appear to be good alternatives.

This is it. If you go to security > SSO with 3rd party IDPs you can manage the profile assignment. You want your teachers/staff OU to be set to "None (Users will sign in with Google)"

I have this one enabled that @paulkerton mentioned - ./Device/Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/LocalPoliciesSecurityOptions/InteractiveLogon_DoNotDisplayLastSignedIn = Integer Value 1 Appears to do the trick

For staff, I have been issuing the Acer 515 Chromebook Plus (i5 model) and they are really good quality... no complaints so far. We did a refresh not so long ago for our students 1:1 chromebooks, we chose Dell 3100s. I will say, that these aren't as robust as other models we have had in the past such as Lenovo's and HPs. Performance wise, they are good though.

If it was me, I would be looking at UniFi. Always used them, and never had any issues. If you went with the U6 Enterprise it would cost about ~£5500, assuming its just a swap out job and no additional cabling etc is required. You could then host the controller on a VM or buy a cloud key for about £150.

Annoyingly, our driveway is slightly too short for an estate. We initially looked at a Skoda Octavia VRS estate, which we really liked. However, when I got home and took some measurements, I realised it would encroach onto our neighbor's driveway… cue the headaches. All of the latest SUVs and crossovers (such as the Karoq, Kamiq, and various Mazdas) seem to be the right size to fit our driveway.

Thanks! - we looked at a CX-30 at the beginning of the week. Lovely car, but we found the back slightly too claustrophobic.

Off topic slightly, but we are in the market for a new car. Preferably, an SUV/Crossover. We have been looking at Mazda's due to the kind of spec you can get for your money - reversing camera, heated seats, sometimes even a heated steering wheel... mainly the CX-5. Does anyone here own a new(ish) Mazda that can comment on their performance and reliability? We have also looked at Skoda's as we also like a couple of their models (Karoq and Kamiq) but for the price tag, you aren't getting quite as much as Mazda's offerings.