PrimaryTech

Awesome, thank you!

Hi there, Can someone tell me the correct SIMS fileset for completing the Summer 2025 Census?

Hi there, Our school is currently rolling out a 1:1 iPad programme and I'm looking for recommendations for charging blocks. We're going to be charging the iPads in blocks of 8 (SLT don't want cabinets / trolleys in each room) on a rotation. As they're iPad 9's they draw quite a lot of power. We've got a couple of 8-port 40w chargers but they can only charge 2-3 at any given time. Are there any power blocks that can handle 4 or 8 iPads at a time? Is at simple as saying I need a 160W block as 20w x 8 = 160w? Any advice welcome 👍

I've still got A HP LaserJet 4050 with a parallel port JetDirect that gets daily use as a label printer, original invoice says it was purchased in July 2000. What's the oldest bit of kit you've still got running?

I've got a Casio 5 alarm Solar as my 'daily' watch, £20 from an outlet store and tough enough for classroom bumps. 'Fancy' watch is an Accurist Grand Prix (Fancy = £50). Bought one for my old man as a birthday gift and liked it so much I bought another for myself. If I win the lottery I'd get a Tag Heuer Monaco Gulf.

Thanks for all your replies, based on what they've been proposed for (TTRockstars, Kahoot, Nearpod and Accelerated Reader) It may be cost effective in the long run to replace them all with Kindle fires. I've just done an eBay search for NB30's and they seem to go for around the £30 mark so we'd be near cost-neutral in selling them and putting the money towards kindles.

Hi all, haven't posted in ages as I no longer have IT as my primary role but I've been asked to try and revitalise some Samsung NB-30 netbooks. The ram was maxxed out about 5 years ago (2GB) and they've not been used in 2.5 years. I'm looking to source some cheap 32/64GB 2.5" SSDs to install a lite Linux distro so the netbooks can be used for Socrative, Kahoot and TTRockstars. I know that 120GB drives are retailing at £15 but I really only need 32GB as they will essentially be cloudbooks. Any help gratefully received.

I'm looking for recommendations on software for Windows 7 that will mirror an iPad screen. We've previously used Reflector trial and LonelyScreen but now most of our iPads are on iOS 11 Lonely Screen doesn't want to play. Happy to pay for a solution, looking for 8 licences. TIA.

I'm getting an Honor 8x at the end of the month, camera reviews seem to be positive and it comes with 64gb on board space with a micro SD slot should you need it. It's £229 and if you buy it at ao.com you can have it interest free for 6 months, about £39 a month.

Can you install Windows 10 on the 4th Gen i7's? One of these would be perfect for our school secretary.

Cheers guys, I think I probably need to spend more time digging out issues rather than starting again. Thanks for the responses!

I'm due a physical server upgrade soon and will be looking to convert my 3 existing physical servers into VM's. I've been running the domain for nearly 12 years now (Server 2000 - 2008 R2) and I was wondering if anyone has ever ditched a domain and started a fresh one from scratch? Our DC migrations have always been a PITA and it feels like each time I do a migration, despite doing dcdiags, I get more and more problems and I'm wondering if a new server would be a good opportunity to start with a fresh domain.

Hi All, Our literacy co-ordinator would like to buy some devices to use as e-readers. We're currently looking at Amazon products (mainly for availability of content) and I'm unsure whether to recommend the entry E-Ink reader or the Fire 7 tablet. The tablet is £10 cheaper and will do other things wheras the E-Reader is more expensive but pupils can't be distracted by other things. Has anyone used a Fire 7 as an E-Reader? Charging isn't an issue as they'll be kept in a central store. TIA

I thought maybe even a 30/32GB SSD would work as I'll only be installing W7, Office, Chrome and some small applications. I'm thinking they'll be used mainly for web applications and word processing.

Hi All, I have 15 Samsung NB30 Netbooks (Atom 1.66GHz processors, 1GB RAM, 320GB HDD's W7x64) that are around 4-5 years old. They're currently not being used by staff as they are painfully slow. I can only upgrade them to 2GB RAM, I tried a 2GB module in one and it improved the performance to acceptable levels but is it really worth it? I have these possible options: Upgrade all 15 to 2GB RAM, Around £200 Remove W7 and install a lightweight Linux OS, such as UberMix Sell them and put the money towards some other IT What would you guys do? Are they worth saving?

Hi there, One of the schools I work at currently have Office365 email and OneDrive cloud storage and all staff are happy using both products. They have also been using Microsoft's Public-Facing Sharepoint website as their main website. Microsoft is currently closing Public-Facing Websites (though we've clicked the option to postpone until March 2018) and I'm looking at a new website provider. I've contacted various school-focused providers but I am also looking into using the Sites portion of Google's G Suite. Is anyone else running both Office 365 and G Suite / Google Sites side-by-side? I'd initially be looking to just set up the website on G Suite but can I do that and use my school.LA.sch.uk domain when the same domain is used by Office 365 for our mail? Thanks in advance.

That sounds good, I have 2x 3TB drives so one will be hosting all the shares and the other will be hosting the shadow copies. Is there anything special I have to do when backing up the volume with the shadow copies on? Currently backing up to encrypted external drives using Windows Server Backup / robocopy.

Hi All, I'm looking to enable Shadow copies on my file server to enable users to restore their own files (and to save me time). Has anyone got any tips / pointers before I start? My file server is running Server 2008 R2 and I have good, full backups of all volumes / folders. I will be continuing with backups alongside Shadow Copy, so it won't be my single recovery option. I'm currently using this guide to undertake the process: Configuring Volume Shadow Copy on Windows Server 2008 - Techotopia

I'm in the same situation, Monitoring is the only this missing from my 360Safe mark. I'm still evaluating RM Response, Smoothwall and Impero but struggling to find something that fits out mix of Windows desktops / laptops and Apple iPads. Has anyone found a workable reporting / monitoring tool that works for both? (I know this thread is 6 months old)

I need to look at what filtering information I can get out of SWGfL, one of the aims of getting monitoring software in place is for the 360Safe mark.

The Smoothwall and Impero solutions looks good, are any of you guys working in a Primary environment?

I found this last night: BrowsingHistoryView - View browsing history of your Web browsers, seems to be a decent tool, I'm playing with the CLI at them moment to see if it can be scripted...

Standard Cisco 881 router, clients DNS points to DC, DC then goes off to SWGfL proxies.

Hi There, I'm looking for recommendations for software that will monitor and log Internet activity on our network's desktops and iPads. We currently have filtering via SWGfL so I don't need a combined monitoring / filtering solution, just a piece of software that will log Internet activity per device with timestamps and usernames. The iPads are shared devices but each pupil has an iPad number assigned to them so as long as I can identify the date/time I should be able to tell who is using it. I'm happy to listen to different recommendations for PCs and iPads. Thanks in advance.

After the frustration of going through the science electricity kits and weeding out all the dead / leaking batteries I've resolved to buy a bulk lot of rechargeable AA's, between 60 and 120. I would like a charger that can charge a bulk load (16 / 20 /24) at any one time. Speed isn't important, I just don't want to have to be swapping batteries out of a 4 cell charger. Any recommendations would be really helpful!