PrimaryTech

For the last 3 years I've bought the same shoes, Clarks 'Acre Out' loafers. A pair lasts me a full academic year of trudging around the building plus the odd game of playground football. They're usually around £40 but the last pair I got were £20 in an online sale. A 5 minute wash and polish every week keeps them smart.

I use a Saitek P150 with my Pi running the full RetroPie distro. D-Pad, 6 button + 1 on each shoulder. They're old though so getting a new one might be hard, plus it's wired.

Intel Play was bought (I think) by DigiBlue years ago. Could be worth giving them an email as they produced a QX7 'scope that was compatible with Windows 7: Digital Blue Store

I did a WSUS server cleanup that clawed back just over 1GB of space but didn't go through the updates in depth. The drive in question contains the WSUS folder as specified in WSUS.

Hi All, Our DC is due for retirement in the Summer and I've stripped away most of its non critical roles apart from being a print server and WSUS server. The WSUS files are filling up the largest drive in the DC and I'm looking to move them to a USB drive connected to the DC until our new server is built in the summer. I'm wary of adding USB drives to server machines so I thought I'd ask if anyone else has done this before?

Mid cornwall, between Newquay and St Austell.

Does anyone know of any schools in Cornwall using the VividTouch screens? They're the only ones I haven't had a play with and would like to get a hands on before making a decision.

Hi All, I'm currently looking at replacing out Smartboard 580's with interactive displays and I've whittled the potential screens down to 3 (All 65"): Genee GTouch 65GTD - Was demo'd one by a nearby school, worked well in low January afternoon sun, competitively priced, Android onboard is a nice touch. Clevertouch Plus 65" - Again, demo'd one by a nearby school, seemed more responsive than the Genee, built in Android again, Like the potential of the Display Note bundled software, premium price. VIVIDTouch VTE-6500 - Keenest priced so far, 2x HDMI in, no android system, slim bezel, haven't had a hands on. I'm wondering if anyone has used any of these 3 and would recommend one over the other. Are the Android based ones worth the premium? Primarily they're replacing Smartboards but our staff don't use the Smart-Ink-Awareness and we will licence Smart software separately.

Long term, if you don't have to carry vast amounts with you do a CBT and get a 125cc bike. Before darling daughter came around (3 yrs ago) I did my CBT, had a 125 for 6 months then did my DAS (Passed first time too). My commute is a16 mile round trip, I could fill the tank on my Yamaha SR125 for 7 quid, go to work all week and still have fuel left over. £16 a year RFL is ace too!

Hi all, I've got two Xerox WC7835's that are shared out to all clients. The default print settings are to print everything in black and white. For a user to print in colour they have to printer preferences and untick the box for B&W. However, once they do this that setting stays unticked until they either change it back or reboot the machine. Is there a way I can get the printer to 'reset' the settings to default after every print job on the client's machine? Secretary is concerned about high colour bill and I think staff are printing a few things in colour but then everything else they send is going through as colour too.

It depends on how much you want to spend on motoring over that 2 year period. Me and the missus have an E91 3 series estate and little Renault Modus that's 6 years old. In March our daughter will be 3 and as we won't need to pay the bulk of childcare then we're going to flog the modus and lease a brand new run around (Either a Clio or Dacia Stepway). We worked out that the depreciation over the 3 years of Modus ownership + doing all the maintenance and MOTs is equal to leasing a car for the same period. We don't travel great distances so mileage caps aren't an issue and don't need to carry a buggy in the boot so something small is fine.

Hi there, At one of the sites I support we're still using TrueCrypt to encrypt our External HDD backup drives so that they can be taken off-site. I'm getting increasingly paranoid about using a piece of software that is now more than a year out of support, worried that a vulnerability may compromise our data. Can anyone recommend an alternative for encrypting large ( <2TB ) external HDDs? Thanks in advance!

Hi All, One of my UPS is failing so I'm looking at purchasing a new one. Using APC's calculator they came up with the APC Smart-UPS 1500VA LCD 230V APC Smart-UPS 1500VA LCD 230V - Ebuyer. Whilst look for alternatives I found this one APC Smart-UPS C 1500VA LCD 230V - Ebuyer Can anyone tell me the difference between the two, apart from the slightly higher Wattage 980 Vs. 900. Is the SMT1500i worth the extra £80?

Yes we had quotes for overhead fibre / Cat6 link but it was cost prohibitive (1 - 1.5k). The outbuilding only serves 2 - 8 clients so a wifi bridge is the better option for us. A 300mbps link would be fine if they had Gbit ethernet connections.

Forgot to say, indoor APs with external antennas 😒

Hi all, One of the schools I support has a wifi bridge connecting 2 buildings. The APs used are 2 old DLink 54G units and I'm looking for replacements as the rest of the site is Gig linked and the bridge is causing a bottle neck. Any recommendations?

Yeah both current 2008 DC's are being retired in the summer and we'll hopefully be migrating to Virtualised 2012 r2's.

I checked the Domain and Forest functional levels and they're running at Windows 2000 Native and Windows 2000 respectively. Can I bump them straight to 2008 as there are no 2003 servers on the network?

Cheers Michael, I'll give it a bash. Can an adprep be done during a normal day or is it best to be done out-of-hours? Will the DC need a reboot?

Hi All, I've got 2 Server 2008 machines running as Domain Controllers and I'm looking to add a third Server 2008 r2 DC as cover while I service one of the Server 2008 DCs. I've read that I'll need to run Adprep/Forestprep and Adprep/Domain prep on the FSMO role holder, is there anything else I need to do? I'll be running Adprep32 on the FSMO holder as it's a 32 bit machine. Thanks in advance

I'm giving ubermix a go, comes packed with educational software, only took about 10mins to install off a usb key. Boots in about 50 secs but resumes from lid close in 5-10. Gonna try 5 on Friday and get some pupil feedback

I work as a self-employed tech at that school and I've known the head for years so the school are happy for me to experiment (Plus they're an academy so saves the pennies). In an ideal world I'd have an x86 version of the Raspberry Pi's raspian distro

I'm looking for recommendations for a lightweight linux distribution to run on some old Dell Latitude D series laptops. They're going to be used mainly for internet terminals but the ability to access SMB shares and printers would be great. If they could connect to our domain for AV management that would be a bonus but isn't essential. Laptops have 1.5GB RAM and 40GB HDD's with 1.5GHz celerons. I've used Slax and CrunchBang linux in the past but if any of you guys have some recommendations that would be great.

I upgraded our DC from 2003 to 2008 during summer (32bit, getting replaced next summer) and since then I've been getting CertificateServicesClient-AutoEnrollment errors in the Event Log (Event ID 64) with the following text: Certificate for local system with Thumbprint [40 digit hex thumbprint] is about to expire or already expired.. I followed the instructions to resolve the error here: Event ID 64 — AD CS Certification Authority Certificate and Chain Validation and found that the certificate in question had expired over 3 years ago: The certificate has a parent TRCA certificate that expired back in April: Whe I try to renew the child certificate I get the following error: I then went to Server Manager > Roles and found that Active Directory Certificate Services is not installed. My question is this, If I add the ADCS role to the server will it pick up the existing certificates or will it get rid of them all? This is the screen on which I decided I'd better ask for help:

Thank you thank you thank you! Spent an hour trying to sort this on Friday. Notebook not working for one user but working for other users or when running as an Administrator. Deleted that file, opened Notebook and it created a new one and opened up fine