crc-ict

I've used Parents Evening System at a previous school, and my children's school use it - it goes down well with parents and is kind to admins too. The developers are also great people to deal with. At my current school, we are looking into this too - we are considering Parents Evening System and the new offering from ParentMail. We already use ParentMail for comms, although the parents evening bookings is on their new platform. Parents Evening System are the leaders on this one, as their product has been around for at least 3 years so is tried and tested and at an advanced stage of development. The PM system is the new kid on the block, I don't think it's even on general release yet. But for an existing PM school, it makes sense to look at, and their pricing is quite compelling for existing users.

Plan in a trip to the local dump as the last thing before you return the van - you are bound to accrue a huge pile of stuff that you don't want any more and it's stacks easier to get rid in bulk at the start rather than goodness knows how many car loads later.

That could be a double-edged sword though - every time I've done a comparison site run, I've picked up at least two credit file hits from insurers - too many of those and they can cause you problems.

Tesco Clubcard vouchers are the way to go for casual Cineworld visits. £4.50 in vouchers for an adult ticket (£3.50 for kids), plus you can use it to book online in advance for 50p a ticket. You can also get a voucher for a small drink and small popcorn for £2.50, which saves about £5-6 compared to the cinema price. Of course the ultimate bargain is Movies for Juniors, £1.35 a seat with myCineworld signup.

Our teachers also like to get the children up to interact. This is much easier with the smartboards. The LCDs seem to struggle with the inevitable errant fingers more than the Smart.

We are a first and middle school, with iiyama 65" Prolite Interactive screens. Our teachers find they are too small, too hard to see, not bright enough, too reflective. They find them over-sensitive and dislike the lack of a proper pen and eraser. This is coming from SmartBoards. With our last set of installs, we went back to Smart. We are using the SBX880 multi-touch (optical sensor) boards, with Hitachi ultra-short-throw projectors.

We actually bought some interactive screen as 'early adopters' and have gone back to buying smartboards as the teachers hate the LCDs.

Wow, what suppliers are they using? Never heard of Next Day delivery?! It's not that the situation is any better with interactive screens - it's just taken us 3 weeks to get one swapped out under warranty.

1. Merry Christmas Everyone - Slade 2. Last Christmas - Wham 3. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Wizzard Although got to give a shout for Bob Rivers Twisted Christmas with classics like 'Osama got run over by a reindeer' and 'Chipmunks roasting on an open fire'

Be afraid, be very afraid. Don't whatever happens let them scan you, you'll never hear the end!

The whole pedalling this is a bit too much effort for me I'm afraid. I've got one of these bad boys for a bit of fun: It's a 2010, and only cost me £175 back in the summer. Gives me a plaything to fiddle with the in the garage, and is useful transport to nip to the shops etc. It's only a 50cc, so it's not fast, but I can ride it on my car licence without needing to worry about CBT or tests.

I reckon this guy might be too!

Beware of SanDisk SSDs - I bought 2 18 months or so back, and so far, both have been replaced under warranty, and one of the replacements has also been replaced. Each time, total failure without warning. Literally working perfectly one minute, dead the next. Nothing on SMART to suggest imminent failure, no loss of performance. The first replacements also require you to ship the defective unit back to Czech Republic at your own cost (about £10 Airmail), although they did send me a UPS label to send back the failed replacement. Replacement takes 2-3 weeks including shipping time which is 3 or 4 days by UPS.

Don't come here looking for sympathy! It's all your fault after all

We have the same problem here with our RISO ComColor printer. The issue also occurs in Windows 8 Modern UI apps, such as the default Win8 Reader. We've also had problems with issues getting things from Google Apps to print to the RISO using Chrome. No idea how to fix, so would also be interested in any ideas.

On that note, am I the only one who keeps thinking about the opening scenes of Outbreak? Given the lethality of this thing, the difficulty in keeping it under control and the risk to the world if it really gets out, maybe that wouldn't be such a radical idea? As one of the quotes in the film says "Be compassionate. But be compassionate globally."

Given that in some F1 races they seem to get the Safety Car out for no more serious reason than someone in the crowd having wind, it seems mad to me that with that going on, in those conditions, the Safety Car wasn't deployed. But whatever the rights and wrongs of it, lets keep our thoughts with Jules and his family.

When we were switching from County broadband to a third party provider, we did exactly as you were proposing. Our new connection and the WAN were both connected to the LAN, with all devices using the new connection router IP as default gateway and the bursar's PC using the WAN router IP as gateway so he could still do FMS exchanges with County. Worked fine. Only thing you need to make sure is that both routers face the LAN with IP addresses within the same range. (for example, we had 172.xx.x.1 and 172.xx.x.2 as the two gateways).

I bought a cheap one electric one from Homebase and it was hopeless - returned it within the week. Ended up buying a MacAllister petrol one from B&Q - so much easier than faffing with cable and much more powerful. Only criticism with it is that it is obviously designed more for blowing than sucking as it's a bit awkward to hold in suck mode. That said, the Stihl one the premises guys at work have is much the same in that respect. I'd cautiously recommend, although I had a bit of a 'mare getting it started the first time. I got it going eventually and it's fine now though, and £70 for a petrol blower is great value.

Good luck!

My first phone was one of these: Back in 1998 on One2One! Think that might be oldest (certainly the brick-est) one mentioned here so far. Even had a pull-out antenna! I think you could have put that in a back pocket on a bumper car and it would have survived!

Is it just me that would be a bit uncomfortable at giving Google the amount of information that is needed to generate a motor insurance quote? That sort of info must be a goldmine for what is, effectively, an advertising organisation! Coupled with what they already have from browsing history, Gmail analysis, location data etc...

Doom? On a printer? Our RISO is a pretty fast, but even that would make for a pretty ropey frame rate!!!

For some reason (even I am not sure why) I have decided that I really want a 50cc scooter to tinker with and run about on! I guess two cars aren't enough for me

All this talk of limiting energy consumption of kettles in the future is baffling to me. Anyone who knows any science will understand that it takes a given amount of energy to raise a given quantity of water from ambient temperature to 100 degrees C. Given that the 'wattage' (power) of a kettle is simply a measure of the rate at which it can provide that energy, reducing the power will simply increase the time taken to boil, with the same net consumption. What they need to do with kettles is come up with a way of encouraging the boiling of only the amount of water required rather than a full kettle. With the other devices, if they increase the efficiency of the kit as well as reducing the motor power, this should reduce the consumption by not decreasing productivity.