crc-ict

How old was your other motherboard? I'm only thinking, does your existing power supply have the additional 4 pin P4 power connector? That might cause problems if not.

When I was a kid I found a dead blow-fly in a Sherbet Fountain! 8O It was great though - wrote to Bassetts and complained and they sent me the biggest box of their sweets that you could ever imagine

Nope, they're not pulling your leg. Most of the ones you see round here are labelled as 'Daim' bars - not sure if they've actually been renamed though, or whether the shops are just selling imported bars, like the bottles of Coke you get in London tube station kiosks with Arabic writing on the labels :?

Standard Shirt, Tie, Trousers combo here - not always tremendously practical, but the professional image is important. There is a distinct lack of other males in several of my schools too, so I have to stick to the accepted idea of men's work attire as I have no-one else to compare with or to be an ally!

Hi All, I am hoping someone can help me with this puzzle! I am wanting to set up an IMAP mail server which can be set up to automatically collect the messages from a handful of external POP accounts and deliver them to one of two IMAP accounts on the local server ready for collection from there. I want to get this working on my home server so that I can have my e-mail archive accessible from any of my computers, and possibly even from online. I am in the process of redeveloping my home server, so I'm not fussed whether I have to do it on my Debian box, or do have access to Windows Server 2000 which is another option. Main stipulation is that it needs to be relatively straightforward, and free! I believe Exchange could do what I want, but it is way too expensive. Any thoughts? Cheers, Chris.

We just got Lego Mindstorms at one of my primaries and I spent a fun-filled couple of hours 'thoroughly testing' the new hardware It's fantastic!

Well, I haven't voted in the poll as none of the options apply really. I'm with Sirbendy, actually - I enjoy the job and find it rewarding. OK, I'm never going to set the world alight when it comes to earnings or progression, but I enjoy making a difference to the children's education. And being appreciated for what I do. Contrary to popular wisdom, not all teachers are whinging PITA who exist solely to annoy the ICT team - I'd say virtually all the teachers and headteachers in my schools appreciate my work and efforts and a large proportion of them go out of their way to convey that appreciation. And to see the look of excitement and wonder on the faces of small primary children when you arrive in their classroom with the latest new thing is priceless. I have to admit to having almost ended up on 'the dark side' by doing a primary teaching degree, but part way through I had a bad experience and gave up teaching, but decided to stay in education and go down the technical route. I'm now half way through the first year and am still happy with the decision, but now I'm thinking about ways to progress in this field without having to make the jump to secondary which I really don't fancy the idea of. Waterloo Road is enough to confirm my opinions of what that can be like!

I bet you do! I have trouble getting some of my schools to buy things we need in the school!

Thanks for that, Tony. Got my MacBook today and just completed the install, decided to go for the full 32Gb Windows partition - small enough that I could still use FAT32 to share with OS X, but I think big enough for what I need. Initial impressions are good - performance seems good and there is something strangely cool (in a geeky sort of way) about seeing XP on Apple hardware! I opted for a refurbished model - saving about a third and getting a 2.0GHz machine with 1Gb RAM, 80Gb HD and DVD-RW for £600 - seems like a sound decision, although you lose that 'new' experience a little bit. Mine has some light surface scratching and some signs of being used, and you don't get that special Apple packaging experience. But the over £200 saved I think compensates - but only time will tell for sure! EDIT: Forgot to mention that the process was simplicity itself, even managed to get it to work flawlessly with a slipstreamed XP Home Upgrade disc, despite the conventional wisdom online that it wouldn't work. There is a trick to using upgrade CDs - google is your friend here!

Same here! No idea what it is in most of my schools. Nope, I use a nice cotton bud soaked in tape head cleaning fluid (Isopropyl Alcohol) and give it a good rub. Any stubborn deposits get the electrician's screwdriver treatment

Hi All, I have just ordered myself a MacBook after deliberating for a while about a new laptop. I'm very interested in the capability of Boot Camp and running XP on the Mac and was wondering if anyone here has had any experience of doing this? I'd be very interested to hear any comments, tips and suggestions from someone who's done it, both about the process and how it functions afterwards too! Cheers, Chris.

Well, voted for going back to Workgroups, but my schools are still on workgroups for the curriculum side at the moment... Not my fault I have to say, only been covering these schools since September and I have what I inherited with little prospect of changing things radically for now. The admin side is now on domains, but seperated completely from the curriculum side - works well for us. County handle the admin stuff, so not my problem(!) and this keeps the two sides apart meaning neither one has to worry about what the other is doing!

Don't be so sure about that! I'm 25, cover support on a weekly basis for eight schools and cover two more infrequently, and although my salary grade is very reasonable, the actual take home pay is far from reasonable at not much more than half a grand a month! I'm in my first year out of Uni (long story) but dedicated to education and living with it to build a career, but it's not a big money maker at the moment. So no, it's not just Dorset who pay peanuts. edit: removed potentially sensitive info!

I can vouch for this - the stickers work pretty well, although they need quite a bit of patience to get them stuck on straight! We stuck 5 sets on Apple iBooks and they seem to be holding up reasonably well.

Any ideas how to attempt data recovery on a hard disk that the BIOS can no longer detect? The disk detection shows about half of the disk's model name, but not all of it, and it doesn't actually get the settings or work! I know it's a long shot, but I have come across at least one linux-based thing (NASLite) which can access drives without them showing in BIOS and I'm holding out a vain hope of being able to get something off. Otherwise, a teacher is about to learn the hard way about the value of backing-up. Cheers, Chris.

Yup, been there, done that. Steer clear of the £399 Optoma they do, though. Utter, utter crap. It lasted 30 minutes with me before I was driven mad by the terrible picture and returned it!

I don't know about the education one, but the Ramesys site for the BCS discounted software doesn't have Vista or Office 2007 on it yet in any guise. Very annoying, and they don't seem to want to reply to enquiries about it either. Not good.

Hi James, I would be inclined to agree with your NM - definately sounds heat-related. Very similar symptoms to those I had with a laptop where the fan had died. Definately try Craig's suggestion. How much thermal paste did you use? Too much can be as bad as too little. Did you notice any damage to the bottom surface of the heatsink? Might also be worth doing a memory test - google Memtest86 - memory which is on the way out can also exhibit similar signs.

Is this another nail in Vista's coffin? If people are already advising to wait at least six months for the evolutional upgrade to Vista, what is the point when a revolutional upgrade is expected in another 18 months? I for one would baulk at paying almost £200 retail for a product which will be superseded by a major new technology upgrade in only 18 months, neccessitating another similarly large outlay! Can't see the sense. Having said that, I can't see what's wrong with XP - on the other hand, I can - I don't need to pay M$ another £200 to keep on using XP Call me a cynic if you will.

Cheers, Simon. I've actually had another look at PowerPoint and think we can probably make that work... I had (rather embarrassingly) forgotten that when I looked at it before, I was at home and looking at the 2007 Beta which does away with the 'Action Settings' right-click menu and makes interactive things a little trickier. Looking again at PowerPoint 2000, it seems much easier! @meastaugh1: Thanks for the suggestion of 2Create. I looked at that too, but the cost issue is the same as HyperStudio - £300 is a lot to shell out for just one unit. I can't see anyone else using it the rest of the year!

Dear All, A cry for help from my fellow Primary people here! I have been asked to look into suitable software for teaching the Unit 6A on Multimedia Presentation. It appears that we need a Multimedia Authoring package to cover all the aspects of the Integrated task. The teacher has a set of published plans and examples which need a program called HyperStudio, but it's old, expensive and to my mind, not very child-friendly. We need something which is pretty basic, and preferably cheap - it's not something we're going to use outside of this unit and it's hard to justify around £300 for a site licence for a single unit. Any suggestions? I've looked at using PowerPoint, but I'm not sure that we can acheive the aims of the unit easily enough. I know you can set up actions and buttons with PowerPoint, but it's not a straightforward process is it? I'm out of ideas and would love to hear how other people are getting around this. Feel free to PM me if you'd rather not post publicly. Cheers, Chris.

But also, rich or poor, need to be able to move around in this modern world. And the truth is, alternatives just aren't good enough at the moment to be able to stop driving, especially in more rural areas. I live in a small village on the south coast, and the earliest I can travel into the nearest city (less than 10 miles away) by bus is 11am!! I can catch a train earlier, but that entails a two-mile, 30 minute walk. So what incentive is there for me to choose either of those options when I can use my car, get there within 20 minutes and save money too? If the powers that be want us to take this seriously, they need to take it seriously too. Give us alternatives that make sense as a choice rather than trying to force us into unsuitable and undesirable alternatives.

They're having a laugh surely? Our George Foreman takes an age to get hot running off 230V from a 13A power point, so I would think the heat-up time for one running off 5V, 0.5A would be measured in hours, if not days! Pure madness... ...but very cool in a geeky kind-of way!

Yep, get that too... It's particularly annoying when you're sitting there surrounded by screws, wires and assorted dismantled equipment, wielding a screwdriver - 'No, I'm not busy, I'm just doing this for fun!'

And within 30 minutes, the previously-untouched "box in the corner" had messy finger prints all over it and toast in the floppy drive Who said the signs were aimed at the children...