3s-gtech

It’s not good. 6W TDP is always going to be tough with an OS as bulky as Windows 11 is (and it’s a RAM-hungry pig). I’ve had my fill of Surface machines. Won’t touch them now.

Publisher’s EoL has been heavily pushed by Microsoft for some time. It has another year yet, until Office 2021 LTSC goes EoL. It’s not included in 365 any more I thought? If it is, it could disappear at any time. We activate Office by pushing the KMS key in the install config, and using AD Activation. Working well.

Well balls, there goes several hundred quid.

Yeah been through the process, got the keys, and deploying and activating them with scripts. £1 a machine. Not heard owt about them being free?

The first one was absolutely mental.

Few days off now, before that it was feet up in the office drinking beers brews, got my summer jobs done as best I could. Windows 11 is everywhere it can be, new PCs deployed, massive pile of ewaste, the usual!

That’s good. It downloads to the Applications folder, and can be copied to USB from there. Instructions to do that are further down the page here https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102662 or you can use OpenCore Patcher to make one.

Oh god. I just found any satisfaction surveys would be such a downer - I’d work my arse off on something, like a summer refresh, then get such dismal, negative feedback that it’d suck me down with it. Now, I do my best and they can suck it up. I don’t care enough to hear negative feedback.

I took the last lot of refreshes (30 odd) to the scrap yard. Bit of a faff with transport, but got rid of them and got some money back. £1 each or so per battery. How you’d get that back to the school, not sure. They usually pay by cheque.

Did you try changing the source?

Yup!

Not 10.13, no. Out of support. No, it won’t install it on his. It should just download the installer which can be made into a bootable USB. if his isn’t compatible with that version, try older ones. You can always upgrade within the OS later on.

Officially, MacOS 13 I think, that’s a guess based on the year. Unofficially, MacOS 15 but that’s another process entirely.

Just checked and the 10.13 link works - it opens up the App Store. You must be using a Mac to do this. Note that I used this method yesterday to update an old Mac.

Yes. Go to https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102662 You may as well install a newer version if going from fresh - that should natively run MacOS 12 at least.

As already mentioned - you’re double-feeding it a display signal. It’s coping well by the sounds of it

How's it connected to the PC?

Non-touch, 14” laptops here - a good compromise of portability and usability. 16” for power users.

Shame you couldn’t get OpenCore working - I use it extensively (I know some frown on that in a work setting, but we have 34 Macs running the latest version of MacOS that would otherwise be ewaste). My work laptop is a 2011 Macbook Pro running MacOS 15 which is ridiculous really (though app support is not complete due to the GPU). The key is to get the machine onto the very latest supported version, install OCLP, boot to UEFI mode, then try installing the newer version. Then use the system patches. Something to bear in mind if you get your hands on another one.

2021 is EoL in October 2026, so you could still use this method for intake this year and next. That'll save you a lot in subscription fees in the interrim. There's most likely a control that's been removed or disabled by default - you can try dropping the security levels in Office 2024 until it works, but it's pretty arcane. FWIW I went to Salamander some years back because creating the in-year accounts became a pain, and managing Teams groups without it became near impossible.

As far as I remember, you don’t need a license key to upgrade - it should go over the top. Do a backup of the configuration first though, from the utility! Get the latest install possible - is that one June 2025 or 2024?

You’d need to customise the layout, which can be done with GP. Not done that myself here - did so in Windows 10 but 11 is slightly different.

Does it have to be there? Can it just be in the Start Menu? You can also access it by right-clicking on Start but that's not a massive help without training them!

Can you try it on an older but still supported version? I think the chances of it working on the latest builds are dropping all the time - I think I last usd it with Office 2016.

I had this all the way back to Windows 7. The key was to disable the services on the printers themselves, that actually broadcast. That wasn't needed in our setup - disabled everything but printing via port 9100 Raw and the web interface on each one.