chinesewhispers

Doing this kind of work in addition to the 'day job' can be good for extra money. It has the advantage that you will probably visit the client in their own environment, at a time when they are not at work, so is more convenient for them. However, you do need to be upfront about your pricing, it can come as a shock to clients when you have spent several hours of what looks like just sitting there. With virus removal, I find it can often take hours, not to remove the obvious problem, but to scan with 1, 2 maybe even 3 pieces of software to ensure it is clean. This is best done off-site, as you can do it whilst you are at home (you need to right business insurance policies) and then it doesn't matter if you have to leave it overnight. A laptop I was asked to upgrade from Vista Home Premium to Vista Ultimate recently took 16 hours including getting it all sorted with Windows updates. It's a long story, but I only charged the client for 3 hours as it did most of the work whilst I was watching telly and doing other work. You do need to price accordingly, remember your taxes, NI, insurance, transport costs (including uprated business use of your vehicle), tools, software. You'll work out you lose about 30% of anything you charge before you think about profit.

We've just placed an order for 30 the Education iMacs with our current supplier, I bartered some other suppliers down almost to the point of embarrassment, but I'd be interested if you can give me your price. It's the 2.0 / 1Gb / 160Gb / 20inch model, exclusively for education. Thanks

How about a spa treatment day, can be linked to an evening meal and or overnight stay depending on budget. How long have you been together, living together? Where in the country are you?

These look interesting (and nice and small, some of our staff are female, and don't have pockets/belts to clip to, so size will be important) Motorola XTL PMR446 radio and maybe one of these for the office Desktop PMR446 radio It'll be to communicate within my team, so not looking for a 'whole school' solution (they already have about 20 other handsets used between premises staff, security, cleaners, pastoral etc all on the same channel). As long as it can be isolated from them (I'm not interested which toilets are open every 10 minutes!). Thanks for the info so far, I'll let you know how I get on.

Just another point, can these devices do point to point communication, (rather than broadcast to all devices, just communicate with a chosen haandset)? I'd like the option of both if possible.

Due to the layout of our school, our whole site isn't covered by wireless unfortunately. I think a set of 2-way radios may be the best be, set on a channel well away from the rest, or even with the basic encryption/scrambling. Any recommendations/experience of specific models that you have used?

Does anybody have a good method of communicating with their staff in school? We have several staff who we need to communicate with immediately (away from their desks). Mobile coverage in our area is not great, and so can't be relied upon. I think we are looking for 2-way radios, but we need to make sure they are on a separate channel to other services in school (cleaners, security, premises staff, builders working next door). Has anybody used some they can recommend, we'll be needing 5 or 6. Cheers

Would be one of mine too, in a proper surround sound set-up, it can't be beat. (Swordfish )

I recently used something similar to: 'It's like the number has fallen off your front door, so the postman doesn't know your address, or where you are, so you aren't getting your post, I'll have to make sure we put the number back up' as an analogy for the machine not getting an IP address and not being able to log on/get access to systems. The teacher appreciated that. Subsequently, having swapped out the PC, it required the display frequency changing to stop flicker on the projector, I told her that the postman now knew where she was, but had mistakenly delivered some jelly!

We use Facility CMIS as the MIS, I have asked the Systems Manager, but they are not sure. Bear in mind that ideally, even the systems manager wouldn't be able to access this information. Each of the users has their own lockable office. bossman, care to share a little more info, I had already looked at the Truecrypt documentation linked to here by Tom, but didn't quite understand the options. Do you use method 1 or method 2? Method 2 led me to believe that the data would be read-only, and how do you restrict access using method 1? Thanks

We have 3 child protection officers in school who would like to use electronic forms of sharing/storage/communicating. Obviously this is a hugely sensitive area that needs to be very secure. I am thinking of a folder on the network, which only the staff members involved can access (NTFS permissions) which then contains a folder/file which can be encrypted by them using software installed on specific PCs. Only they would know the passphrase. Also, is there an existing software solution for this kind of scenario (very secure record history) that could be used as well as or instead of? Bear in mind that they may need to access the data at the same time. Thanks

So, if we have Macs with Tiger installed, upgrade them to Windows (using VLK, but not SA), then install Leopard or Snow Leopard alongside, is that OK? I am trying to be awkward and facetious, I don't actually want or intend to do this, but is it legal (assuming the OS X that I put back on is a full licence of course).

OK, let's spice things up a bit. For hypothetical purposes, let's say I did manage to overwrite the existing Mac OS and install Windows as the only OS on a Mac. This is legitimate using just a correct vlk (it seems). What if I then want to make the system dual boot with another OS such as Linux? I assume my Windows licence is still valid, none of the hardware is changing.

Thanks for all the replies, and I'm glad it stirred some discussion and wasn't just me, but I think we can agree that the licensing solution for a BootCamp install of Windows on a Mac retaining the original OS X install is VLK+SA. VLK is fine if you destroy the OS X (who'd want to do that, even if you can). So I need to find a supplier who can do me a good price for this setup. I have more questions on licensing, but I think they won't be in the Mac section. Cheers. Let's hope we've got this right, this post is already top 5/6 in google for 'windows licence bootcamp', higher if you add 'volume' to the query.

I don't mind having a volume agreement, just that I don't have one already. There'll be 52 clients initially, then a further 16, followed possibly by another 10, so up to 80ish max by Xmas.

This is indeed for a high school. These will be the only client OS under an agreement so far (all the rest are OEM COA on the boxes). Will that affect the pricing I am getting, or do I need another reseller. Essentially then, I need to buy (at the best price) full licences with downgrades rights for UK education?

OK, back from my appointment, and thanks for the reply. Here goes more head scratching: 2. I didn't mean the licences say I have to install alongside, but: i) I wouldn't want to get rid of OSX, I want to use it; ii) I didn't think there was a way to do a bare metal install of Windows on a Mac (without VM or BC) So installing Windows as an upgrade means replacing the existing OS, which isn't possible due to 2.ii ? 5. My current reseller has told me that software assurance is one of the 2 options I have (the other being a VL upgrade, but technically that can't happen due to 2.ii) I would be buying Win7 software assurance licences at approx £90 and using the downgrade option to WinXP. I think these are cheaper alternative to buying the full product. 6.i) Not possible due to 2.ii ii) Possible only option iii) This is a new one, how do I get an OEM Windows licence when buying a Mac? This would be perfect if it is possible. 7. I refer to this page which my reseller directed me to (my reseller isn't sure either btw, even after speaking with MS): Product Points Note the points: So, what does 'as provided below' refer to, and an 'active Software Assurance' mean exactly? Am I making this too complicated for myself, or just being stupid?

I'm getting confused and frustrated. Can anyone give me a definitive answer? What is the cheapest way to get Windows (XP) on our Macs (currently 52 of them, expanding to 70 maybe)? Here's where I am at. 1. To install Windows on a Mac, I need a valid Windows licence. 2. To install Windows on a Mac, I have to install it alongside the Mac OS, not instead of. 3. There is a VL upgrade path available using certain base 'qualifying operating systems'. 4. Apple Macintosh is listed as a 'qualifying operating system'. 5. An alternative is to purchase software assurance for the VL upgrade. 6. An alternative is to purchase full licences not available in VL. 7. If I have active Software Assurance, I do not need to uninstall the qualifying OS. All our existing clients have XP OEM licences stuck to them, so I believe that putting all of them under Software Assurance (to fulfil 7.) would not really be a wise financial decision at the moment (we aren't currently looking to upgrade the client OS). How do fact 4 and 2 work when the qualifying OS must be removed to be valid (unless under a Student Select agreement). In fact, how is point 4 even valid, when it is required in point 2? My 3 o'clock just arrived, I'll be back to this, but if anyone has any info in the meantime... Thanks

Do you have managed switches that you can trace MAC addresses by port connection?

Had a similar visit from a Konica Minolta rep last week. Going to their showroom this week. All sounds good, as they do, and should make management and billing much easier. They have a great feature, 'follow-me' printing, where a user with no printer in their area sends a job to the print server, which they can then retrieve anywhere in school by accessing one of the MFDs (multi function devices) and entering their credentials. So they don't send a print to a printer, but to a server which then waits for them to be somewhere to pick it up. You can also control how long these jobs stay on the system, so if they don't collect it, it can be automatically removed. Fewer printers in school can't be a bad thing. Anybody got these type of set ups?

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There's also this: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/o-s-deployment/38394-pxe-problems.html

Not by a FOG server at the moment, but found this: Other Information -> PXE Boot Menu -> Change "Graphical" to "Text"

I think this method removes password protection, but it doesn't present an option list to people, just a prompt for 3 seconds which needs correct input to function. We had to do this to get our Toshiba Satellite Pro A200 laptops to work properly.

Have you tried switching to the text based PXE menu (where you have to type fog.reginput to register the host?)