rj_mayer

Hi all, If anyone out there (in the UK, probably) has any of the proprietary EPOS terminals associated with the Vericool cashless catering system available for purchase, do get in touch. We are in the market and second hand units would do us fine. I look forward to hearing from someone. Best wishes, Richard

Interested to hear your outcome, as Adobe Web Standard CS3 is failing here via MDT as we're trying to role out 8.1. Given up on the package for the time being... Was fine on 7.

Hi, I have a third party speech recognition/narration package that uses the native Speech Recognition engine within Windows. This Windows feature works fine with a student user who has: - a local profile; - the group policies we apply; - the login scripts we use; - the disk rights we have in place; But, when our Mandatory Profile is put in place (which our students use), it is reported in Control Panel-->Speech Recognition that no language pack is installed. Hence, this feature doesn't work. We have tried loading these features whilst logged in as our profileuser user, for whom the students' mandatory profile is its roaming profile (with the .man to .dat changed for this purpose). In every other way, the profile works fine, yet testing strongly indicates it is the profile that is causing the issue. Any pointers appreciated. Richard

We tend to be satisfied keeping all backups on-site, but replicating to separate buildings (we have a sprawling site), using Veeam and other tools. I've never been comfortable trusting a third party with the college data, however robust SLAs might be. If I get challenged from a data governance/security perspective as to where the data resides, I can point to the various SAN and NAS units that house it. I like it that way. We also have access control, CCTV and climate monitoring in place, managed by the college, adding further peace of mind about the security and safety of the information.

To clarify, a personal school email account, as opposed to a group address or support support desk one... Not an off-domain address!

Hi, Having just seen to such a request from a senior colleague and being used to doing such things at strange hours... I am wondering how normal/widespread it is for IT Managers to action support requests, sent to personal email, out of hours. This particular one was a remote access issue, on a Saturday night, mid evening. Another recent one was a password issue, emailed at 00:15 on a week night by a very senior colleague. Both were seen to within the hour. A rod for my back, I know, but I don't really mind, as long as an immediate response is not assumed. Is this a normal level of service in places that don't run an official 24/7 service desk, or would people generally see to user support issues of any kind, during the next office hours and not before? Discuss.

I second the Specops recommendation. The full version is very expensive, even for us, but the free version is pretty sufficient for all I've wanted to do. Brilliant piece of software for interfacing with the otherwise formidable AD DS FGPP.

What was the problem?

We use PRTG (Paessler) for much of the functionality you describe. It has a huge host of different sensor possibilities, ranging from a simple Ping to WMI for keeping an eye on Windows services, disk space and NIC throughput etc., SSH for Linux interaction and SNMP for other types of device. Many hardware vendors publish MIB files, which can be easily imported. For example, I use this to monitor the hardware status of our storage units (down to individual disk/controller) and also servers (using the DRAC interface). Very intuitive and fast iPhone/Android apps, coupled with a third party bolt-on provides Push Notifications the moment something goes wrong. Education commands a huge discount on their list price, making it also affordable. Happy to speak further, if interested.

SIMS doesn't manage the SQL log files for you... Might be worth taking a look there.

I've been building new Server 2012 R2 VMs, but not 8.1, yet.

It sounds like it is already an admin job, printing/dispensing these cards... At our place, we find that student printing is so minimal that we just absorb it, at no cost to the student. Staff can't print to personal accounts, but have to go through a host of shared budgets, according to the job in hand.

I'm not sure I understand why you don't just apply a credit on the Papercut admin interface, if you are charging users. Just give the person handling the cash the necessary rights, train them, and away you go... No need for printing vouchers, I would say. Sorry if I'm missing something...

We change the student wallpaper dynamically upon logon (within the KiX script), using an executable I found on the web. Personalised wallpapers are generated nightly, at the same time as photos are extracted from SIMS for use elsewhere (intranet, cashless catering etc.). The wallpaper includes the student's photo and name, together with the school logo. Teachers find this useful, allowing them to ensure the right student is using the correct login, but students are less impressed (!). We also use Microsoft's BGInfo to superimpose upon it live the machine info, so that the student can reference which box they're using in the event of needing to request support. As a little ditty, the wallpaper generator has the capacity for a seasonal image to be included, which I'll probably leverage in a few weeks...

I would like to know who wrote such a policy and what qualified them to do so. I must say that it sounds absolutely absurd. No self respecting IT professional would ratify such a proposal if it was put in front of them, surely? There are various routes to issuing initial passwords to users (to be changed ASAP), but to even conceive of storing live passwords long term beggars belief.

We considered the SIMS behaviour offering a few years ago, but concluded it would be best to go our own bespoke direction... It was pretty shocking at that time, but I expect Capita has made some, if slow movement in improving it, since then.

We have one of these Samsung units and yes, the software is awful. We have a single slide that simply shows a web page, which then has it's various elements of content managed elsewhere. Custom built JavaScript rotates the elements in a 'Single Page Application' style, without the need for whole page refresh. We went through the various stages of attempting to wield their software and concluded it was best just to write this.

We have been using Impero for the past year for live desktop monitoring and remote support. Very good product for this purpose.

I have a line in our KiX login script which passes user, computer detail etc. to a PHP page, which then logs the 'login' into a SQL database. We don't use the data to rationalise suites in the way described, but one could.

Can't really imagine what the root requirements are here, but if this was asked if me, I'd spin out a little web page, searchable if necessary, that queries AD over LDAP. Easy if you have a web server that can run PHP or similar. I'd even write it for a small fee...

We got 20 of these units last year, with i5, 8Gb, SSD 240Gb, Intel WIFI upgrade, 5 year warranty for around £650 per unit. They absolutely fly and have had no negative feedback, apart from reflections on the weight, as compared to previous laptops they've had, but the performance far out weighs this issue. We tend to buy through resellers, as they always beat Dell direct in our experience. On this occasion, we got the SSD drives separately (from the same reseller, with the same warranty), as Dell were unable to build exactly what we wanted. The result was a little more work for us, but profiting by 20x320Gb SATA drives for other purposes.

If your SIMS installations are always kept at the same level, you could just use the native connect.ini SIMS client config file to offer the user multiple options on launch. The choice is then represented as a drop down box under the username and password, upon launch of pulsar.exe. These could point at the three discrete SQL instances. We use this for development platforms quite a bit. Apologies if I've not understood correctly.

We do this using a VBS script which gathers various bits from the client using WMI and then invokes cURL to send the data to a PHP script, where it gets entered into a SQL table. The script is in a GPO to execute every time a machine boots. It works well, giving us very current data that can be joined to other queries for reporting - it is this aspect that would be more difficult to achieve with System Centre etc. only. I also make use of Dell's API to retrieve warranty info based on the Service Tag.

Short deadline, but if you're interested, do put an application together: BOTTISHAM VILLAGE COLLEGE CB25 9DL We are looking for an ICT technician to join our hard working and forward thinking Technical Services Team. You will be patient, a good communicator and conversant in the use of Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010/13. Main duties will include providing first line support to users, maintaining the college's client estate, managing classroom ICT infrastructure and assisting with hardware and software installations, upgrades and maintenance. Salary details: APT&C Scale 3, £15,725 - £16,830; Full time – 37.5 hours per week, 52 weeks More information about this vacancy can be found on the Bottisham Village College website: Bottisham Village College, Lode Road, Bottisham. Application packs are available from Heidi Kempster, Business Manager, or on the website. Closing date: Monday 4th March 2013 Interviews w/c 11 March 2013 --- ‘This is an outstanding college, where a very strong ethos of community, high quality learning and aspirational academic achievement exists throughout. One student commented: “Bottisham is inspirational. The college helps individuals to shape well, giving us the confidence, determination and skills to succeed.’ Ofsted 2012 --- Bottisham Village College is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Hi AngryITGuy, I dare say there could be some guidance from BECTA, if you look hard enough! Until I got here, there was no access to student areas at all. We were forever being asked to extract over-due work etc from student areas for teachers. I set up a p: drive (they used to be called pupils!) for all staff that has read only access to the student directory structure. I wouldn't dream of giving anything further for fear of the [potentially disastrous] consequences! All the best, Richard