simpsonj

Apologies for dragging up an old thread, but I wondered if someone could answer a quick question to do with IP Phones and PoE. I've been informed that in some cases an 8 port PoE switch may not be able to power 8 phones because a phone takes up more power than, say, a WAP. If this is true, what should I be looking for to find out whether a HP Pro Curve E2520-24 PoE switch can handle 24 phones being attached? The other switches will most likely have half the number of phones compared to PoE ports, but the main office area has a lot of phones, and only a 2U gap in its cabinet...

But if the product key been used more times than it should have been, then it's unlikely that the teacher has installed multiple copies onto their PC, more likely they have given it to friends, family, or in a worse case scenario, posted it on the internet. If the key has been used on multiple members of staffs computers, then it would be near impossible to track down the leak. As a result of this potential headache, I tend not to advertise any work from home scheme unless the software is essential for that teacher to teach their lessons. I advertised the 'Office 2010 for £9' deal, and that went down very well, and would be my preferred method.

But even if we did install it ourselves, it's not exactly difficult to extract a licence key from an install of Office (or Windows for that matter). Either you trust your staff and give them the opportunity to install the software (either by bringing in their PC, or you giving them the media and product key) or you don't.

My only, if slightly odd, issue with the MSA and now EES is that when I log onto my eOpen account with Microsoft, they give me access to lots of software, an awful lot of it I'm 90% sure I'm not licenced to use. And yet its all there, with licence codes. As much as I like new software, and testing some of this stuff out, I would prefer to at least have it split between "this is what you're licenced for, and for how many users/machines, and this is trial software for you to try out for 30/60/120 days or whatever..."

Anyone managed to disable Flight Simulator mode? Causing one or two students to go off task...

Our HP All-in-Ones don't have a VGA out either, we're using a USB to VGA connection for the one connected to a projector. Haven't decided what to do this summer, as I'd actually like to have a holiday this year... Going to experiment with some software, have a look at some GPOs, readjust our profiles, but generally keep it interesting. And fix all those niggle little things that have been building up the last few terms.

We got around this issue by using mandatory profiles, and removing the local folder from the profile. Seems to work here, though I'm sure there's a neater solution.

Teracopy? (Copy your files faster with TeraCopy)

Sounds very interesting, especially as I've just started experimenting with Remote Desktops... Where did you get WTPC from? Has it been released as part of the MSA/EES agreements? Any licensing issues to be aware of?

You could create a central store for all photos, and then run something like Riot (RIOT - Radical Image Optimization Tool) which will at least keep file sizes down.

I would try turning off Library Rich Features - User Configuration -> Policies -> Admin Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Explorer -> Turn Off Windows Libraries features that rely on indexed file data That might work on its own or in conjunction with the registry changes suggested above.

Rather than start a new thread on a similar subject, I wondered whether there was a battery program that does the above, but sends the information to a server or Desktop computer? Would really like to be able to monitor whether laptops are being plugged in across the school, and rather than checking the hardware, a piece of software that monitors the battery level and sends the information to a server every 10 minutes or so would be invaluable. If it had a nice GUI, you could even force it onto the teachers desktop so that they can see whether the laptops are being charged or not. Thanks for the above though, will test deploy the Battery bar, looks very useful!

Depends on how they've been set up, but the best place to start would be to check the Event Viewer of the PCs that may not have been shut down and see if any events were logged during the weekend. The way our shutdown works here is each PC has a shutdown command in their scheduled tasks, so it might be worth a look there to see if there is a task due to shutdown the PC. Start up here is a WOL.exe set to run on a server at a given time (not working at present, but the theory is fine), so a check in the scheduled tasks on your servers might reveal whether this is the method used to boot PCs in the morning. If it is, then it might be that the PC not booting hasn't got its MAC address on the WOL.bat file. Also, are you running an RM CC3 or CC4 network? If so, the Shutdown script is very easy to modify using the RM Manangement Console.

For use in education: How easy is it to replace component parts? This would be my critical question in mobile technology. Easy to replace keyboards, screens, hard drives and RAM are vital for me. If we had the money, we would be looking at RM Mobile Ones with a wildcharge trolley, with wildcharge desking in place in the rooms they are most likely to be used. this would effectively elimanate the battery and charging issues we are experiencing. A network adapter than like WDS PCE booting would be a must have too. We use different size laptiops for different classes, but having a full size keybaord with number pad is very useful, and 15.6" screen size is a minimum for us. Our wireless is now N rated throughout, so that would be a minimum too. I'm about to trial Solid State Drives in laptops to see how that improves speed, but disk space is not a priority, I'm thinking a 40gb SSD drive would be preferential to a 160gb normal hard drive. 2gb RAM minimum, 4gb prefferred. @nephilim, how does the dedicated charging area work? Sounds like an interesting idea.

I think he means verbose login details, which can be found under the Server GPO - Computer Configuration - Admin Templates - System - Verbose vs normal status messages and set it to enabled.

I contemplated a Rome: Total War club for a while, the game is cheap and would run on our dated machines, and it was vaguely historical and educational. Also considering installing Minecraft, not sure how you would make it into a competition though...

You could try using a VGA splitter like this: Videk HDD DB15M to 2 x HDD DB15F Monitor Splitter Cable: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories Not sure if it's long enough, and you'd have an extra VGA lead dangling, but it might work...

The RM Mobile One, extremely tough to break, but still got "pingable" keys, as has every laptop I've ever seen. Main issue with the Mobile Ones is the price, around £900 each last time I looked, and the specs weren't amazing, but that was a year ago. Other option is to buy cheap laptops, and with the money saved, buy spare parts. The HP 530 is cheap, and very easy to replace all its components, including the screen if necessary!

I've never had an issue Sysprepping a Windows 7 machine, other than the Domain issue you've mentioned. I haven't had to keep adding the NIC drivers either, those are injected into the Boot image and the Install image with no issues. I used this guide: HOW TO: inject drivers into Microsoft's free OS, Windows PE 2.0 To be slightly more useful, I highly recommend using some of the blog posts from here: Blog.BrianLeeJackson.com

The ratio of broken laptops to broken desktops here must be around 10:1, I've got a pile of 5 laptops on my technicians desk waiting to be fixed, and I hate them, staff are now wary of laptops, where as the 4 year old desktops are going fine, and will be much improved after the RAM upgrade I'm planning over half term. So for £10 per desktop, they'll keep going for another 2 years or so, where as I've got to start looking at replacement screens, batteries, battery packs, keyboards and motherboards for the laptops which have been broken, misused or worn out. This is not to mention the number of times students have accidentally turned off the wireless and so can't login or access the internet. Plus students have lost respect for laptops, swinging them about, carrying them up and down stairs, holding them in one hand and all manner of things which make me wince. This isn't to say laptops don't have their place, I think they're brilliant for Science labs, and for topping up ICT Suites for Managed Coursework, or if they're aren't quite enough PCs to go around, but I would never replace an ICT Suite with a "mobile solution" unless I knew the teacher was brilliant at managing the classroom, the wireless was flawless and the desks and trolley were based on RM's wildcharge technology.

Hard drive driver issue? Had a problem installing Server 2008 R2 onto a server, and needed either the RAID driver, or SCSI or SATA driver to install it. Though it doesn't look like the same error message.

This is what I found before, but its not particularly useful in a school environment: User Logon Display Picture - Set Default for All Users - Vista Forums

Just a quick note that the size of the background image has to be under a certain size, 256kb if memory serves. The only other option I can think of is there is a GPO somewhere that says something along lines of using the default profile picture for the frame, but I couldn't get it to work, but I didn't try too hard.

Might be worth having a word with RM as they can provide the internet connection and filtering.

Why not modify the background so that the school logo appears where the frame is? Take a screen capture of the logon screen, find the position of the frame, amend background accordingly. Though, I have to admit, I would like to change that frame (or remove it) the only methods I found wer registry hacks or 3rd party software, neither of which I was comfortable changing for aesthitics...