phil_thebeans

yeah thought you'd like that, can't stay for any more banter as thanks to that last spawny shot from Croatia I'm about to have a f**ckin heart attack

not the good part obviously

See all you unbelievers look what happens when you believe, ENGLAND ENGLAND ENGLAND come on come on come on

Yeah that's right you fully fledged geeks take the piss out of a wounded animal, have some respect and belive anything is possible. Get behind your country!

Check out the other forums to see at least 2 reasons to move away from RM (ks3 online testine and RMEasymail) Buy a new server we recently bought several rack mounted Dell Poweredge 2950, brilliiant kit we got 3 times 73 Gb hard drives, 4 Gb of RAM and 2 quad core Xeon processors all for £2.5k per server they are lightning fast and the best thing is all the technical support (if needed) is UK based.

I love RM easymail! it is often so slow that emails can take up to a couple of hours they (RM) are forever trying to improve it when the reality is that they did not consider the amount of users and the usage when originally providing it for our LEA. This latest example of RM just goes to show how s**t a company they are they are only interested in the bottom line and sewing up all of education with their products. HURRAH for Easymail, HURRAH for KS3 online testing. This latest outage (or should that be outrage) will allow me to convince SMT to go with running our own Exchange server and abandoning this highly unreliable service. It is interesting to note that our own LEA at county hall do not use RMEasymail, can't think why not.

Hello anyone got an idea why my HP 4108gl switch randomly rebooted a couple of times yesterday? I have temporary misland the admin password so will be unable to check logs untill I locate passwords.

Cheers I hadn't been told that by ICT Solutuions, surprise surprise

Yes we are using the active directory version. The problem with neoteris as i understand it is that it only allows access to folders and we want complete remote access to all our systems

Hi all just thought I'd give a different side to the winsuite experience. The early versions were the most awful piece of dodgy software ever built but the latest version is as far as we have experienced very reliable and significantly reduces our tech time as we give all students the exact same desktop plus 1 for adulted, 1 for staff and one for the 6th form. Although I would prefer to go down the vanila route I inherited the system and haven't been able to convince management that there would be a great benefit to the users as unfortunately there is very little concern for our students to experience a real world setup, however the new ICT coordinator is as keen as me to give the kids a taste of what they will encounter when they leave school. So no RM crap or specialist software that they will never encounter we are trying to change their experience so as to prepare them for corparate networks etc. Thank god that the online ks3 testing is not now compulsory as we shall hopefully never put our kids through those poorly designed tests, oh and guess who is behind them RM isn't it? Our local lea (norfolk) has consistently made the wrong decisions regarding hardware for example Tiny, then Elenox (really badly built switches on their desktops and the power supplys failed after less than 18 months, we had to replace over 50%) broadband is a last becomibg reliable although the speeds are poor in comparision to a leased line (for obvious reasons, contention) no remote access to our network for myself or my techie and the caching server they gave us is so noisy that we have had to house it in a remote cupboard ( although we have now decommissioned it as we are useing our own proxy as we had always done) OK sorry for digressing into a rant about my lea but i'm sure all the norfolk techies could agree on some if not all points and as a final dig at the lea i'll leave you with 2 words ICT SOLUTIONS.

We are using software called Webmarshall that allows all browsing to be monitored and also allows for the filtering of content. This product is excellent and allows you to assign users to certain groups eg full access to sys admins and limited accessto the employee who continues to access non business sites, all is highly customisable and can be tailored to meet you requirements. The logs are searchable and will produce queried reports on access and usage. The product is easy to setup and can be used instantly with little configuration , we have ours installed on our proxy and the users are imported from active directory so you can use them in their already assigned groups or add them to new specific webmarshal groups. There is even a real time active sessions window (very handy for on the spot checks) this software is good value for money and very customisable I would highly recommend it.

Full time and my technician is term time plus 2 weeks although when it is possible I get him some overtime for holiday work. Hey linuxgirlie we also get the "did you have a nice holiday" no because unlike you Mr Teacher we actually dont get 13 weeks paid holiday a year and still find time to grumble about the hours.

Managed to get rid of all except 5 machines that we have to use W98 on as RM successmaker is on them and the version we have wont run on anything else (upgrade is £200 per machine). If it aint broke why fix it?

I don't believe we do which is why we are looking at the alternatives. Ben As I understand it Norfolk LEA will not provide funding if you withdraw from E2BN. How are you going to find the money for a similar speed connection (do you have 8Mb?) or are you going to run a seperate line because apparently that will breach the conditions of your aggreement with E2BN?

Cheers dos_box that good eh!

Thanks everyone for your input I was 99% sure that the product was great and you have confirmed that it is well worth the expense (should reduce time required moving round site) I just need to raise some extra cash, better get my begging face on and see if the bursar has any spare end of year cash.

Hazard perception WHAT IS THAT! Oh I know , look out here comes a teacher with an IT question like "how do I print?"

I work in a school because it is a nice place to work and the staff are great the kids however are at times a royal pain in the backside and there constant vandalism and general low level misbehaviour makes my job more difficult. A news story like the one in the scum is just what we need to hear and if I heard parents outside the gate suggest that I was only working at the school to be close to kids I would put them straight in no uncertain terms. Those parents outside the school gates need a slap it is people like them who are raising (or should I say dragging up) bad tempered, rude, arrogant, self opinionated, "I know my rights" little so and sos that have resulted in the moral decline of our society. The person in question should have his you know whats cut off and the Head if he knew or even suspected and did nothing more than "have a word"should be ashamed.

I think you may have been a little hasty with your comment. We are currently a PFI school due for completion April 2008 (refurb and new build) and If I was asked to comment I would say F****ing ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGG. Finished school will just be big enough for our present size and no room for expansion, Oh and some bright spark thought it a good idea to situate 3 ICT clusters in the open areas (corridors etc) with no partition walls or anything else that might stop the "little darlings" wrecking and ripping off IT kit. The head and governors think the kids will adapt and learn to respect equipment in there new school, yeah right!!

I was at college doing a computing degree when I took a placement year (offered as part of course) at a school as a technician (right place right time) who had just been let down. I was then offered a full time post with a salary increase to stay so I converted my course to an HNC and settled in to gain some hands on experience. I was the only technician and after about 2 years the ICT co-ordinator proved himself technically incompotent and I managed to negotiate myself into a network managers role (still loads of hands on technical stuff) and was given a part time technician. I am now about to negotiate for a full time technician and a salary review as the school is expanding and my responsibilities have dramatically increased, unfortunately while I am appreciated senior management are not very IT knowledglable and have no idea of the work involved to maintain a reliable and secure network. I never did go back to finish my computing degree as I felt the course wasn't particularly useful for my job and I learnt far more by practical hands on firefighting, however I am in my last year of an OU open degree which includes computing and Classics (strange bedfellows I know)and have just secured myself a CCNA course at the Open University which the school is funding. (hurrah) I couldn't get them to pay for a MCSE but I am going to work on that with the new Headteacher when he or she is appointed. Sorry I posted before I had made my point, that being in the right place with a bit of releveant experince and the ability to learn quickly and react well when presented with a problem is worth much more than qualifications but how many jobs in industry and even some secondary and tertiary education jobs now state that they require either a degree or relevant experience before you will get an interview. The honest reality is that if you and another have similar experience and one has a degree it is likley that the person with the degree would get an interview before you, a HR dept can judge a person by his CV alone and only in the interview/skills test will the best candidate prevail. The problem is if you are not shortlisted and this is where being a graduate helps, harsh but it is becoming the common reality especially if you are not young (ie cheap to employ and take a chance apon)

Hello fellas Just a quick question to plexer, I am using latest version of winsuite and have found out that they don't look as if they are planning to update product for Vista. So same as ninjabeaver i am considering using group policies and starting from scratch with desktop security on our XP 2k3. I would appreciate any "watch outs" that you have relating to GPs not applying (if at all)and what work arounds you used. Cheers.

I have used this software (winsuite desktop management and security software)in its various guises for 5 years and enjoy the ease with which we are able to control multiple student desktops so I am a little peeved that the company who make it have, it seems no intention to produce a compatible version for use with Vista (as of a phone conversation today) I know we can do all the same things with Group Policies and profiles etc but the iniatial setup is time consuming and needs to be tested thoroughly so if any one out there is using a similiar product to winsuite i would greatly appreciate your views and feedback. And no we are not planning to move to Vista on our existing computers but any new purchases after the iniatial bedding in of Vista (bug fixes etc) would seem sensibly to use the latest OS (if suitably) especially when we intend to have replaced all curriculum computers within the next 3 years.

I have used this software (winsuite desktop management and security software)in its various guises for 5 years and enjoy the ease with which we are able to control multiple student desktops so I am a little peeved that the company who make it have, it seems no intention to produce a compatible version for use with Vista (as of a phone conversation today) I know we can do all the same things with Group Policies and profiles etc but the iniatial setup is time consuming and needs to be tested thoroughly so if any one out there is using a similiar product to winsuite i would greatly appreciate your views and feedback. And no we are not planning to move to Vista on our existing computers but any new purchases after the iniatial bedding in of Vista (bug fixes etc) would seem sensibly to use the latest OS (if suitably) especially when we intend to have replaced all curriculum computers within the next 3 years.

Thanks another great management tool should be very helpful if disaster strikes, cheers plexer