superatticman

Funnily enough the HP AIO 400 G1's that we are rolling out quite strangely include a serial port. We've actually taken advantage of this and plugged our older boards directly in using the serial cable! Actually think this is more reliable than the USB versions.

This is pretty much the scenario we are facing. The issues are only with the newer HP AIO's of which come with on board USB 3.0 Disabling the USB3 in the BIOS doesnt seem to have any effect on the USB2 ports at all. Managed to speak to a Promethean techie who pretty much went through what you posted above. He seemed to be under the impression that at present, 3m is the maximum officially supported USB cable length using USB 3.0 chipset PC's and promethean boards. Even when using the USB 2 ports with USB 3 disabled. 3m is of little use to us as most of our PC's require a 5m cable. They did recommend using a powered USB 2 or 3 hub and then extending the cable from there. The combination of 1m USB + active hub + 5m USB cable has so far proved to work fine. Promethean have had a number of calls regarding this and did mention there may be a generic usb driver or windows update out in the future of which will allow the USB 2 ports to work in the same manner as those on USB2 only PC's.

Just a bit of fun to carry on from my "Types of IT Support Worker" thread a couple of years ago. Have been having a good think about it recently and I'd say you could pigeon hole people into 3 key personality and capability traits. These don't just refer to IT support but anything. These are: Workers Boffins Leaders Of course some, in fact most people will have a certain percentage of each in their capabilities. Some though will have an extremely dominant one of those three qualities in their make up. So lets begin: Workers These are the guys/gals who are happily pulling up trees whilst others are talking about it. They will happily take instructions from Leaders and will rarely question what is expected of them. They will simply get on with things. They do not like red tape and equally do no like the boardroom environment. Quite often they refuse career advancement because it means having to get involved in the boardroom, or heaven forbid, the boardroom politics. They tend to stick to what they are good at and earn respect for their hands on attitude and outputs. Workers tend to be more conscious of their non work time and are usually glancing up at the clock more often than the other two. They generally get on okay with Boffins and Leaders because there is rarely a conflict of interests. A handful of workers could have easily fallen into the boffin category, but despite having strong intellect, they prefer to do than think. Boffins These are deep thinking, naturally gifted brainboxes. Give them a puzzle to solve and they will quietly finish it whilst others are still trying to understand what they are trying to achieve. They respond to scrutiny with logical answers and can usually turn a debate around in a matter of seconds. Despite this natural gift though, they often shun the boardroom and take a back seat when politics are involved. Boffins can usually be spotted because their desk is a real mess. They don't like order because they don't have to be particularly organised to perform their role. They will always be able to think their way out of a situation. They often try hard to bond with workers because they know they need to the workers to perform the roles that need less intellect, but need a more hands on approach of which doesn't come naturally to the boffin. The boffin will often clash with the leader. Boffins are usually over confident and do not like to plan, organise or take a third party view. They feel leaders are treading on their toes when they try to arrange them into an organisation structure or project plan. Boffins can lack interpersonal skills of which puts them at odds with workers. However, when there is a problem of which is looking hard to solve, its usually the boffin of which comes up with a solution. Leaders Usually derived from workers who want to better themselves but maybe lack the intellectual prowess of the boffin. Leaders are those which thrive in the boardroom environment and take any chance they can to get involved in an activity that may further their development. They are usually the hardest workers and know to be able achieve results they need to push themselves to areas they may be unfamiliar with. Leaders often have excellent interpersonal skills and are as comfortable talking to cleaners as they are executives. Most workers admire leaders because they know they have earned their position and were probably once in their shoes. However, leaders will soon find themselves under fire if they lose the respect of the workers. Leaders usually know how to handle boffins, because they know they need the boffins sharp mind and problem solving ability for their plans to succeed. Leaders are usually the most vulnerable in any organisation. I'd say IT Support workers in general tend to fall into the boffin/worker category. Those who are leaders or become leaders tend to move into IT project management or similar. I'm sure you can pick holes in all the above but then again I'm not a boffin.

Dear All The majority of our promethean Activepanel/activeboards are within the 5m USB lead tolerance. However, some are just outside of this. We have tried: Adding active USB repeater 5m cable. Hit and miss. Seems to work fine on some boards/PC combo's but not other. Adding 1m passive cable. Again, Hit and miss. Was thinking about USB over Ethernet? Anyone managed to find any reliable solutions for the above. Thanks

Hi All Managed to finally get an hour or so to resolve. Had to: Ensure both EUFI and Legacy boot was enabled Secureboot turned off And most importantly considering I was installing W7 from USB: Disable USB 3.0 mode in the BIOS This then allows you to install windows 7 (of which I presume natively does not support USB3) Handy bit of advice there if anyone else comes across this.

Hi All Has anyone tried to install Win7 on a Thinkpad 11e? Getting a message shortly before the option of install location suggesting that I need to add a driver to continue. Reminiscent of the 'F6 setup' in Win NT/2000/XP. Short of staff and time this week so not had much time to investigate this. Any ideas? BIOS setting maybe? Regards

Another possible factor regarding why IT support in a School can feel unrewarding is that the majority of staff (teaching especially) have little idea of the the scope of work that an IT Helpdesk will undertake. Its nothing malicious, just blissful ignorance of what we do. They know that in general we: Respond to calls, are there to help them, respond to calls, are there to help them, respond to calls, are there to help them. Repeat! Probably little appreciation or understanding of the bigger picture. For example a member of staff came in screaming that her laptop wouldn't connect to the internet and that one of us needed to rush downstairs to help her NOW. She was not taking a lesson. She was quite put out when I told her that someone would be along "within 10-15 mins" as our team was very busy but would prioritise her call to ensure she could carry on working. It was also pointed out that she could use one of the spare PC's in the staff workroom to carry on her duties. The fact is the team members were: NM: Looking into a site wide problem with SIMS not functioning correctly Tech: Putting a phone order in for Toner Carts that needed be ordered before 3pm Me: Putting together a stage plan for a project with an outside company on telephone hold. I'd say 10-15 minutes was a pretty reasonable response time. However, the teacher concerned probably had little idea of what other duties we're involved with hence her feeling that we were not doing our utmost to help her. Plus there's a chance that those who could influence ICT salaries at Schools have the same level of ignorance too. Still wouldn't swap being in IT for much else though.....

Interesting. The general consensus from those I know who have left Edu-IT for the corporate World seem insistent that its actually less stressful with a lesser sense of expectation. Although all have gone to larger companies such as TFL, BUPA and not your classic City of London Finance giants of whom probably are pretty demanding places to work. Then again I guess it depends on what your EDU-IT experience has been, whether the School is Private or State run etc.

Some impressive statistics here! For the record I keep up a reasonable level of fitness but not in the business of trying to break myself. 1x mile per week swimming 45mins 1x 1hr gym session various weights. 1x 1 hr run, sit ups, leg raises etc That's more than enough to keep mind and body at peace.

LA jobs tend to do that. Even for relatively menial positions! The Corporate World is usually more willing to take a chance on someone who lacks formal education but has drive, proven achievements and is basically capable fulfilling the role.

Arwen thats interesting regarding employees asking for a degree. What sectors were they in? Can empathise with users being a pain in the backside but the point about being able to move onwards and upwards is still very valid.

Down the years there's been a fair few things said on here about the negatives of working in an IT Support role. Lack of recognition, salaries not being what they once were, high expectation of knowledge versus salary. However, there's some huge positives too. I think the biggest is that its possible to have a long, progressive and rewarding career without having many/any academic qualifications. I know plenty who didn't do great at School, fumbled about with dead end jobs but found their feet with IT. Some are now working as Network/Project Manager or specialising in certain applications or technologies. There's a clear progress route. Some of these roles may be dressed up differently, but you have with very approx salaries: Junior Tech £16-20k Tech £20-25k Senior Tech £25-35k Network/ICT/Project Manager/Consultant/ £35-45k Senior Network/ICT/Project Manager/Consultant £45k+ I believe you can start the JT role with basic hardware/software skills, maybe A+ certification but most importantly enthusiasm and willingness to learn. Not sure if any academic qualifications are a must have? Obviously as you sail upwards you are expected to gain the likes of Microsoft Exams or other technical qualifications. Definitely a good industry to be in all things considered.

Chance to join an excellent team with scope for personal development...... Current Vacancies | St Benedicts School

Mainly: HP Desktops, HP AIO's, Dell Desktops. Dell Laptops. Apple Devices. Looking for suppliers who are competitive price wise, have decent customer service and most importantly can reliably deliver the products within their lead time. Any recommendations welcome.

Am undertaking the Practitioner exam in May. Its a pretty dry subject to study but have three days of classroom study booked immediately prior to the exam. Agree that the Organisation Theme is possibly its most useful as in my experience there generally seems to be a lack of understanding of roles and responsibilities during projects. There's usually a lack of understanding on the scope of work that the Project Manager usually undertakes too. Some think they are at the very top of the organisation with ALL the responsibilites and with ultimate authority over the project. Have used the Organisation Theme here to good effect and ensured that the most appropriate stakeholders are chosen during the early stages. Also made them aware of their roles on the project. As for the 'Quality' Theme in PRINCE2, its arguably its biggest weak point. If only for the use of the word 'quality' to describe fit for purpose!

Who have undertaken the practitioner exam? Did you find that PRINCE2 assisted you in project management duties in any way?

After nearly 5 years of usage, we have now decommissioned Citrix VDI from our internal pupil system. It will now purely be used for Staff remote access and internal Staff BYOD access. That will also be held to review in the future. I've nothing against the technology at all. In the right environment it's a fantastic infrastructure which ticks both technical and business case boxes. However, for us it hasn't really served a purpose apart from complicating things and requiring an extremely high level of technical know how to administer and procure. I've seen plenty of arguments on here from a technical point of view about how it can be made to look virtually identical to a decent spec physical PC etc. From a different angle, has anyone managed to gain tangible benefits from a business case point of view? I'd love to see some figures if that is the case. And has anyone else retired VDI from their network? Or are we going against the grain here. Be interested to know.

Hi We're soon going to be in the process of upgrading all of our laptops to SSD. We use clonezilla for image deployment but moving from larger to smaller disks isn't something of which this does well. Frustratingly the OCZ SSD's we've brought in don't come with cloning software. Has anyone come across any software (preferably open source) that can clone any brand of SSD from a larger HDD? Will save us a lot of time building and testing new images if we can do this. Cheers

Hi all We are building a number of new system images from scratch. I plan to install Solus 3 client on the system image prior to closing and running 'sysprep' for deployment. Has anyone come across any issues post sysprep when using Solus 3? Was planning on also installing SIMS onto the system image via Solus 3 and then running sysprep but am wondering how the Solus console would handle a number of new computer names which originally came from one source PC. Or am I looking at closing the image prior to installing Solus 3 and SIMS and then pushing out afterwards to each individual machine? Cheers.

PRINCE2 practitioner for me. Apple and Microsoft based technical courses for the others.

Hi all Just wondering what the general consensus is on the following training companies: Global Knowledge Q and A Any others that you would personally recommend? Thanks

Hi all We currently have an IP webcam that is pointed at a new build that we are able to view over the intranet. However, we would like for this webcam to be able to be viewed from the www too. Has anyone on here managed to achieve this and any recommended methods. Cheers.

Hi All We have a new member of the team who we want to grant access rights to install software manually on workstations. We do not want him to have full administrator rights or the ability to change anything in AD etc. Does anyone know what levels of access we need to give them? Regards Adam

Hi As the title says do any of the IT teams here practice frameworks such as PRINCE2, Agile or ITIL when it comes to managing projects or service delivery? Its possible that we may be implementing a framework tailored to suite our environment in the near future. Just interested to know whether other large Schools are practicing this and what particular frameworks. Regards

Hi All Knowledge of Exchange is limited so please excuse me But have an issue where 5 or 6 mail boxes out of 150 or so are pointing their global address towards their personal address. ie exchange accounts are set up as: [email protected] Yet when you add their address from the address book in it will come up with their home email address. Indeed when you browse the address list, their email address is listed as their home email address as opposed to their @organisation.org.uk I presume somewhere in exchange there is the ability to set up alternative email addresses. Contact cards? Would seem that this alternative address has somehow become their primary address. Any ideas on how I resolve this? Users are sending internal emails to these affected users but its not going to their internal address. Cheers