jcollings

We don't let staff access it here - there is a homework folder etc. to share work and our VLE will change things a bit I think. I was so outraged by some of the attitudes on the TES thread I posted a reply. What annoys me is this attitude we can't make professional judgements - comments "like some schools need to get a grip of network managers etc".

There's also a really neat little free util on the Capita forum I think called SIMS photo extractor so you can extract by year group or staff etc.

We've bought loads of Lenovo kit (laptops and desktops) for the primary schools we support and it all seems pretty good. Reasonable quality and no (touch wood) break downs yet.

@ric - I think their whole attitude to this has been poor if I'm honest. I have heard of more issues moving server than just doing the upgrade. A colleague yesterday was saying how they have moved the DB to another server and it just wouldn't reattach. As someone once said "Do ya feel lucky? Well do ya punk?" Russian roulette SIMS style.

I did ours SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 + SIMS transfer & upgrade. It all went very smoothly with only 1 minor issue with the connect.ini Whole process took about 4 hours and I did it remotely from home so I could do it out of hours. I guess the only benefit of using Capita's managed service is if it does go wrong (and I have read lots of cases where it has) then it becomes Capita's problem to sort. If you do the upgrade and it goes wrong Capita will charge to sort out any data corruption issues.

That's what some guy in Child Benefit said

But as administrator you can see all documents etc anyway so even if you don't know the password they could still blame you for losses etc if they are of that mindset. Therefore how does it matter to them if you know the passwords?

I agree with Zak - as long as you secure it properly it's fine. We have too much crossover between curriculum and admin staff and data to keep it seperate. We've had a single network for 7 years and (touch wood) haven't had any issues.

We use QMS 5430DL in most of our classrooms - very solid and reliable. We've also got some HP2600N for offices etc.

We have 1 Smartboard that is causing nightmares - everytime you orientate it (with the nine point or 20 point thing) within 10 mins it's miles out again. Anyone else come across this or have any bright ideas? Cheers

Isn't it mail1.cumbria.cleo.net.uk now?

Shame it's rubbish money!

I would say Smartboard all the way. We have loads and they just work all the time (touch wood!). In terms of projectors we use Hitachi almost exclusivley and love'em - again they just work. We've also got a couple of the Smartboard 680i with the integrated projector - they look superb in any room and can be fitted on the adjustable wall mount.

Well done matey!

We were told the same thing

I've done the server side and 1 client. All works well/ I rang Edexcel and suggested that an MSI may be a plan as lots of schools need this - was told "oh we didn't think of that" and "We'll add it to the list" I always get annoyed when people like this don't figure that hundreds of schools use MSI - it isn't difficult is if FFS!

Yes - slam the fingers of the offeneder in a door - that should disuade them.

Same here my thinking was to create some Exam User accounts (with all our usual security bits) - create a group called ALAN Testing - make them a member of that and give that group rights to the appropriate bits of the C drive via GPO I think I would be nervous of letting a student sit a PC logged in as an administrator - just my thought though and not intended as a criticism.

Thought they only need read/write access to the share on the folder and c:\program files\promissor on the local machine?

and my Program files connect.ini has The workstation on is fine. Your server one looks wrong to me. Ours before conversion was [sIMSConnection] ServerName=SERVERNAME\SIMS DatabaseName=SIMS When I upgraded I changed it to [sIMSConnection] ServerName=SERVERNAME\SIMS205 (new instance name) DatabaseName=SIMS That sorted that issue for me. Out of interest it you logon to the SIMS server itself and try to run SIMS do you get the same result?

I think I was saying what you say - that there is balance to be struck between outgoing and in yer face. I've had people on tour basically tell me how I should be doing the job which doesn't go down well.

Not sure why you want to do this but I guess you could have a scheduled event that moves them from the default location to one of your choice every night.

Have you checked what your s:\sims\connect.ini says and what your connect.ini on your workstations say? I had this problem. Should say something like \\Servername\instance DATABASE=SIMS

I think you need to be able to rationalise how you would prioritise your workload when you have 10 jobs on your desk and all the people are telling you theirs is the most important.

Ok - reading your posts you seem to know plenty about ICT so you should be ok on that front. When I'm recruiting I'm looking for someone who will fit with a) my team and b) our school ethos. Someone with a reasonable amount of tech skills and good people skills I can cope with - they can always learn more tech stuff. Someone with rubbish people skills generally can't be taught them no matter what technical skills they have. You need to try and find out some stuff about the school in general and relax into it. Try to be confident but not cocky. Ask questions but don't worry about being quiet some of the time (particularly on tours of the school etc). Don't come across as a know it all. Personally when I'm doing this I don't like smart arses - eg. We were having an group chat with candidates once and backups came up so I described our backup and one guy said "I suppose it doesn't matter much - being a school you don't have any valuable data" - guess how far he went in the selection process!! Hope this helps and good luck.