Rydra

2 vacancies available, Please message me if interested in this position. https://careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/client_capita/external/jobDetails.do?functionName=getJobDetail&jobPostId=255709&localeCode=en-us Technical Analyst - One Bedford Competitive Salary & Benefits About the role One Technical Services provide technical expertise to Capita One customers and to the Capita One business. The analyst team has a primary remit to provide technical expertise covering product support, usually on a chargeable basis. The team is also required to provide help and support for the Technical Consultants' team, and to play their part occasionally in the form of onsite visits. The team consists of multi-skilled Technical Analysts with Oracle and Microsoft disciplines. Fundamental to the role of Technical Analyst is effective resource management, commercial acumen and technical competency. The post holder will be expected to be a highly motivated individual who works well within the team and aims to reach and exceed targets and standards set by the Team Leader and Head of Technical Services. The Technical Analyst has a responsibility to ensure that service levels are met and that both customers and internal departments receive a timely response to their requests. What you will do: To provide technical services to Capita One customers and to the Capita One business Work towards targets and goals as set out by the Technical Support Team Leader and demonstrate an understanding of how you will achieve these in your 1-1 meetings and regular reviews To plan effectively and to achieve expected service delivery To work effectively and flexibly with all other Technical teams to help collectively achieve targets across Technical Services Proactively seek out new opportunities which will help deliver increased service levels, or quality improvements To assist the Application Support Team in their investigations at a technical level. Work with the wider business such as Development, Product and Sales to provide sound technical advice and guidance toward the continual improvement of our products and services. Work closely with other team members and other teams, ensuring you continually develop and improve both own and the team's knowledge, skills and behaviours to help maximise performance Be a subject matter expert on a key technology Your experience will include: Proven successful experience in a Technical/ICT setting or demonstrable passion for it. Experience of working with Microsoft Windows Server (2008/2012) Excellent troubleshooting skills People skills for building relationships with colleagues and customers at all levels Strong written and verbal communication skills Ability to build strong customer relationships Demonstrates strong interpersonal skills including questioning for clarification and establishing of facts, observation and active listening Communicates regularly and effectively during the change process, ensuring the change takes place successfully A working knowledge of Microsoft Office applications What's in it for you? At Capita, training and development aren't optional extras: they're how we do our job. We will motivate you to perform at your peak, recognising your achievements and rewarding them appropriately. As well as a generous basic salary we also give you 23 day's holiday, , company pension scheme and access to voluntary benefit options including; child care vouchers, share save scheme, life assurance, holiday buy and many more designed to suit your own personal lifestyle. All of this, in a professional but fun environment. What we hope you will do next Help us find out more about you by completing our short application process - click apply now. Capita operates as an equal opportunities employer and we welcome all applications regardless of gender, marital status, sexual orientation, pregnancy, race, colour, ethnic origin, nationality, religion or beliefs, disability, age, political opinions or trade union membership. Listen | Create | Deliver Capita Resourcing welcome applications from all suitably qualified people regardless of gender, race, disability, age or sexual orientation. Capita Resourcing is a trading name of Capita Resourcing Ltd. Services offered are those of an Employment Agency and Employment Business. Applicants will be required to register with us. If you are successful with your application, you will need complete Capita's vetting and screening checks. This will include, but not be limited to, Reference Checks, a Criminality Check, Financial Probity Check, Sanctions Check and Media Check.

This vacancy is still available, and I have updated the original post with full details of the position. If interested, please private message me.

Other than Geoff's interesting read, anyone tried this on a home style/gaming PC, and had any experience of accessing the data from another machine in event of hardware failure for Windows? I don't plan on moving to linux/unix/mac, so afraid this isn't all that relevant.

Would you/Do you encrypt the drives on your home computers? I have a fairly powerful PC, with 2 SSD's as install drives, and a pair of Mechanical drives in mirrored array for data storage of things I don't want to lose. I have W10 ultimate. If you've done it, does it impact on performance of your PC for gaming and other duties to any noticeable extent? What is the protocol for recovering the data to another computer in the event of the PC going splat? I also have 2 laptops, both with windows 8 (one pro/ultimate, one Home Premium) that I think I might do as well, but depends on how much affect it might have on their performance, as I do not want to run into issues as a result of it.

Please message me if interested in this position. Technical Analyst - One Bedford Competitive Salary & Benefits About the role One Technical Services provide technical expertise to Capita One customers and to the Capita One business. The analyst team has a primary remit to provide technical expertise covering product support, usually on a chargeable basis. The team is also required to provide help and support for the Technical Consultants' team, and to play their part occasionally in the form of onsite visits. The team consists of multi-skilled Technical Analysts with Oracle and Microsoft disciplines. Fundamental to the role of Technical Analyst is effective resource management, commercial acumen and technical competency. The post holder will be expected to be a highly motivated individual who works well within the team and aims to reach and exceed targets and standards set by the Team Leader and Head of Technical Services. The Technical Analyst has a responsibility to ensure that service levels are met and that both customers and internal departments receive a timely response to their requests. What you will do: To provide technical services to Capita One customers and to the Capita One business Work towards targets and goals as set out by the Technical Support Team Leader and demonstrate an understanding of how you will achieve these in your 1-1 meetings and regular reviews To plan effectively and to achieve expected service delivery To work effectively and flexibly with all other Technical teams to help collectively achieve targets across Technical Services Proactively seek out new opportunities which will help deliver increased service levels, or quality improvements To assist the Application Support Team in their investigations at a technical level. Work with the wider business such as Development, Product and Sales to provide sound technical advice and guidance toward the continual improvement of our products and services. Work closely with other team members and other teams, ensuring you continually develop and improve both own and the team's knowledge, skills and behaviours to help maximise performance Be a subject matter expert on a key technology Your experience will include: Proven successful experience in a Technical/ICT setting or demonstrable passion for it. Experience of working with Microsoft Windows Server (2008/2012) Excellent troubleshooting skills People skills for building relationships with colleagues and customers at all levels Strong written and verbal communication skills Ability to build strong customer relationships Demonstrates strong interpersonal skills including questioning for clarification and establishing of facts, observation and active listening Communicates regularly and effectively during the change process, ensuring the change takes place successfully A working knowledge of Microsoft Office applications What's in it for you? At Capita, training and development aren't optional extras: they're how we do our job. We will motivate you to perform at your peak, recognising your achievements and rewarding them appropriately. As well as a generous basic salary we also give you 23 day's holiday, , company pension scheme and access to voluntary benefit options including; child care vouchers, share save scheme, life assurance, holiday buy and many more designed to suit your own personal lifestyle. All of this, in a professional but fun environment. What we hope you will do next Help us find out more about you by completing our short application process - click apply now. Capita operates as an equal opportunities employer and we welcome all applications regardless of gender, marital status, sexual orientation, pregnancy, race, colour, ethnic origin, nationality, religion or beliefs, disability, age, political opinions or trade union membership. Listen | Create | Deliver Capita Resourcing welcome applications from all suitably qualified people regardless of gender, race, disability, age or sexual orientation. Capita Resourcing is a trading name of Capita Resourcing Ltd. Services offered are those of an Employment Agency and Employment Business. Applicants will be required to register with us. If you are successful with your application, you will need complete Capita's vetting and screening checks. This will include, but not be limited to, Reference Checks, a Criminality Check, Financial Probity Check, Sanctions Check and Media Check.

It's the Peel Remote, Flipboard etc that you cannot b****y remove that annoy me. It's my phone, let me choose what pieces of rubbish to put on or take off my device. I have a 16gb handset, and the vast majority of it's internal storage goes to it's horribly bloated self than to things I want to install. my wife has a J somethingorother, that only came with 8gb onboard memory. That thing might as well be a nokia 3310, as I've had to remove half the apps that CAME with the phone just to keep it running. At least they brought back the ability to officially move apps to the external storage now, it was gone for a couple years, and drove me nuts every time it updated, moved the app back to internal storage, and the phone stopped working due to lack of space.

If you notice, this doesn't use it for that. Essentially the Apple configurator is used to restore the device settings and to manage it with a pushed profile. Itunes is used to manage the content on the device. See above; all content is put on the ipad using Itunes rather than the configurator, and the configurator is used for getting the devices setup in a managed fashion.

The other reason for application forms over CV's, is the likelyhood that the applicant themselves has written it is much higher. There are plenty of CV writing services or pre-made CV's out there, so can you be sure that the really good looking CV in front of you was written by the person, or is that person actually a hairy troll that literally lives under a bridge and just has a high-class CV they send out occasionally so they can collect benefits. Something else I've always made a point of doing, is putting SOMETHING about what I do outside of work, and where possible point out the relevance of it. If you don't do anything outside of work except eat, sleep, watch TV and occasionally PUB, then it might be worth looking for something to do, even if it's just model making. Most places want individuals with a personality, and not just a mindless automaton. Hell being a 'pro gamer' is still better than doing nothing, as at least you're interacting with other people! And lastly, never be afraid of actually applying. I came across a job advert a few days ago for £100k for a high-end global IT manager, and I met 9/10 of their requirements (they were pretty horribly vague I'll admit). I dont ever expect to hear back from them, but you never know!

Well I play BF3, Arma2, EvE Online, Lotro, and I have a PS3 for movies and playing DUST514.... I also do a fair bit of stuff with websites and data work around excel, along with playing with virtual servers. Failing that, I keep emails, IRC, facebook, usually some video playing (either movie or TV) while I mess with something inane like minecraft or just running around in lotro. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd buy a 2nd graphics card and run 6 monitors, but the wife'd kill me.

I've been pondering replacing a couple of my oldest monitors (one is now 4 years the other 6 years old) I have 3 monitors at the moment -ASUS PA238Q IPS 23" 1920x1080 with full tilt/swivel (2d only but absolutely lovely) -Viewsonic 22" 1680x1050 TFT (TN) -Samsung 19" 1280x1024 (TN and 6 years old, broken power button, and starting to go faulty with dead pixels, poor brightness/contrast, and occasional ghosting) I love my Asus, bought it last year and it's just superb. But what I'm wondering, is if it's worth buying some 3d stuff now, or buy 2 more of my lovely ASUS one? last year when I got the asus there wasn't really anything worth getting that used it, but the market for media and probably gaming is heading for 3d as the norm. So anyone got any views, is it worth investing in 3d's now, or have I got another 3-5 years of being a fuddyduddy and sticking with 2d?

The Catch 22 This techie has worked in the industry for a good few years, and is now pretty good at what he does. Most things are fixed in record time, and anything that isn't is more likely to do with prioritisation than because of lack of knowledge/ability. He can do most things despite not having the certificates to prove it, and as a result finds it hard to obtain the training, either because work dont see the need, he can't afford it, or see's them as a waste of time since they really can do it already. A thankless individual, he is under-appreciated in general, as people are used to him being able to accomplish almost any task. He is stuck in the rut of employment; where he's too good at what he does where he is, therefore everything works and he is mostly getting bored with the daily tasks and sporadic projects, compared to a lesser-experienced body who would still struggle to keep things running as smoothly, and therefore be (or at least appear) busier. This techie will either one day get a lucky break and move onto some new exciting role within IT, or give it all up to become a Bottanist.

If you're already buying the license from a cloud-like interface, might as well license it there too! Ipad Apps can be grouped into folders and the folders named appropriately; eg, create a maths folder, a literacy folder and so on. As to locking the tablet desktop, I dont think you can do that per say as Apple still treat them as personal devices. But if they break things that badly, you just backup/restore the things which with the right setup and kit takes minutes.

I've tried to signup and try out Meraki stuff today, and the site won't go past registering name/email/company etc.

The internal iCloud I like, not sure about the point of the licensing server though. That can be cloud-based, since licensing is already handled at the Apple end rather than client end, they just track number of times license is used/tied against serial numbers of devices which apple pulls down anyway when you register them etc. As to the time-controls of apps, that sounds needlessly complicated to me, and I've not heard of a PC based system that allows this level of application control based on times, at least not so dynamically, since windows relies on physical files for it's linking, so to turn that on and off would be a nightmare. It's begging for things to go wrong. Much better to have open access and have users with the concentration above a gnat and someone to manage the class effectively.

No don't be silly. They only do it under circumstances -It's successful -It's useful -It's innovative -It works better than their own versions For reference, see every tablet based device, every mobile OS, half the desktop OS's, anything with a menu, anything you click/touch/lick/look at in a specific manner, and of course anything beginning with one of the 24 letters* of the alphabet. *Apple decided it didn't count the letters Z and J, and they've released these "NEW AND IMPROVED NEVER USED BEFORE" letters which I cannot type here as it's not apple. Z has been replaced with a complex pattern of swirls and pronounced "Uck" and the other has been replaced by something unpronounceable with a human tongue, but is a little like "NGHUER" then relieving yourself in someone elses underwear. The letter itself is a bulbous upside down 'T' with a pineapple on top.

Apple will either sue them for allowing people to use their product effectively in some patented way, or buy them out and break it knowing they way they've worked in the past

Apple's T&C's and several of their services have a 10 device restriction. But so far it's not 'enforced' for the store, not sure if iCloud restricts/enforces this, but it states in their unreadable-small-grey-text-at-the-bottom-your-supposed-to-miss that some iCloud services are restricted to 10 devices. Frankly I dont care much about their licensing agreements, they aren't there for me or to make my life better, they are for them to milk us for more money. The volume licensing I want is to make it so I dont have to mess about to get Apps onto multiple devices, and dont have a paperwork nightmare declaring the costs of it. There's other threads about it, I've got a lion OS server here specifically for the ipads and macs, but if I'm honest it's not really doing what I want, and the way I'm doing it is not the way Apple want me to.

I got asked a bit recently about some info on ipads and managing them and it got me thinking, how would/could/should they work in an environment such as ours? My biggest bugbear, is annoying and seemingly pointless restrictions. -5 computers per account -5 accounts per device -10 devices per account This is such a useless restriction in our environment. Even if you follow 'Apples advice' and use multiple accounts for different device banks, these numbers are so abritrary. The average home user might not have more than 5 computers/devices or whatever, but we do! I have approximately 20 teachers with staff ipads, all wanting the same apps, and all want to be able to sync their work. So to use the devices I need 2 accounts, and I need to gift each app to myself 9/10 times. Great, except now I've got the restriction on computers, therefore I need to find shared-computers for them to sync to. This means they can't be used individually, since your now sharing your account and your syncs with 9 of your peers. So you need another account per device to handle the 'teachers' individual work which they can sync to their own computer. Now you have 40 more ipads used by the students in loan sets. So that's 4 more accounts you need, each of which need a machine to sync to. But the teachers need access to these accounts so they can get at the work themselves, so now you've passed the account-per-device restriction. The limiting factor here, is the 'personal computer'. Each device NEEDS one, and doesn't really work without it. So I'm hearing some chirping in the background about 'iCloud'..... Great! cloud based syncing, apps, mails, calendars, files! But ah, do you setup one per student? if so, expect a bill worth millions by the time you buy each app 500 times ( I recently passed 250 apps in the store, at least 40 of them are paid for, meaning I would be looking at £20,000 if each of the 40 apps only cost £1, which they did not!) Not going to happen, so you setup your 6 school accounts to work with iCloud.. Problem solved! Except ah, now class 1 used set 1 last week which had account 1, and now they are using set 2 which is based on account 2.... So they need to login to iCloud account 1. This then REMOVES all the apps on the device, and ADDS the account 1 apps, files etc. (If anyone wants to correct me on this feel free, I've not tried iCloud as I don't own any personal Apple devices, but i've been told by people who have that it does this) You've got 8gb of apps and files on your ipads, there's 10 devices, and you've got a 10mb internet connection. Assuming you're using 100% of the connection, you're going at 1.25mb per second, which if I'm right, will take 18 hours to download.... You've got 45 minutes of a lesson. So say goodbye to iCloud here, it's not going to work. Ok, so enough ranting. What do I want it to do? I want firstly a single-account volume licensing model, with no arbitrary limits on devices per account, be that computers or iOS devices. I want iCloud to be able to pull down 'new' things and allow syncing, but don't touch what I've got on the device already you little bugger. What I'd like even more, is for them to work 'like computers do' and allow the ability to control the apps seperate to the login accounts, ideally with domain login ability. I want a server based app-repository, which I can dynamically push out, recall and deploy apps from and to. Therefore, if an app is purchased on a device, it is then syncing to the server, and can if allowed be then pushed out via the server to all devices. I want to tailor access to the App store on the Apple ID's, one for getting what is already purchased on the account, and another for 'adding new apps'. What do you want, what would make this apple gear friendly enough to bring it into your environment and not cause you headaches from restrictions?

I haven't the time or inclination to read all 76 pages, but what I read I actually found quite intriguing, and think that despite their narrow base of research, I think they found the problem fairly well. Half the conversations of kids I've overheard over the last 5 years revolve around these topics. I've heard 8/9/10 year olds discussing who their girl/boyfriends are (though it is fairly rare, it's certainly not widespread), 11-13 year olds boasting about who they snogged last night, and I won't even go there what I've read/heard from the 14-16 year olds... Maybe I'm being naive, but I don't really think this is much of a problem on the grand scale. I think back to what it was like 10/15/20 years ago in school, and I dont see a lot of changes, only difference now is that social circles are probably wider and larger than they were thanks to the internet; mostly I was friends with people I was in school with or lived on my street. Now, children can have 'friends' on the other side of the globe that speak to eachother more than I do with my wife most days! Heckling happened in the noisy class or the playground, and you discussed who was going to ask out who for the disco. A lot of my friends had 'girlfriends' by the age of 12 (ah the wonders of 'behind the bikesheds', lovebites and snogging!), I had my first girlfriend at 14, and met my wife at the age of 15. And I was one of the slowest of the group to 'pair up' with anyone... There's always going to be pressures to fit in, but ignoring the anomalies, I think most kids are still kids. The only difference is access is greater now. e-safety and sex ed has fixed a lot of the issues. Outright banning most of these things only makes it worse, but education of the issues means that these things will cease to become problems eventually.

I've been trying to get a webdav share running on the server, but have yet to get it working successfully. I'll post if I have an update on it, as I didn't try very hard. 'IN THEORY' you just turn it on and set permissions, in reality that doesn't work, and I haven't played with enough it yet to work out why. I had planned to write up a whole guide on Apple and Windows network integration, but frankly I couldn't work out how I did it in the end, and until I do I wasn't willing to make a fool of myself writing a guide for it. Apple firstly don't actually care (yet) about the business/education/enterprise iOS market, though they are moving towards it slowly, and really don't care much for anywhere that isn't the US, and at a push Canada. This is a shame, as there is some call for these things over here, only time will tell if this gets corrected.

If you want an example of who 'the people' vote for, look at -britains got talent -xfactor -dancing on ice/strictly ballroom -the latest government, since it seems 'the majority' voted them in, but 'the majority' thinks they're incompetent. I wouldn't trust 'the people' to agree on the colour of the sky if you put them all in the same place on a cloudless day and told them all to look up. Also to note, it's not just their accolades within their profession, but what they do with the profession within the country as a whole. None of us are likely to win an award of this size, because we don't do things 'for the country' as a whole. You might be the greatest IT tech that ever walked this earth, but in reality you're still only helping 500-1000 people in one area. Paula Radcliffe is one that's probably overdue, Elton John has been a face of British music for decades and one of the best selling artists in history, he's also helped numerous charities, and has been close friends with the royal family for quite some time. You can't blame people for giving him some credit, how many of you are multimillionaires, have some of the best selling material on the planet, president of your own national football clubs, and a name known by literally hundreds of millions of people. A lot of these people serve their country the best they can with their skills. Is it biased? Yes and no. Only 'big names' achieve these things, but guess what, their achievements are well known and far reaching. So they probably deserve it.

Couple of notes, from doing the bulk setups so far: -iOS update took less than 5 minutes for 6 ipads at once, using a pre-downloaded iOS update. -the initial sync of books/apps etc, I had to do that to no more than 3 at a time. I had 3 more ipads plugged in ready to go, but before I could set the 4th syncing, my mouse died (USB powered!) so I had to disconnect the other 3 ipads then dis/reconnect the mouse before it came back to life. -I would probably recommend getting a powered USB hub if your looking to do them in bulk, the higher the quality the better... My poorly Mac mini is roasting hot on the back of it over the USB ports with just 3 of them going. -In theory, a lot of this can be done via your wireless (at least the updating and syncing). But I've had troubles with this, mostly due to the nature of my network. Firstly, vlan's mean the ipads can't see the server. Secondly, our ISP/LEA have messed with things, and our mac itunes cannot update via the web, only the windows version, and this goes for our ipads as well (wireless update just errors out).

So I finally managed to pin down how to do this, though it took a while, and I'm going to have trouble in the future till Apple fix their entire operating ethos. The problem, is that Apples configurator program, for mass deploying iOS devices, now only support the Apple Volume Purchasing Program. This is bad, because that is only available in the US for fully registered companies with a DUNS ID (cant be bothered to explain, but it's a database in the US for businesses to register themselves.) This means, that only free apps can be deployed as part of Apple configurator, not paid apps, unless you are in the US, where you can buy volume licensing for them. So this is what I've had to do to get around it. I recommend that you either run seperate accounts for your different device sets, or, if you have what I have, and that's a single account, make different itunes libraries (it might be worth doing anyway even if you have multiple accounts) To do this, hold down Alt + click on the itunes icon. Then create library... This means, that for the different ipad varieties, yes you have to keep multiple copies of the same apps, but it makes your life a lot easier to manage the apps on your device. The general process flow to follow is this -Update iOS to latest version using Apple configurator; you can either let it go and download it, or you can download it yourself and point it at the upgrade file. You can plugin as many ipads as you've got USB ports (or hubs), but even better, once you set it up, you simply unplug the ones that were done, and plugin the next one(s) and it just carries on going till you hit the 'stop' button. -From the apple configurator window (Prepare Tab > Settings), only select from the dropdown the iOS version you want. Do not change anything else in the window. -Hit Prepare -Swap in/out till done. NOTE: HIT THE STOPP BUTTON WHEN YOUR DONE! I forgot at one point, and nearly factory wiped my master ipad when i plugged it in for imaging!) -Install all apps, books, music, movies etc and arrange the way you want (NOTE: it's best to do this using Itunes. I'll explain later.) -Transfer purchases from the ipad to itunes/the pc. This makes sure your PC has all the apps you want if any were added via the device rather than itunes. -Hit sync. This makes sure what your ipad has, so does the PC and vice versa. -Right click the Ipad in Itunes, and do a backup. This will now give Itunes a full backup of the SETTINGS. Note, this does not save the apps themselves. Now, the reason I said above that you need to use Itunes to setup the layout, is that there are 2 kinds of restore for the ipad. If you use the summary page restore, it is a factory reset, and reinstalls the iOS from scratch, giving you a vanilla ipad. It will then apply your settings/preferences. The problem is, that it hasn't put all your apps back on at this point. And if you were unlucky enough to have ticked 'sync apps on setup' and/or 'sync new apps', then it will put every single App on your account (that you've downloaded to the PC) on the device. Now this is not really that cool. At one point we had more than 270 apps in our library here, most of it junk, and we ran out of home screens to put them all on. This is why I suggest having different libraries. Seperate libraries means you keep each library with only the apps you need for that set, and applying the app sets is as simple as shift selecting all the apps and dumping it onto the ipad. Onto the restore part: -Stick in your new ipad with nothing on it, fire up itunes, and then tick to sync apps (suggest unticking auto install new apps, this gets annoying if your trying out apps etc.) along with anything else you want to sync up. Because you have a seperate library with just the apps you want in it, you can just shift select all the apps, and dump them on the ipad! -Wait till this is done syncing -Once it has all the apps you want on the device, Right click the ipad in itunes, and select Restore. THIS IS IMPORTANT. This right click menu option does NOT reinstall the iOS! It ONLY restores the settings, therefore all apps on the device are left alone. Since all the apps you want are on the device, it can create your home screen layout the way you want it. Anything on the device it's not sure of, it'll dump it loose on the home screen (so you can have some customisation where required) -Once this is done for all your ipads, it's time to go back to the configurator. -Setup profiles the way you want (To create a profile, click the '+' at the bottom of the window). You can set restrictions, wifi settings, mail settings, whatever is in the settings on the device, you can control it here. From the top: -Give the set name. Tick the 'number sequentially starting at 1' button. If you want the numbers to start from a different number, tick it, then change the number and it updates itself. -Supervision on/off means if you set it, only your PC can alter the settings on the device. -iOS: assuming you did it earier, don't touch this setting. -Restore: don't touch this setting, you did this stage during itunes. -Profiles: Tick next to the profile you want to apply -Hit prepare, and swap in/out devices till all are done. -HIT STOP! This will give you a set of ipads all with the same layout, same iOS, same app sets. -From Apple config, select from the restore drop down: 'Backup' This makes an Apple config backup file for later use. label it appropriately. In the event of needed to reinstall from scratch, follow the processes above entirely. If you just want to reset the layout/settings, and assuming no apps were removed/added, you can simply hit 'restore' from here and it'll restore back to your master. If you update your app set, you'll have to do it all from scratch again.

Where I am I've started working on upgrading all hardware/software to the point where it can be better managed/controlled. Hardware is 3 years for an upgrade (EG more memory, bigger HD where applicable), and 5 years for replacement. This is more because you don't want to rely on 5 year old kit, it's not really designed to last that long with really heavy usage. OS's I would say don't touch new versions for a minimum of 12-18 months, and wouldn't consider a mass upgrade/rollout within 2 years of release. OS's should ideally not be used for more than 5 years after release, the exception being with XP, where vista was such a pile of fail it had to limp on for longer. Other software (EG office suites) I would suggest a 5 year program, as it takes 1 year to iron out the bugs, and 2 more years for the 'new version' to become standard. The servers are straight forward; 5 year replacement program, and stagger it by 2-3 years; so at no point do you have ALL new kit, you have AT LEAST one reliable bit of kit. This reduces the chances of mass failure due to hardware problems, or mistakes in config. Server OS's need to move with the prevailing clients. When the majority of your kit is not supported by the existing Server OS, it's time to eye up those upgrades. EES from memory costs about 15-20% more than the outright purchase of the OS/CAL's, and is normally about a 3 year program, and is only cost effective if you keep upgrading every 3 years. I am likely to upgrade to windows 7 by next summer, and will upgrade my main server to 2k8r2 this summer, giving me 3-5 years more on that OS and server 2008r2.

Rarely cost effective in Primaries. By the time you NEED the upgrade, the kit it's running on is out of date anyway. I would hold off on S2012, firstly to get the bugs out of it (do you really want your network running on a partially tested buggy system?), and until you're client machines are at a state where they NEED the upgrade to use all the features. Since most schools have barely left XP for Windows 7 it seems silly to upgrade to a newer OS to support kit that isn't used yet.