amacken

Exchange CAL's are very confusing. I phoned 3 (supposedly trained)resellers and got 3 different answers. I even phoned MS Licensing helpline and got a completely different answer. The way I now look at it is that I have got Office with Outlook, therefore I have a CAL. There is also a letter or two somewhere on this site which is supposedly from MS saying that OWA is free, even though a certain very large company tried to charge me 9 grand for them (yes, 9 grand just for OWA x 100 staff) MS Licensing is ridiculously confusing

Apologies for my above post...the 5 year warranty is on PC's, not laptops as I found out today :oops:

I'm using one right now at home, and it is superb. We have a couple of hundred of Stone machines which are very reliable. Support is second to none. Also, I was at the VIP open day of their new facility this week, simply stunning. They announced that they have just bought their very own recycling facility, and as of July are offering a free 5 year warranty 8O on all purchases....stunning to say the least. Therefore they may be a little more expensive, but total cost of ownership wins hands down.

Scruff, notice you're in Lincs. I am the Service Manager/Business Manager at a school in Lincs. We have the MD of Securus up here quite often, he's a top bloke, enough in fact that we've just gone into formal partnership with the company. Happy to put you in touch with him directly, you won't regret it. Cheers

Thanks Craig, I'll have a look at that

Some eejit has created a yearbook in Powerpoint 2003 which is nearly 80Mb in size (!!!!!) which somehow I need to put on our website for download (it's about 50-60 pages). I reckon I should be able to reduce the size by a huge amount by converting to Word then undoing a load of the formatting/pictures etc, but I'm having problems converting. I saw somewhere that within Powerpoint select "send to - " then "word", but all I get is a single blank page. Does anyone know of another way to accomplish this ? Thanks

Thanks oscarod, I'll bear that in mind

It is bordering on the worst software I've ever seen. The main file to be used by the students for simple multiple choice type questions is an 80Mb excel file 8O Great fun over wireless

Jason, I think your views are very short sighted. The very fact that a company (whoever) is willing to come on here and publicly acknowledge there are faults with their product to all and sundry should raise an applause all by itself. I don't see any sales-speak in any of Donna's posts, she has replied in order to help others. The fact that a company is willing to come out of its own box and make a concerted effort to assist others gets my vote every time.

There may be another route to consider here. I was in much the same position as you last year and was not happy to take on a system that was flawed. My first piece of advice is to steer very clear of FAST. They are well documented as being nothing but money grabbers and will aggressively pursue you and the Head of Establishment. Second piece of advice is to make an approach to BSA; compared to FAST, BSA are are well documented for assisting you through your troubles. It may seem a bit radical, but once you have owned up you have got time to come up with a suitable plan to make things right. The bottom line is BSA are there to help you, FAST are there to screw you. Have a look at their website which gives some very good tips and advice.

Just to add to my post above, Ramesys quoted a couple of weeks ago for 100 users (teachers and staff) around 12 grand. They are not aware of these letters....it would be interesting to know how many other schools have paid this extortionate amount for OWA if it really is free..... 8O

Another member of this forum pointed those out to me a few weeks ago when I asked about OWA. I sent them to Ramesys to ask for clarification as they wanted to charge me a huge amount of money for OWA. They said they'd never seen them but would get onto MS to ask.....weeks have passed with no reply, and you've just reminded me to chase them up. Thanks

We use CSE ( http://www.cse-net.co.uk/ ). It's not brilliant, it's okay, but it does what it says on the box.

Let them know that all it takes is one disgruntled member of staff to make an anonymous phone call, and potentially the school will have all its hardware removed and the Head will face a possible prison sentence.

I would strongly suggest you get a rep from the E-Learning foundation to talk to yourself and the SLT. There are multiple schemes out there which can be funded, and it "usually" costs the school very little in terms of finance and manpower. The costs I have seen are reasonably good, and include 3 year next day on site warranty, worldwide insurance cover etc etc. All setup etc is done by the company, not the school tecchies.....to be honest there's too much to mention. A lot of companies have jumped on the bandwagon as they see easy money, and to be honest it is, but your first stop must be the E-Learning foundation. They can advise on good companies who they have had good relations and service with. In a nutshell, you apply to them for a percentage of funding, and it is very rarely turned down.