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I've sent you a PM with my details, let me know if you need further info, if you email me the quote I'll pass it by the head and if all is well were good to go. (Yesterday it was only one hard drive and she was a little bit concerned as the laptop is 6 years old but it's cheaper than a brand new laptop by any means and other than this issue the laptops still work well)

Will do!

It's the hard drives that carry the fault. I would usually do 2-way-swaps but I have had trouble locating another laptop of the same model/spec but I've managed to find one and it actually works and I swapped the hard drives and the fault carried over. We will need 2 replacements and the cheapest I have found is: dabs.com - Western Digital 80GB Scorpio Blue 5400RPM IDE 8MB (WD800BEVE) at under £40 each but we cannot purchase from the company as we are a school and they only take card payments, do you have any ideas where I can get the hard drives at a reasonable price via a purchase order that will also be compatible/recommended by dell? Thanks!

It's around 5-6 years old, it's a DELL Latitude D505 (in fact I have 2 laptops of the same spec with the same fault) One of the laptops I looked at around 4 months ago and I'm not sure how I got it working but I was able to re-install windows and it worked ever since but then I got it back yesterday with the same fault and now this morning I have been giving another laptop with the same fault! Yes the hard drive activity light is on. HELP!!!

I have a laptop that displays the following message: Primary hard disk drive 0 not found No bootable devices. Does anyone have any ideas or is the hard drive ready for replacement? (or could it be a motherboard issue?)

I know! That's why I wouldn't mine a PM with the quotes!

Yeah £500 is steep but it's top of the range, well what you said "core2quad, 4gb ram and a 19" tft" was your quote from dell? If you have a full spec and cost and wouldn't mind PM-ing me, it would make me very happy! Thanks!

A typo! Wow you obviously have a bigger school and more on-roll and more funding! We buy from Dell and would like to continue that trend. Do you mind me asking what make yours are? If you have any info from past computers you have ordered within the last year would you mind PM-ing me a full spec with cost, I would be more than greatful!

Do you have a link to the thread or do you have a website regarding CRBS, maybe version 1 could get me on my way and then move to version 2 when it's released.

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/45127-thin-clients-pros-cons.html#post414388

I don't know much about thin clients, we use to have about 10 but they got replaced over a year ago. What are the pros and cons of looking at thin clients in the future. At present we have over 300 pcs and it is becoming tricky with budgets to ensure all the pcs are in warrenty and in full working condition, the rolling program of replacements has gone through the window. What spec would you look for and what about server side to support the thin clients?

A lot of people are talking about thin clients. We use to have 10 of them the library but they got replaced a year ago as they were buggered! What is the average cost per thin client and what spec? Maybe we should start to talk about the pros and cons of looking at thin clients within this forum, in fact I may create a new forum for thin clients and add a link from this forum.

Wow! 160 replacement PC's each summer, how many computers do you have in total! 50 is our max looking at £500 per PC. We don't replace laptops anymore as every classroom has a computer.

We do have 2 week timetables but it's not a big issue, on our current system week 1 and week 2 arn't seperate, for example the booking just state's "week 1 - ICT Mr Bloggs, week 2 - Maths - Mr Emc". Our current system expires next year and is too expensive to continue the use of plus we don't have the ability to change the layout. We are looking for either a free or cheap system that can be used by staff as well to book the IT suites once the timetabled lessons have been added.

Yeah good idea. Cheers.

Yeah he's done that, he completed it very well - sorry!

Are you saying that the image can be taken from a machine of any spec and deployed to a complety different spec machine? What about drivers? Are there no compatability issues or do you add drivers after. We currently use WDS. I don't like the idea of adding software via GPO, had problems with it in the past.

The budget for computers is taken into account by management and then an average cost per computer and the number they came up with is 50!

That's done and up to date. I wouldn't really see that as a task that could benifit someone looking to get into the IT field. Thanks for the suggestion though.

We don't replace staff laptops, we have around 25 staff with laptops back in the day of the laptops for teachers scheme. We have over 300 computers and around 100 are out of warrenty now. If we are on a budget of 50 computers per year thats a 6 year cycle! I thought it would be interesting if we could all share information on our process of computer replacement. Ideally if you have 5 main IT suites with 30 computers each you would like them all to be of the same model so it makes updates/re-imaging easier but when your limited to 50 computers a year it's quite hard.

Hi, I was looking for sugestions of the sort of work that could be provided to a present student for work expeirence. Obviously we wouldn't want them doing certain admin task that could put the netwok at risk as this information may be passed onto their friends and also we wouldn't want them accessing things like bios so what interesting jobs could we get them to help us on that will give them an insight into IT within a school and something that they will enjoy other than task such as cleaning monitors.

Hi, I am interested to know what others school have in place regarding the replacement of old and out of warrenty equipment. Information and advice on the timescale of the replacement cycle, amount of money available, equipment purchased and quantity. Mainly focusing on PC's.

Hi, I'm looking for ideas for room booking. We would like to set up a booking system so that classrooms can be booked by staff.

I'm sure the last time I had that error message it was because the name I was trying to join the computer to the domain with was already in use, have you check that?

Stupid projectors! 2 of the replacements back from June have just had the same fault as the previous projectors!!!!!