OllieC

If buying it from Apple, buy it with the smallest amount of RAM possible... they stupidly overcharge for RAM and it never voids your warranty upgrading it yourself afaik.

Helped a nearby secondary get their Xibo signage up and running this week. Also heard of another recent large-scale implementation this week. ^_^

We buy a lot of stuff from Canford Online - Professional Audio and Video Equipment and Home at Studiospares

Eurgh, I've had misery with most LaCie devices I've ever had any contact with. The bufallo stuff's worth it though, we've got two terastations that work away happily, problem free.

I was going to mention DD-WRT again but didn't want to sound like I was going on about it, haha. DD-WRT is the ultimate geek home networking toy. I'd hate to not have it.

Linksys WRT320N Wireless-N Dual-band Gigabit Router - Ebuyer That'll run DD-WRT, 802.11n and gigabit. You can use any old ADSL router as the modem... the DD-WRT router will deal with the connection, as in, the connection settings will go into the router rather than the modem.

I'll just mention something else we do with Xibo. Whenever we have an event on in the evening we usually create a new layout containing any required information to greet visitors and then schedule it to automatically change in time in the evening.... 'tis so useful.

I'd give Xibo a shot, it's incredibly quick to set up and easy to use once you've got the hang of it. Very flexible as well with the scheduling and multiple display support. In our reception there's a projector pointing at a large white wall that is plugged into a laptop running the Xibo client. That is scheduled to display a looping slideshow of the various school logos/achievements that usually go at the bottom of letters.

I'd recommend grabbing a router that can run DD-WRT (Linksys WRT54 series ftw). In the past I've had my main SSID (WPA2) and then a second with WEP for my sister's DS, this was on a different VLAN and could only access the internet and had MAC filtering. Take a look at this Multiple BSSIDs with DD-WRT - Interactive HowTo Slightly different/less comprehensive from the official DD-WRT site VLAN Detached Networks each with Wireless and Internet - DD-WRT Wiki It can probably be done with Tomato firmware as well although I wouldn't know where to start with that.

Okays, thanks guys, will have a play around with the ubuntu setup in that wiki. If I can get that running I'm sure we'll have a very happy IT department.

It would be a lot of students, more than I'd be happy to set up accounts for individually. I'm also less inclided to set up a central web server that they can access, I like the idea of the server environment being individual for each machine, teacher would be able to pull up work in the lesson by going to their computer name and suchlike.

Here's an interesting one... the IT teachers would like students to be able to access some kind of web server so that they can use web applications such as wordpress and joomla for their IT work. An idea I thought of was to have a small web server installed on each student machine, having data (htdocs, databases etc) stored on the student's user area whilst all the actual software runs on the machine. I was looking at XAMPP lite but not really sure where to get started, obviously all of the paths can be changed within the configuration files for apache/mysql etc but I'm not sure that would work... surely the structure that has been setup by the installer would need to be present on the students' user area...? In short, this is all a bit experimental, does anyone have any kind of experience doing anything like this or have any suggestions. It may be that there's something out there much easier to use than XAMPP that'll do the job. The basic requirement is that the students can use php/sql on the computers to set up websites, their htdocs/databases follow them round and at minimal impact to their storage space. Any suggestion greatly appreciated. Ollie

Hi, I'm struggling to get ours working, I'm sure I've missed something basic... Server 2003/IIS6. I can access the site, I add a new server, fill everything required in correctly... it says that it's added but then nothing appears in the overview or server tab. In short, it's not adding stuff. Any suggestions pleaase? Edit - sorted this, changed the permissions for the data folder. Now the problem I'm having is that it doesn't seem to be liking the servers... it just says fail count: 3 and there's a warning on the public display... again, missing something simple?

Yup. Using this for Kayako Big-screen ticket queue monitoring for your Kayako helpdesk | Kayako Blog

Can you try another computer as the client? Preferably one that's not very similar to the one you're currently using. Also, there's some code in the embed script by default... I left that as it was.

I finally got round to getting something simple set up. http://i49.tinypic.com/t9f7kk.jpg Got another layout doing a slideshow of the logos that usually go on letters, running on a projector in reception.

Awesome, I have one of these in my room. Did another of the VT440s today and an ancient Sanyo. Would do a guide for the NECs but they're so old I doubt many actually use them still.

Thanks. We don't have any of these but you inspired me to rip apart one of our useless old NEC VT440Ks... was unusable in a classroom before, cleaned it out and it's as good as new now!

Hey, I'd like to be able to have the year 12 and 13 distribution groups in exchange to be subscribed to our sixth form blog RSS feed in outlook/web access. Is there any way of doing this? Thanks, Ollie.

It's worth sticking your nose around at school, offer to help where you can even just for the experience, one of our techs started straight after year 11 and since has completed his A+ and Microsoft server/desktop certification alongside work, think he's doing network+ atm. I've been helping around IT for a good 4 years now and after year 11 they started paying me to work alongside sixth form and in holidays.

He approached it completely the wrong way, if he was a new user to windows he'd be faced with similar problems no doubt yet he tries to make these seem like flaws with Ubuntu. The man is an idiot most the lot from Click irritate me... especially after they felt the need to make room for this question xD... http://olliez0r.com/skitch/BBC_iPlayer_-_Click-20090823-110755.jpg "What a good question!"

It was a either a blue or grey here until now but I want something a bit nicer. Thought it would be really good if we could give the students a choice out of a few that we add.

Hey all, we're looking to set a wallpaper for students to use on our thin clients that now connect directly to the server. Any ideas for what to use? I was thinking perhaps gettings some decent photos of the school (perhaps HDR) and whacking the logo in the corner then setting that, we could have a few and cycle them or is there any way to allow students access to a resticted desktop properties that will allow them to choose out of a list of ones we specify? Anywhoo, the question is, what do you guys do for wallpapers/desktop backgrounds if you use them? wOllie.

Hey, sorry if this is in the wrong place. We've got an Epson Aculaser C3800N that we're struggling to fix. Being as we don't have a printer support contract at the moment can anyone recommend any companies who can come out and fix it for a good price. The problems seems to be with one of the sensors, it won't clear the jam even after a partial dissasembly. We're in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham. Thanks, Ollie.

Hey, slightly unusual one here but I knew the best place to find out would be here... does anyone know where I can get just the feet for HP-KU-0316 (the bog standard) keyboard. We're assuming that it'll be cheaper to buy new feet if they're available from anywhere than buying new keyboards in some cases. So, can they be bought on their own or am I being far to optimistic? Thanks, Ollie.