localzuk

Yeah, I've had a lot of bad experiences with Seagate drives too - don't touch them these days. I stick to WD and HGST. Though, HGST were bought by WD, so that makes me pretty much a WD only man these days!

It doesn't turn it all off sadly. Some still gets sent.

There is a domain you can block on your firewall that stops it. trace.svc.ui.com - Ubiquiti are working on a way to stop it on the controller, but its not out yet. They published the address in the meantime.

Yeah, I will continue to swear by Ruckus. We've had it for 3 generations of controller now (all still a physical controller here, may switch out to cloud stuff next time round in about 5 years). We've had 2 APs die over that time, Ruckus replaced them without issue. We've had an issue with one version of firmware and a specific model of wireless card on an older laptop - they spent multiple hours working through the issue with us. They aren't even that expensive to be honest. About half the APs we run at the moment were bought as Unleashed models, and reflashed as full ones, the licenses etc... allowed it just fine. We got those at 50% off. My new senior tech hadn't touched Ruckus before either. He seems to have taken to it very quickly also, without any training.

Here? Not any more. They used to though. Many schools do pay a third party for extra support too. Those are just the end user apps. Not the system as a whole. Again, ignoring the complexity of building and managing such a setup. Depends what you want to achieve. Fully legacy? Server + WDS or SCCM etc... Modern cloud stuff? Azure + InTune. Both have well documented ways of doing things, used in exactly the same way by hundreds of millions of other users. None of that is "simple stuff". The fact that you cannot recognise that is the issue you repeatedly are exhibiting in threads like this. What is simple for you is NOT simple for everyone else. It is a new setup. It is an entirely different way of doing things. Not overly so. There are a lot of schools that don't have that expertise in house, they outsource the top level knowledge to support providers. So, their IT staff don't know the intricacies of DNS/DHCP/LDAP. Under the hood its the same? I think the distro maintainers would disagree with you. Systemd? Non-systemd? There's an entire battle going on out there about that one. Windows 10 and Windows 7 are not as different as 2 distros. Redhat vs Debian might as well be 2 completely different OS's rather than 2 different distros. We're going in circles. Anything I say won't change your mind, and you seem to be dead-set on something that is not suitable for many schools. If your individual school manages with it all like that, good for them. I'd hazard a guess they'll have issues when you leave though.

There are literally thousands of support companies providing support. Google includes support with ChromeOS when you buy the management license. There is no single "standard" way. Also are you seriously saying that building a linux setup, from scratch, would be as easy as buying Chromebooks and loading up the admin console which is ready to go?? Yup. Linux is a niche skill. Especially Linux on the desktop. Again, this is because there is no "standard" way of doing things with Linux. Every distro does it differently. Many distros provide dozens of ways of doing things. Mac? There's a Apple standard way of setting things up. Android? There's MDM - which is standardised based on the spec by Google. iOS - same as with Android. ChromeOS? Only one standard way of doing it - the admin panel. Windows? Whilst you *can* do things in different ways, MOST people follow the MS way of doing things - using MS tools on MS OS's in their standardised way. One server? Running one piece of software? Not exactly an example of an entire network is it? That doesn't dismiss what I said in the slightest. Things broke - they took longer to fix when they were Linux systems. My years of experience with Windows didn't help - at the time, we didn't have ChromeOS, Android, etc... You are talking about a total and radical change in doing things. Going from "MS says click XYZ and it'll do ABC" to "write your config files by hand, you'll fundamentally need to understand how every single tool works, and how to integrate them together" etc... ChromeOS is an easy transition - it is a very simple single pane of glass to admin it. Linux stuff is not. That's kinda the whole point I'm trying to make. There is no such thing as a standard Linux network. It doesn't exist, because there is no such thing as a standard Linux OS, let alone the tools on top of it to do various tasks. That flexibility increases admin and support costs. It is a completely different way of doing things, that will require significant investment in training - either in the form of actual training, or in the form of time. Many schools don't have time, so you end up trying to justify actual training - and the question then becomes why do we pay for all this training, when the system we have already does everything you want this new one to do, and we can get support from thousands of companies at ease, and hire your replacement at ease should you leave right now?

Chromebooks, up until this month, had 6 years of support from initial release date. This has now been increased to 8 years for models out this year and some from last year. If you're buying old models, you're doing it wrong too. The devices are fine for most use - as they are for web browser use. A Windows device is not just £200 either. The device itself costs that much, but then you need a heck of a lot of infrastructure to manage it - if you add it all up, you find that you're paying a considerable amount more for it. From servers to Intune/SCCM to OVS-ES licenses. Or, with Google you pay a one off management fee when you buy the device, and get access to the management infrastructure for that entire 8 year period. Also, for £200, we got 2 in 1 devices that work as both laptops and as tablets. I've yet to find a Windows device that is this price point that has that capability. Put it this way. For the same price as 3 suites of windows PCs, and a couple of clusters of 4 PCs around this school, we can issue every child in the school with a Chromebook. Then there's the support aspect. We have 300 of them deployed now. We've had a grand total of 8 requests for issues in 3 months. 1 was a dropped one with broken hinges. 1 was one dropped in a bucket of water (which miraculously was fine, except for 1 dead USB-C port). 2 were dead PSUs. 1 was an issue with Wifi, which Acer support are resolving, and the others were fixed with a reinstall of the OS.

The problem with that is it ignores the increased costs associated with running Linux - admin time in particular, and loss of the huge wealth of support. So, for example, you have a problem with one of the tools you're using to administer your Linux setup. Your support options are much more limited - either that single tool's mailing list/forums (which I have found generally to be quite condescending in how they treat new users), a hope that someone on a more general forum like this one knows (which as it is not a common thing in education in the UK, will be less likely) or paying for a support company to help (at which point, you're back to paying for something, so why not Windows?) Increased training costs - if your school or organisation has so far been a Windows user, and you switch, you've got a lot of learning and admin to do to switch over. Moving to Google is very simple - there's masses of trainers out there that can show you the majority of it in a day or so. Moving to a Linux setup, which by its very design is custom each time someone does it, is harder. So, in the end, you potentially will increase your management and support costs. A lot of schools like to know that they're not out on a limb too - what happens if their resident expert leaves? They'll struggle to find someone to take over, because availability of staff who have all the skills necessary is much lower (and therefore, their salaries are generally higher). So, the idea that you will save considerable amounts of money moving to Linux isn't really that true to be honest. You just shift your costs elsewhere. I'm talking from experience also. We have ran Linux servers for various things, and we used to run all our thin clients on a Debian install, with a Python UI which wrapped around one of the RDP clients. Worked OK, but when something broke? Took much longer to fix because we just didn't have the knowledge needed to trace it all easily.

Here, we have an Azure Storage account in our Azure account, in that we have a container which holds the data. In our backup software (currently using CloudBerry) we then enter the settings for this and tell the backup to utilise the Archive tier storage on the account. That's all there is to it. We also have a rule set up in Azure that deletes data that is more than 180 days old. We buy Azure credits from our MS reseller, and add them to Azure periodically, and the costs are deducted from those.

Why are you wanting to store stuff in your school? Prevents children getting their work at home unless you add in something for remote access too. So, instead of GPO, you end up building the same idea using other tools? Or you can just use Windows Server or the G Suite admin panel, or InTune. See, what you're suggesting is basically copying the setup that most of us already have, but instead of using Windows/GPO etc... using a bunch of different tools from all sorts of different providers, so instead of having to rely on one provider to provide all your critical tools, you now have to worry about loads of tools and potentially projects dying off etc (this happens a lot in the open source world in my experience, and documentation rarely keeps up with changes too). Why would you go to all that effort just to mimic what is now a pretty legacy experience?

We considered it about 10 years ago. The biggest issue at the time was the sheer volume of legacy apps - I even went through them all and tried them out in Wine. We had about 85% of them working well in Wine. Since then though, the world has changed. We've now moved to a world where the client machine OS doesn't actually matter any more - most work is done via web browsers. So, that's why we opted to go down the Chromebook route. It will still save us a lot of money, which we are actually just reinvesting in more devices. So, instead of a few ICT suites of PCs, every child will have a Chromebook in 4 years (we're introducing them 1 year at a time). The costs work out around the same to give every child a device vs running the old Windows setup! It does mean we end up with 4x the devices, but going by our experience so far with the Chromebooks, this shouldn't be a huge issue. In 3 months we've had 1 broken Chromebook from dropping, 2 dead PSUs and 1 having weird wifi issues. Out of 300. Staff have taken to G Suite very well also. So, I would take the topic back a further step and ask "what is our IT trying to achieve?" and work from the ground up. Do you need servers? Do you need a full desktop OS? Do you need "profiles"?

I would say it all depends on need. If you are putting 35 computers in every room in your building, all running off wifi, I'd suggest that Unifi may struggle, and you're probably gonna want to look at the high end stuff like the Ruckus R750. We run Ruckus on most of our sites, and Unifi on one. They both work well - but they key thing is that the Unifi site is a small site with relatively low device density. I suspect we'd need many more APs in our largest site for our higher density deployment. We currently have 2 R710s handling 160 Chromebooks without breaking a sweat in one area.

In the time I've been here, I've had a few requests for this to be done for people on long term sick. Most of the time, I get a request for a specific file or folder to be sent over to someone - I get told what file/folder, and I make a copy for them. On the few "really long term" sickness requests, our COO authorises it, and I make the data available via a shortcut for the person who needs access. I think there's only ever been one request for access for someone's files regarding a disciplinary, all other times have been due to long term sickness for job continuity.

It really depends on size of machine. We have what I would say are 3 tiers of machines in our Trust: Pro level machines (Ricoh Pro C5200s and Pro 8300s) - £0.0195 colour on the 5200, £0.0019 for mono on the 8300s Mid-range (IM 5500/MP C4505) - £0.023 colour £0.0023 mono Small workgroup (MP C307, IM300) - £0.04 colour and £0.026 mono 3 year deals. So, I'd say you're paying over the odds for your click charges for those mid-range models IMO. Oh, also, those click charges I list are for A3 or A4 - you don't pay double for an A3. All of this is under the CPC framework with Ricoh direct. Signed literally 2 weeks ago.

I'm confused by your statement "these terminal devices don't like DHCP reservation". An endpoint doesn't know it is a reservation or not, it is just an IP it gets sent by the DHCP server. The client requests an address like normal, and the DHCP server replies, as normal, the only difference is that the server always returns that same address.

You won't find any official Apple repair company willing to do this - they sign contracts with Apple when they get certified stating they'll only use official Apple parts, and that doesn't stop when it becomes vintage (at least that was the case last time I spoke to any of them). You're going to have to either do it yourselves, or look for a small computer repair business for it instead - not an official Apple one. We sold a 2009 iMac recently, got £250 for it... So they certainly are worth selling on if you go down that route!

You would need a printer that can support it - not many do, and those that do often don't do it very well, or print on a larger sheet and cut it down (this is how its done professionally).

These days? I don't. If I need a portable device, I use a Chromebook - I can RDS in to our servers with it if I need to, and access all my documents on Drive. But, even then, I think I can list the number of times I've needed it on one hand since Sept. At home? I don't have a laptop. I have a desktop with a 43" ultrawide screen instead.

This is the same reason I went from Hyper-V to VMWare. Stability. I had regular issues with Hyper-V. Since moving to VMWare, those issues have all disappeared.

Roundabouts are a communist plot.

Watch any of those crash videos on Youtube and you see why. Intersections there are insane. People approach a 4 way stop at 50mph and wonder why they crash into someone. Numbers wise, they have 3 million people injured in RTC's each year - near enough 1% of their population, compared to the UK where 181k a year in the UK, about 0.27% of the population. Self-driving cars, theoretically should massively improve that rate!

I think that's just a thing of scale again. Take Reading - the big companies are all out of town. Microsoft/Oracle etc... but you don't really drive there - you get on their bus service from the train station. They can do this as there is enough business there to fund it. If other areas did similar things, then this would sort what you're talking about out. But, I take your point. I live in a rural area where the main A road narrows to single lane in places. We're going to be struggling when they build the 2000 new homes down here, so more business traffic would be awful. So, it'd definitely need a proper joined up transport plan to implement a business park down here.

No. Just a login. If you have paid for the subscription, it gives you access to the online service also (which is basically a Notebook viewer online with a few bells and whistles).

Yeah, you have to have a SMART account to use it. Those accounts are free though...

In my experience, Casio projectors were always good for having a great adjustable throw distance - might be worth taking a look at. They are LED/Laser too, so no replacing lamps. The XJ-V10X should be a fairly drop in replacement I think? The lens is roughly in the same spot as well, so you shouldn't get any "off centre" issues. Might be worth trying one.