Lee_K_81

But the schools staff wont have any say on that, or manage the server using those tools, In BSF's plans that will be handled centrally Again the school techs wond do it. It'll be done remotely. Then you get on to 4-5 day priorities, etc. You're an idealist. Try looking at as a realist for 5 mins. If you are a school technician, you wont work for the school anymore, you'll be one of a few thousand, likely to be moved to another school if theres absense etc. nothing the school can do about it, you're line manager will be a voice at the end of a phone you might see once a term if you are luck as he'll have 20 schools to visit. If you are a school NM it's P45 time. The types of regulations and procedures BSF will bring in would make a better system, would make life easier for techs, but theres a reason we dont do those things anyway i.e. Teachers. A long drawn out procedure for getting support will have a real effect on T&L, a negative one. But how many problems in the class are to do with the infrastructure or because of a network issue, they're usually because a teacher cant press fn-f5, or some darling kid has unplugged their network cable, or switched the interactive whiteboard off, or a kid unplugs a mouse and bends the pins trying to force it back in. Or the "fantastic software that will really make a difference on a pupils learning" is actually a badly written piece of VB with an access back-end. Having a fantastic up-to-date infrastructure wont cope with a piece of software designed for windows 3.1

We all know the blurb about the good points of standardisation, and that in theory by purchasing one make in large quantities the BSF winner will be able to get rock bottom prices, but they will be a PLC and required by law to make as much profit as possible for their shareholders. If i can buy a dell PC for £350 (say) and the BSF provider can buy in bulk for £200, you think the school will be charged £200 or even £250? I wouldnt be suprised if they got charged as much as £340. Hey aint that great we saved a massive £10 because of BSF. Now dont get me wrong, i'm all for involving businesses and creating partnerships with businesses, but i like having a choice. I like being able to get the best deal possible and play HP off against Dell, or one supplier off against another to make my tiny budget go further. Standardisation can be a good thing, but what about all the investment that has already been plowed into schools, i'd be really annoyed if we were told we HAD to have RM machines or Dell Machines and all the HP Thin Clients, desktops and servers we've bought are going to be disposed of. For all the advantages BSF and a managed ICT service brings there are just as many disadvantages. No more "can you just do [insert something outside of JD]", the response will be "contact [insert bid winner] and they'll give you a price on how much that will be. They should be back to you within 2 weeks". Schools dont run like businesses, they have a 60minute slot to teach a pupil, they have a problem they wont accept "well just log it and we'll get round to it in a week". They want somebody over straight away to either solve it or try and do something.

My point was that Birmingham, despite having outsourced a lot of things, still (currently atleast) sees the need for roles such as IT Managers / NM / SM. I wasnt actually defending you as i disagree with quite a lot of what you have said in this thread. I was merely pointing out that the examples of outsourcing you have given dont necessarily mean that we're all out of work.

torledo, you use Birmingham as a prime example of how outsourcing is good. Fair enough, Birmingham is the largest council in the country and has formed a private jointly owned business with Capita to handle its IT Support. It has also outsourced www hosting & email, VLE, firewall, etc taking these things out of the schools responsibilities. However, and i know as i'm an information systems manager at a school in Birmingham, they do not mind schools internally hosting their own website, VLE, email, etc. Here most schools employ their own NMs / SMs etc. Lets hope every LA uses your example of Birmingham as a role model. We are still yet to see how Birmingham will be effected by BSF, but their company will retain some services.

Not at the moment. The costs with Citrix are a bit prohibitive. I know there are other alternatives out there that are cheaper but if we went with anything like that there could be other problems with the software not being as good. Just out of interest how much does citrix cost you?

@ bossman: well technically it's currently around 130 clients but most simultaneous is 90ish. Servers are HP DL380s 2x 3Ghz Dual Core Xeon, 4GB Ram. I've got another server ready waiting as we've got another 30 in stock ready to add. I've been keeping an eye on the servers and the most capacity they've reached is about 40%CPU and 50% RAM. @Butuz: With some it's not too bad, but sometimes kids are waiting 5 or so minutes for it to automatically connect. It's causing complaints from the teachers. @_Ric: Yeah the thin client we bought for testing was great with altiris. Imaging took seconds. They it end E-O-L and the new model doesnt.

I was hoping i wouldnt have to do that. Giving them access to the HP Thin Connect window just opens up the option of them playing. I'll have a look over half term. Just not looking forward to reimaging 130+ clients. Damn altiris / HP (in) compatibility.

anybody???

I have 2 MS Terminal Servers, load balanced with 160ish HP T5135 thin clients. Have a slight issue with the thin clients timing out and then re-connecting, i.e. tc loads up, and connects to a TS, no body tries to log in so it times out. Then it doesn't connect straight away. There seems to be a lag, sometimes of 5 mins where it doesnt connect. Anybody have these types of issues? Thanks in advance.

I had a similar issue to that one, my boss has my mobile number and she gave it to the office, one day i was in the computer room and got a phone call from office to put a phone call through. They try it now and again but i never answer my mobile unless i want to. They still ask all the time why dont i answer my phone. Answer: Because it's my personal mobile and i dont like to answer it during work hours as it's not professional. If you'd like to buy me a work mobile, and pay the contract, thats fine.

Family and friends are the worst for taking advantage. I hate it when people ask me "how much?" I ought to say before hand i charge £20ph or something. Sometimes they dont even offer to pay.

Biscuits, beer or wine are the usual currency. Leave it as you doing them a favour, and then them buying you a gift as a token of their appreciation. Unless they're fit, in which case letting you take them for a drink would be acceptable. Money causes too many problems. There's the whole tax / self employed / vested interest.

Slight variation on this one A man in a hot air balloon looses his bearings, reduces his altitude and shouts down to somebody, "where am i?" to which the man replies "in a hot air balloon, 100ft above the ground. The balloonist responds, "You must work in IT". The man on the ground says, "yes i do, how did you know?"; "the answer you gave, whilst technically correct, was no bl**dy use to anybody!" The man on the ground looks up and says, "you must work in management" to which the balloonist says "yes, how did you know?". Man on the ground says "You have no idea where you are, how you got there, or how to move on, yet you expect somebody else to help you."

Hmmm, I installed the Google Maps API, when i have automatically geocode ticked i just get a blank screen when trying to add a new marker by postcode. Only way i can add markers is to manually geocode them, disable the auto-geocode option and add the marker by it's co-ords. Not a huge deal as i'm not exactly having millions of markers but it's not ideal.

Aside from the obvious security issues which other have mentioned, what is the main cause of the noise from the server? Is it actually the fans or is it the whirring of the HDDs, etc. If it is fans is it definately the fans on the outside of the case and not the processor fan? Some noise could be caused by rattling? I.e. fans go round causing chassy to vibrate slightly against the case. Have you tried cleaning the general build up of dust and muck out of the case? Was it this noisy from the start or only recently?

try adjusting the resolution in the remote desktop settings. Change it to something then change it back. I've had issues with not being able to click start on sessions because it hasnt detected the resolution correctly.

if you open the HP System management homepage in the top right it should have System Model. (start -> all programs -> Hp Management Agents -> HP System Management Homepage I've checked 2 and one tells me it's a ProLiant ML350 G4p and the other says ProLiant DL380 G5. Should work.

I might be being a little bit dense, but how do you install a plugin in joomla? I've installed the google maps component and need to install the geocode plugin, but cant find any option. I'm using 1.0.x if that matters. Cheers..

* Rushes off to check all the wiring!

You could pin a job list somewhere visible, i.e. staff room, and then when people stop you tell them to put it on there (make sure you put your existing million and one jobs on there first). When people see the huge list of jobs they may back off a bit and realise that their problem is a bit insignificant, and can wait until the other staff get back. Insist on everything in writing / email. 24hrs notice on resources. Try prioritising your jobs. i.e. P1 (Urgent): Problem effecting whole school; or HT needs something P2: Problem effecting a class of pupils / number of people P3: Problem effecting one person / pupil P4 (less urgent): Request for something that is not having an impact on T&L or peoples immediate jobs, things with deadlines a few days away etc.

Well yeah. We have to. We're the ones that get stressed at when jobs arent done, or done correctly. The word manager in the title is a bit of a clue. I have a habit of never shouting at my techies or asking them to do something that i wouldn't / couldn't do, and i'm the one that backs them up when people complain or when suppliers mess us about. The job of a NM / SM isnt necessarily 9-5 or even 8 - 4; i start at 8 each morning and am often here til 6. Much later if there is an event on, figured it out the other week that i do an average of 45 hours a week. Considering "Single Status" is coming in soon and based on 37.5 hours per week, it should be interesting. Having read some of your previous posts I'm sure you weren't having a go but.......

I got 2 unsolicited emails off them 2 minutes apart back in Jan. Just decided to block them on exchange. As others have said it's the name that put me off. I think it probably sounded really good to whoever came up with it, but i'm sure it's put a LOT of people off.

Vista sucks. Unlike my gf 8O Maybe you should upgrade to girlfriend 2.0? or get mistress 1.0? That reminds me of a Joke. me too!

Vista sucks. Unlike my gf 8O Maybe you should upgrade to girlfriend 2.0? or get mistress 1.0?

Buy a printer with built in NIC? No netgear print-server required.....