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I received mine yesterday. I love it! I can't believe how good the screen is - it really feels like reading a real book. I didn't bother installing the Sony software. I have a Mac and the internal drive simply mounts on the desktop. eBooks can be dragged into the media folder and they are then available on the device. I haven't bought any ebooks from the Waterstones store yet, although I believe all you need is Adobe Digital Editions installed since the UK ebooks use the new ePub format (at least that's what I think it's called). So far I have been buying MS Reader .lit format ebooks and using a couple of utilities to strip out the DRM and convert to Sony's .lrf format. A wider range of books is available this way since we aren't allowed to buy directly from Sony's US store.

We use It's Learning and love it! It is a Norwegian product and the Scandinavians have been using VLEs for years so have really thought things through. For us, the final choice of VLE was between two Norwegian VLEs, It's Learning and Fronter. Some years ago one of our ASTs visited Norway and came back very enthusiastic about what the Norwegian schools were doing online. At the time we had never heard of VLEs but have now put two and two together! Like any VLE, there is a learning curve and initially you won't see the benefits - you need to start using it before you begin to realise what it can do. We are using it with a cluster of schools - a secondary (us) and seven primaries. Personally I don't feel Viglen sell It's Learning very well. They are only distributors for it in the UK so don't let them put you off. I know schools who have been put off and have chosen something else because another company had a slick sales pitch. When I have shown them what we have done with It's Learning they realise they made the wrong choice. jamiesev, it sounds like you don't really know the product. For a start It's Learning does messaging to other users within your school/cluster, and on the same page you are able to setup conventional email - more than one account if you wish. We have an MS Exchange server for email and have an external IP address for it so users can access the IMAP server outside school. Simply adding the details into It's Learning means that users can access messaging and email using the same interface. All this can be setup initially using a csv. When a user sends an email using It's Learning it gets sent using the It's Learning smtp server. If you have externally provided email it is even easier - you simply need the mailserver address, username and password and you're up and running. So far we have created virtual staffrooms with bulletins and filestores; a great many courses containing content, surveys, forums, tests, assignments (where pupils are able to submit work via the VLE and you are able to view it and assess it online) also projects - where the pupils take charge of an area (like clubs, personal interest areas etc.). It's Learning has ePortfolios available and we are building up a CPD area where staff access a common CPD course and create their own ePortfolios accessible only to them. Our pupils are busy blogging and doing some fantastic stuff. One boy went to India in term time and did a blog of his adventures, avidly followed and commented on by pupils back at school. All users have a files area making it easier to transfer documents between home and school. I have just bought/upgraded Boardworks to the SCORM compliant versions and am installing these into the Library of It's Learning so staff can pull what they want into their courses. I want a lot of 'must-have' content available to encourage staff to use it. It is revolutionising our use of ICT and has one huge side-effect - it is all being done by teachers rather than by technical staff. Our network manager basically has very little to do with the VLE. We publish our weekly staff and pupils bulletins into It's Learning and are giving parents a generic guest login so they can access letters etc. the office staff have uploaded. As ICT Coordinator my plan to get the VLE used was to get the kids on board first. I got them into messaging and blogging in their ICT lessons and made sure all the ICT work we do is in courses in It's Learning. This, of course, means that it is all accessible from home. Thus the pupils are confident with it and the staff have an easier job. Whenever I log on in the evenings or at the weekend I can see many pupils also online. Some of our pupils conference through It's Learning in the evening to discuss ideas. We can also input video/audio directly into courses using a simple webcam. The more we use It's Learning, the more we find out it can do. We've been using it for 10 months or so now and there are still hidden depths we haven't explored. As you can tell I am very enthusiastic and whole-heartedly recommend it. I have seen nothing better. We have had no stability issues or problems logging on apart from where our broadband internet access has been causing problems generally. I would say it had depth enough to be used at higher-education level. jamiesev, some of the advanced features are not enabled by default so are not apparent unless switched on. JRMatthews, hope this helps. Please get back to me if you need to know anything else!

Thanks for all your advice, guys. I am approaching some of the companies mentioned for a chat and a quote.

I have been using NVU with my year 8 pupils to enable them to design websites. The problem is NVY is just too buggy. Is there anything else for Windows that lets users to design a site using WYSIWYG yet allows them to make changes to the html code as well? We tried Serif Web Plus, but that was just too different and showed no html at all. Dreamweaver is just too over the top and too expensive. We are happy to pay a reasonable cost for good software. Thanks for any advice offered.

We are looking into the feasibility of getting a third-party company to create and maintain our website. We are a high school of around 800 pupils aged 10-14. Does anyone have any recommendations of companies to approach? Many thanks.

We have a very perplexing problem. Flash pages (.swf) will not display in ie7. If we downgrade the PC to ie6 they work fine, as they do in Firefox. Does anyone have any ideas? It is very frustrating and we don't really want to downgrade the whole network to ie6. Cheers.

CyberNerd - please tell me how to access my WebDAV drive using Konqueror which is installed by default on the Eee PC . . . . Cheers.

Yeah, OK, but as a Linux user for many years I couldn't find a way to use it. The default GUI on the Eee PC is not very configurable. Goodness, I remember using LaTeX and all manner of similar command-line tools. I was quite a Linux geek in my time - so I resent the aspersion that Konqueror is too difficult for me. I used KDE and Gnome and several other window managers. Funnily enough my favourite was always AfterStep . . . As I said before, I abandoned Linux because I didn't have time for all the tinkering and configuring. I wanted to get some work done. I also felt that computers should not be machines just for the geeks but should be accessible to the general public and usable out of the box. Geeks will always prefer an OS which allows them to receive the adulation of the majority who do not possess such advanced skills. Why would they want to lose status by adopting Mac OS X? OK, I have a virgin Eee PC. What do I do next to access my remote WebDAV drive using the default tools already installed . . .

Yeah, webman, I used to use Linux but I found it not as user-friendly as a Mac. An example, I bought an Asus Eee PC which runs a version of Xandros, I believe. I use an external WebDAV drive on which I store my school documents. Apple OS X and Windows XP allow me to easily open my WebDAV drive as a folder on my machine. After lots of research I managed to install davfs on the Eee PC, but found I could only mount the drive on the command line, then had no desktop concept on the machine where I could pull out the spreadsheet I needed to edit, save it and pop it back into the WebDAV folder. In short it couldn't do what I wanted it to do and this was a biggie because that's why I bought the machine. In the end I had to install XP on it. I used to love tinkering with Linux, rolling my own kernels, trying out different window managers and distros, but I then realised that's all I was doing! I wasn't actually doing anything productive. The Mac really gets your productivity up - the things I can do now I couldn't imagine doing with Linux or XP. My technician at school is a Windows geek and he got this 'brilliant software for creating DVDs - much better than iMovie/iDVD on the Mac'. I interestedly asked him to burn me a DVD with a professional menu etc.. The disk never materialised. When challenged sometime later he sheepishly told me the program kept crashing half-way through the process. That was a year ago. I have noticed that every time we need something taken off a video camera and burnt to DVD he uses the school Macs. Hmmm

Yeah, I know it's bait, but I've not long come off the phone to my son whose PC has some sort of trojan virus caught because his girlfriend agreed to let some pop-up scan the computer for viruses. His eBay and Hotmail passwords have been changed and he is having a devil of a job getting it sorted. So I'm going to bite. That couldn't happen to me. I am a Mac user. I abandoned Windows eons ago, but I often get people asking me to sort their machines out. The Windows geeks just say 'I never get a virus, I make sure I don't do x, y & z, or go to this or that dodgy site, and I have this super-duper anti-virus utility'. Basically they care not a jot for poor Joe Bloggs who gets caught out constantly. If Joe Bloggs had a Mac he'd be fine. He could go anywhere and do anything, dodgy or otherwise, without fear of spyware or viruses. We have several pupils at school who cannot use their PCs at home because the machine has a virus and they don't know what to do about it. There is no way they have enough know-how to reinstall Windows from scratch - unless the machine has a restore disk. It is OK the geeks saying that the only reason Macs don't get viruses is because they're not mainstream, but that is a non-argument. They don't get viruses for whatever the reason - and no amount of saying 'well they would get viruses if . . .' changes anything. Macs are inherently more secure - every single one of the Windows users I know outside the school environment logs into an account where the user has admin priviliges. A virus can access system files with relative ease. Every Mac user I know (because that's how Macs work) is unable to do anything with system files unless they re-authenticate. Any Mac virus which could damage the system would need you to expressly give it the permission it needs to interfere with system files. I'm not even going to mention the capabilities of Apple Macs over Windows PCs . . Well I wasn't going to, I'd best duck instead!

Thanks for your help, guys. I am trying the /etc/hostconfig automount solution this morning. In reply to Ross, we don't have any sort of Mac server, we are authenticating directly against AD. I used Directory Services to set up AD authentication and binded it. Not sure what a kerberos realm is :-( Cheers.

We get the shaking screen time after time. If we log in to the local machine and unbind, then rebind, we can subsequently log in successfully with an AD username/password. The first attempt after rebinding always results in an smb error - a message telling us that we are attempting to login to an smb volume. The second time always works fine. Things will remain fine for several days, then we are back to square one.

I now have a system.log file which shows us trying to log in as an AD user. Some of the messages are a bit cryptic so if anyone can shed any light on the problem I'd be most grateful. The logfile is available by clicking here

Unfortunately it wasn't a clock issue. The time on the Macs and on the servers is in perfect synch I tried logging onto a Mac today, which wouldn't log me on. I logged on locally and tried accessing a logfile. Which logfile should I be looking at? System.log? There didn't appear to be anything in it of any relevance to AD authentication.

Cheers guys. We already use OpenOffice so I will give Impress -> Flash a go. I have also downloaded Power Bullet Presenter to try out. What an excellent forum

Thanks, guys, it could well be the time settings. I will check in the morning and if the time has drifted will set up time syncing with the server. Fingers crossed that you've hit the nail on the head! I will report back.

Thanks, saundersmatt, I will grab the relevant part of the system log as soon as the problem next occurs.

One of our staff wants to teach some flash animation to pupils. Does anyone know of any good (preferably cheap!) software for this? Many thanks.

We have 20 iMacs in our music department and we used Directory services to set up AD authentication with our Windows 2003 server. Authentication works, but every couple of days it decides not to work and we need to go back in to Directory Services, unbin from the AD server and rebind and then it works fine for another few days. It is driving our head of music mad! Anyone else had this? Anyone know a solution? We will throw money at an Apple server if this is going to fix it but the when the authentication works it is fine and users log on correctly and everything is locked down just like it is on Windows clients. We use Ranger on our network - if that makles any difference. Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer . . .

This is exactly why I prefer to use OpenOffice. I have been doing databases with year 9, using OpenOffice Base and it is very much like Access <2003. You might like to give it a try (especially since it is free!).

Do you know, I was just going to write Here Here, then realised I didn't know whether it was Here Here or Hear Hear!! So I've now written it both ways, and either way it look silly. Must be the heat! Anyway, GrumbleDook, I so agree with your sentiments on transferable skills. We've ordered 21 17" iMacs directly from Apple for the Music department mid-July and were given a date of mid-August for delivery. I can only assume we are going to get the new 20" iMacs - surely there's no way they'd send us old stuff? I get so irritated doing stuff on Windows machines - the workflow is always so clunky compared to Macs. My network manager doesn't like them though - he only likes Microsoft. reminds me of a quote I read recently - may have been on this forum: "Most "IT Professionals" are not actually "IT Professionals", they are just Microsoft junkies. All they know is Microsoft, and plugging various Microsoft systems together (or, trying to, anyway). To be an "IT Professional" you would actually have to have a solid understanding of protocols, and their capabilities." It's his age, bless him, he's in his early twenties and Microsoft is all he's ever known. Since he dismisses everything else, its all he will ever know too :-(

Hmmm. Interesting. So 125 concurrent users would probably be enough. Hadn't thought of concurrent internet requests as opposed to users logged on . . . That makes it a fair bit less expensive than we thought. I am just waiting for a price on SmoothWall's product before I make a final decision. Thanks for your advice, Chris.

We have around 350 machines - so I understand we are not going to get 350 concurrent users. Probably more like 200 on a very good day. Censornet reckon we could get away with saying 100 concurrent users, but if both ICT rooms are in use, that's 70 users immediately, then staff laptops and 20 Macs in Music . . .

OK, Tom, I'm listening. What does your product offer? We are currently using Censornet V3, which is why we are going the V4 route. I know nothing about SmoothWall. I have sent you a pm with my email address - please get back to me with more info. Thanks.

Cheers, Clodhopper. We have to buy through Dell themselves so I will see what they can do for us. I will certainly specify the extra memory. At £5 a concurrent user, we would still be looking at paying over a grand a year - which is a lot for us. A lot of software seems to be going down this route of a yearly fee - I am much happier buying the product then deciding whether to buy in support or additional features. We reject the MS School's Agreement for this reason. At the end of the day it is just a way for companies to assure themselves of a continuous revenue stream.