RobC

Well, I'm not promising anything, but I will look into the possibility of a future Edugeek meetup/"Schools IT Conference" in Elgin in the future. Wont be this year tho!

Tarq, yes they are ALL working. Three home-made desktops, an HP laptop, a Vaio laptop & an Acer laptop. All working & in regular use.

Nah, you wouldn't all fit. At least not while there's still six computers in the house! (Three desktops & three laptops...)

I'm currently (and have been for the past 16 months) addicted to Eve-Online. You can find me in there as Cowan, in the Firma corporation. Still like the WW2 shooters though - Medal of Honour, Call of Duty, et al.

Well, if you organise it for the end of the year, we can all go snowboarding too!

We've still got two LaserJet 4ML's running fine. They're only used by two people for occasional print jobs for which they're perfect, although one might be needing a replacement fan shortly.

Stewart, SP1 for 2003 is already out & you can download it from Microsoft, however it won't begin to be distributed via Automatic Updates until July 26th, or later if you opt to use the Download Blocker (like the one used for XP SP2).

Because all of our lasers are dealt with by the managed service, we're predominantly Lexmark here - mainly Optra S1855's & T610's with a couple of T520's for good measure. A lot of departments have decided to get their own colour inkjets though as school won't stump for a colour laser, so we've a mix of Lexmark Z53/55, Epson C46/CX3600 & HP 1220c's. As for carts, we use compatibles for all our inks & toners, all from local suppliers.

If you want to limit logon to only certain users, put the machine in an OU of its own in AD & then create a new GPO for that OU. Head to the following: Computer Configuration, Windows Settings, Security Settings, Local Settings, User Rights Assignment Double click on Log On Locally & put a tick in the Define these policy settings. You can now use the add/remove buttons to populate the list with those users/groups you want to be able to log onto the machine. You can also specifically deny logon to users/groups using the Deny Log On Locally object in the same location.

/me hides the fact that I live next to a distillery, in an area wiht the highest concentration of whisky distillerys in the world... :twisted:

I'm in the process of going through the CompTIA qualifications - A+, Network+ & Server+. I've got my A+ (I'm an A+ Certified Software/Hardware Engineer! :twisted: ) and just deciding whether to do Net+ or Server+ first. Incidentally, having the A+ & either Net or Server together counts towards your MCSA qualification, & having Net/server+ and Security+ counts towards the MSCE. Oh, and exams are around £100 exVAT, not sure if some places give educational discounts...

Geoff, if you loved Elite (like I did!), check out Eve Online. It's an online space-game similar to Elite & Frontier, and it's fantastic.

Yes, they have their good sides. The problem is that it isn't our hardware. As it's a completely managed service, with the exception of the workstations & a couple of switches that we've bought, they own everything. Thankfully, I get on with their field techs which has allowed me to get a copy of the standard Ghost image, and a couple of handy passwords which makes some jobs infinately easier.

Oh, for an internal install. Fujitsu won't let us have PHP or MySQL on our servers, or external web access so it's all got to be done on an external host (1and1.co.uk in this case).

Stop sniggering at the back!!! Anyone out there use moodle & would be prepared for me to have a look around their site? I'm in the process of testing it for our school before putting a case to them upstairs & would like to see what it's truely capable of. Cheers, Rob.

Nice. Even comes with a 'Test Your Knowledge' exam too. Definately added to favourites.

Ok, who's the lucky b£%$^rd on 25k+?!? Heheh, I've moved from 10.5k up to 13.5k after my promotion from Technical Assistant to Technician. (Also got made permanent at the same time - 14 months after my two week contract started!)

I've also been given http://www.ibypass.org, http://www.ibypass.com & http://www.ibypass.ibypass.org to block.

OK, this forum is quite quiet so I'll get the ball rolling here... Do we have any other Scottish ICT Techs here, or am I all alone in a foreign land? If so, can you point me in the direction of any useful policies and/or funding information for ICT? There seems to be so much out there that the English/Welsh schools can get their hands on, yet virtually nothing for us jocks up north. So please, let me know there is some info out there...

I'm sure I saw this come up a while back on teh Schools-IT ng. IIRC, I think the answer was that there wasn't one that was any good. Hopefully someone will prove me wrong.

Just taken a look at the FirefoxADM's and one of the group policy options is to disable the installation of XPI extentions & themes, which should be perfect for what eejit wants to do...

Mark, would that be the Epson EMP-S1H or the EMP-S3? (Although I think the S3 is only just out...) We've got two of the S1Hs & just received an S3. Given the price of the projectors (£550 & £470 respectively) and the fact we got a spare lamp with each, I can't fault either Epson or Misco who supplied them.

Actually, talking about toolbars... Does anyone else have a problem with the Yahoo toolbar installing on their IEs? I've blocked the toolbar download URLs for both Yahoo.com & Yahoo.co.uk and yet people are still ending up with this on their systems. Ordinarily it wouldn't be a problem, but we use Symantec Web (in)Security for web filtering & for some reason, if the Yahoo toolbar is installed, SWS will not authenticate the user. I've tried contacting Yahoo, but got nowhere very fast. And while I'm rambling on... if anyone else does use SWS, have you got Firefox to work with it? Firefox seems to do the same thing as the Yahoo toolbar, but I really can't figure out how to solve it. RobC.

Ok, I'm still trying to find the perfect database (in between hunting for the Holy Grail & a cure for cancer) for holding Inventory, Helpdesk jobs, Knowledge Base, etc. What do you use, and how do you find it in operation? Personally, I'm trialling GLPI after trying to build a homegrown Access DB, but I have to use an external host for GLPI as the Managed Service won't let me put PHP/MySQL on the main server!

That's precisely what I did when I had a problem with Successmaker. I spoke to one of the other schools in the area that did have a support contract. I'm sure a few people around would be good enough to answer the occasional query.