RobC

I would suggest taking a look at AllwaySync. I've used it in the past for folder syncronisation and it works really well. I just can't remember if it can be scheduled/automatic.

Thanks for your support everyone Contink, I would be interested in seeing the spreadsheet. I await its arrival with baited breath... And as for your advice, spot on. I've got my accounts/crm stuff sorted - Microsoft Office Accounts Pro (blagged a genuine free version) and Business Contact Manager, both integrated together. I've also got a decent accountant, recommended by the IT company I'm going to be contracting for. Mostly, I'm looking at contracting for local IT companies (I have one main client that I'll be doing a lot of work for) but I still keep in touch with my old school employers so I may get some work from there too. Regards, Rob.

Funny, I'm using Vista on a fairly old (~3-4 years) machine with 1Gb of RAM and it's running great for me. Starts up and logs on very quickly and is responsive throughout the day.

Excellent, I got some interesting responses as hoped. I should make you aware that I'm not necessarily trying to make excuses for Vista. I'm just interested in the opinions, etc. Either way, I'm going to query a couple of the points made... Again, this was true of XP and if you have ever tried running XP on its minimum memory requirements (64Mb) it is virtually un-usable. The same is true of Vista - its minimum requirements may be higher (512Mb) and its actual usable amount (1Gb-2Gb depending) higher still, but this is the inevitable march of technology and there has been seven whole years since the launch of XP which in IT terms is an ice age. Yes, things like this shouldn't happen, but surely this isn't Microsoft's fault. Surely we should be ranting & moaning at the application and hardware developers to pull their fingers out and get this sorted. After all, they have had access to Vista for almost a year & a half since its launch, and roughly two to three years prior to that, and yet they still can't get thier applications and drivers to work properly. I don't think we're really pointing the blame in the right direction on this one. Microsoft have concentrated on security, and yet for most people it is of no interest? I would put this one more down to MS not marketing Vista properly then, rather than it being a particular problem with Vista itself. Ok, so Vista doesn't have a huge array of fancy features immediately obvious to tempt the buyer, but surely the major security changes shoudl be a big winner. And now that Server 2008 is out, there are more features available to the coporate users too. It's not that Vista is bad, more that MS's marketing is bad. There are still a few large, caution orgs using NT4 - that doesn't mean it's good! Come on then... any more thoughts?

Ok, I'm going to throw the cat among the pigeons here, but I'd like people to put some complete reasons forward as to why they feel Vista is rubbish. I hear things every day on various forums/groups/blogs I frequent on how Vista is terrible and that it's worse than ME, etc., but I've been using it since it was released to Microsoft Partners in November 2006 and to be honest I'm finding it pretty good. I think one of the major things people are forgetting is that XP was absolutely slated in the same way when it came out, and it was only when SP2 came out that it really became truely appreciated. I think Ed Bott over at ZDNet says it better than I can: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=382 So my question to my fellow edugeekers is this: What makes Vista so absolutely terrible compared to XP's early days? What particular feature(s)/bug(s)/etc, do you think warrant it being labelled Windows ME II and similar? This isn't a rant at you guys in particular, just throwing it out to you guys/gals as I know I'll get some reasoned responses on here. Over to you...

Well, having moved from Schools IT into IT Course teaching/Networking I am now leaving my current post to take the brave steps of Self-Employment. As of Friday, I will be a self-employed IT Consultant/Contractor so if any of the schools in The Highlands, Moray or Aberdeenshire need an contractor for anything, feel free to give me a shout. Cheers, Rob Cowan Carrobes IT

Yep, I'm in for a couple too.

I'll be at the glasgow one.

24 weeks?!? Almost half a year?!? Damn, have you become a teacher...

Personally, I hope she does try & sue the BBC so that it can be proven in the courts that the family are idiots. For a start, it's said that she advertised it on Facebook - if that is true then it's been shown in court before that social-networking advertised parties get stupidly out of hand. On that basis alone, without even hearing the daughters confession, I would find in favour of the BBC. But then, I am not a judge...

Morning Guys. ZH already knows me, and although I'm not in education any more, I'm very much still in IT. In fact, I'm just about to go freelance. Based in Elgin so just along the road from you Aberdonians...

Geoff, I had the pleasure of using Groupcall at my last job, for a secondary school in Scotland. Based on the software back then (~2 years ago) I can very highly recommend it. It was pretty simple to use and they gave us a half-day's training before it was introduced. There are different versions for each of the main MIS packages although that shouldn't really make a difference for you. If you do require support, however, I found that they are very good on that front too and have even had tech support from the Managing Director, who also did our initial training. If you take a look at their website you should find some more info about it (although I think the site is playing up at the moment...). The contact details I have are for Lawrence Royston who IIRC is the MD. if you want his details, drop me an e-mail at rob (at) mycourse (dot) co (dot) uk. I should say that, although I might sound like I work for them based on my raving above, I have no affiliation with them. I just thought that it was fantastic software and deserves to be promoted. Regards, Rob Cowan Mycourse Limited

Hats off to you guys! That was a very useful read and I think it will be invaluable for Edugeekers all over the country. Rob.

First thing I can suggest would be to run the System File Checker using "sfc scannow" which should clear up any potentially corrupt file issues that may be lurking. Beyond that, I'm stumped. Regards, Rob Cowan Mycourse Ltd/Digital Business Support

Funny, my first suggestion was going to be "restart the DC" which may have sorted that for you...

If you are looking for reliability - Zen Internet. Four years running, they have been PC Pro's Best Broadband ISP.

Lithium - to the best of my knowledge, it is still IE6 that is included in the exam. As for the Office part, I'm not sure which practise test you have been using but the DST has never covered Office XP - it's been 2003 from day one. Best advice I can give you is to go through every menu in the major office apps and IE6/7 and get to know what options are available. Know how to customise toolbars, where things are in the Options menus, etc. Also, take a look at Techexams.net as they have some good resources for the MS exams. Also, I'm teaching a DST course at the end of the month, so if I remember, I'll check with the students after they sit the exams as to whether there were any IE7 questions in there. Regards, Rob Cowan.

A techie using AOL?

Sounds very much like KVM over IP. Very useful to have around...

This is a complete pain in the a*** for us too as our company is a VUE testing centre purely to allow us to test our students at the end of their boot-camps. Not as bad as it could have been, as two out of our three courses are CompTIA, but it means we've got to look again at our MS course, and also means I've got to travel to Edinburgh to sit my MS exams instead of doing it in our own centre! Also, I don't think I've heard a good thing about Prometric's testing software. the VUE software is great and crashes about once every 3-4 months, while I've heard reports of Prometric software crashing about 3-4 times per exam! So, I think this is an awful situation for everyone.

We use Mills Ltd for the cabinets we use in our installs. Haven't had a problem yet.

Just looking at the printer online - it looks like a four-pass model, which would probably rule out re-aligning the colours as the drum is in the same place and it's just the carts that change. I would probably say that it's a terminal fault within the printer.

Ah, just saw your reply after I posted...! Is it possible to get a different range with enough addresses from the relevant authorities? Rob.

OK, just to clarify and see if I'm understanding this... You currently have two networks - admin and curriculum. Admin machines have static IP addresses while curriculum machines receive through DHCP. Are we talking completely different address ranges (ie, admin 192.168.1.x subnet 255.255.255.0, curr. 192.168.2.x subnet 255.255.255.0), or two ends of a single range (ie, 192.168.1.1-200 for curriculum, 192.168.1.201-254 for admin)? From what I can tell, you are looking at adding an intermediate machine as a DHCP server. This server will talk to DHCP-assigned admin machines on one NIC, and the static assigned admin server on the other. If this is the case, you don't need to do it like this. The Admin server (I'm assuming it's running either server 2000 or 2003) can become the DHCP server for the admin range, and still have a static assigned address for itself (in fact, it has to have a static address for itself). If I've got the wrong end of the stick, let me know. Otherwise, I hope it helps point you in the right direction. Rob.

In what way are you running out? If you can let us know your IP Address ranges for all networks and also the associated subnet masks, we should be able to help. Regards, Rob Cowan.