RobC

No Red Dwarf?!? Blasphemy I tell you, Blasphemy!!!

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Nope. I think you're stuck with going to every workstation. We run it on some standalone machines so I'm not 100% up to speed, but the install seems to require you to be there. And quite frankly, it sucks.

|__| |__| |__| |__| |__| |__| |__| |__| |__| |__| |__| | | There' a ladder for you Russ. It's not quite enough to get you out of the whole, but you might get to see some light!

@Tarq, Ours is piggybacked onto our network, but there doesn't seem to be any detectable slowdowns. I'm not sure how the situation would be using unmanaged switches though. I think without QoS ability it could prove unworkable.

Basically, they will randomly change volume (both ringer & in-call). The curly cords last about a week (I think that's par for the course though), and we get phantom calls quite regularly where two phones both make a single ring at the same time & then stop. We know it's not the kids cause the timing is too precise. Regarding the network, it's a 10Mb system running on Cat5e, Cisco switches (can't remember which model) which I'm assume are using QoS and an Index phone exchange which is managed remotely by a company in Livingston. Let me know if you need any more info...

Anyone use Index DT1 phones? We've got them here & I'm trying to figure out if they are just crap phones, or if our phone system's buggered. We seem to have very few problems for quite a while, and then several break at once (in this case, five at the same time!).

If you can provide as much info as possible (Model, specs, Windows version, updates installed, etc), I'll try & get hold of our Fujitsu techs & see if they have any information. Also, do you have the Cisco connection management software installed? Rob.

Yes, I suppose I'd better admit it. I did actually base it on the FITS call logging template. Hell, why re-invent the wheel.

Sorry, completely forgot that I've actually finished the form. We haven't implemented it yet though as I haven't had time. (Spending two days vomiting this week hasn't helped any!)ict_fault_reporting_form.doc

Nope, this thread isn't quite dead yet. Right, that should resurrect it. Ok, we've recently (finally!) got our Staff ICT handbook complete and distributed so I thought I would share it with you. When I get some time, I'll try & get it on the Wiki too. Please let me know what you think (no outright flaming though...), and just remember that it's only the very first draft and I'm crap at writing manuals. generic_ict_handbook.doc

Woohoo, another online census database for the public to break!

Excellent. Thanks for the info.

@Catbert What impact do you find Kix has on your logons? On our old computing network (NT4 Server & Workstations) they had used Kixtart as the entire logon script which set printers, drive mappings, etc. It also took well over a minute to log in. When I moved the whole system to Windows 2000 I got rid of Kix entirely & did everything with vbscript. Login takes no more than five seconds now. Just curious...

Successmaker at Pearson? Am I getting confused, or did RM not produce Suckcessmaker (on a license from CCC)? We use it here on standalone machines, although it's an older version and I had to hack file permissions quite a bit to get it to run on a couple of XP machines. And welcome to Edugeek.

I'll agree and say that they are good projectors, however I would much rather recommend Epson's line of LCDs. They are very good quality and the lamps are almost a third of the cost of virtually any other make out there. We've recently payed almost £300 for a replacement NEC VT440 lamp whereas for our new Epsons that would cost us only £120.

Well, much as I'd love to attend, I would need three days away from work and there's no way they will spare me for that length of time. I hope there's going to be loads of info available post-event for all of us that can't attend...

@ICTNUT Thanks for that. I never realised that Exchange could handle RBLs out of the box. I'll forward that on to the relevant people, and await the standard response of "It's too expensive (and yes, they will try that with free stuff!)" or "It can't be done on this system." God I love Fujitsu, honest!

Well thanks for the tips guys, but I severly doubt Fujitsu will go down the SA route. I think the only way would be some sort of spam filter for Exchange itself. I'm gonna look into whether Exchange 2k3 CAL = Outlook 2k3 license, but as that would potentially involve an updated Ghost build on over 1000 PCs (every school in Moray) I can't see them doing that. I really wonder why they don't use GP installs! Basically, if it can't be integrated with the current server software, I think their gonna try & shaft us. Another reason why I would love to be able to detatch the school from this contract, although that will NEVER happen!

DB, we're still stuck on Outlook 2002. They won't fork out the cash to upgrade to Office 2003 (although I've used one of my personal licenses on my own machine for it!). The long and the short seems to be that they know fine well that something should be done, but either one side doesn't want to pay for it, or the other side doesn't want to take a knock in profits for it. Personally, I would have thought that it was a necessity considering the risk of these sort of e-mails reaching the kids. And to be honest, with over 1000 pupils in our school the chances of none of the kids having received anything like this are very low!

Ok, one of the problems I've found in my job is the spam we get on our system. Not necessarily the volume, more the content (almost exclusively 'Adult' in nature). Every time we enquire about this, we keep getting told that they can't do anything about it and just to block the sender's address and delete the e-mail. Well, this would be fine if spam always came from constant addresses, but as we all know every address is different so this seems like a rather non-solution. So: What does everyone else use for antispam, how easy is it to integrate into Exchange 2003, cost, etc? At least this way I could put some proper suggestions forward. (And for the newer people on the board, it's a fully managed service so I can't do anything to the servers myself )

Heheh, yep. That's where I thought it was, but I haven't seen the laptop in a while so couldn't have said straight off. For info, if anyone does have any problems with Fujitsu kit that they can't solve drop me a PM or post here & I'll ask one of our Fujitsu engineers. (We pay the company stupid amounts so we may as well use them!)

@ChrisH I'll check our Amilo laptop later on today when it returns from classroom abuse. I'm sure there is a specific way of turning the WiFi on. Rob.

Can you post the script in full for us to check?

Ok. I finally have a worthwhile idea to pitch for the project. This one is security based and spurred on by the security article here, and in particular, this quote: How difficult would it be to write a program that monitors all code executed by the system? This would look at programs that run, etc and decide, based on a list of rules, what is allowed to run. Anything else would be prevented and logged with the ability to allow it if it is a legitimate application. Not being a programmer, I don't quite know the implications of this task such as processor time, memory usage, etc. but I think this would be a very useful feature for schools. Certainly it would stand as a big barrier to spyware, malware, adware, etc, as well as stopping staff & pupils trying to install unauthorised applications. Can someone tell me if this is possible, and whether it can be added to the (potential) features list for the Edugeek Project? Cheers, Rob.