pingleict

This is good news.

One post from someone who's just joined, I smell a ... We've used Stone Computers for many years and have always found them to be one of our best suppliers. Their support is excellent. They have also been really resourceful in helping us with kit from their Encore division when we've had to take the refurbished route because of severe financial constraints. We've had some terrific deals. We still find them to be personable and helpful. You don't get the feeling they are just out to get your money - far from it. Therefore, when this story popped up, we were concerned because we wouldn't want something bad to happen to Stone. As the story has unfolded and still continues to do so, it seem obvious to us that some are stirring up mischief and unfortunately others will believe it. I hope those mischief-makers get exposed for what they are and we wish Stone the very best.

Hi. Interesting and potentially very helpful. Do you use IE on your network with Group Policy. Have you found Chrome's Admx's mess up IE's Group policy. Someone has warned us about this. Any thoughts? We found we couldn't get the ADMX's to apply to Chrome but we haven't gone too far with it yet. We are in the situation where we would rather not use Chrome but are being told we must etc for App Inventor2.

Hi. Is there any chance we could have this too, please? Our Head of Computing wants it on our machines. We have downloaded the current version from Microsoft but it it's not stable for us. We've noticed that some find that the older version maybe better. Thanks

Thanks to those who gave very helpful replies on the thread "Papercut Is it possible to have only Shared Accounts Charged - not Users?". A bit of extra advice, please. After a meeting yesterday School has changed strategy with charging departments for printing. Instead of a cut off limit i.e. £5 per month, they would like to give departments (these have been set up as departments in Accounts) unlimited printing that is charged on a monthly basis. 1. What is the best way to set this up in the Accounts section? I tried to set it at £0.00 / unrestricted and allow the accounts to roll up a deficit and then take the amount to charge the department at the end of the month. I'm not sure this is the best way because of the next point 2. I want the system to reset the balance on a monthly basis so as a new charging period is started. Am I better to still put in a Thanks for any advice

Any thoughts on this. I think I've gone the wrong route here. Everyone's balance is showing ----- because I set everone to zero last night and unrestricted. . Just to repeat, I need to get a scenario of unrestricted printing with charging every month for each shared account.

Yes thanks, I've got the client working fine.

On another note: I've just had a meeting with our business manager and strategies have changed from a £5 a month restricted strategy to untrestricted printing but charged for on a monthly basis. Is the best way to run with this to set the balance at zero in shared accounts, reset to zero on a monthly basis and then have the charging report done on a monthly basis?

Thanks guys. I will try this out and it confirms what I thought as to how to carry this out. Great to get reassurance

Hi. We are new Papercut users. SLT want us to Charge Shared Accounts only - not Users i.e. Users will not have an any credit at all only the department(s) they belong to. Therefore, do we give all the Users a balance of zero and restrict them? Then do we make sure that their group(s), picked up from AD, are attached to created Shared Accounts (already done this). Then do we do all the assignment of Charging and restrictions through the shared accounts section? Any help appreciated - I think we're almost there but this last step has me slightly confused.

Hi We are trying to make a shutdown policy for our School with about 650 clients. We want to have a message to warn users if they are logged on at the time with an option to cancel the shutdown. We used to use Poweroff in XP but the message display will not work in 7 and the machine shuts down without any warning to a logged on user. We've tried a couple of sceduled scripts (not Pstools) which work when user is logged on but we can't get them to work in Windows 7 machines when no user is logged on. It looks as though PsShutdown may solve this for us from the reading the blurb. Can anyone confirm whether this will work to 1) warn a user for x minutes with a cancel option and 2) shutdown the machine (Windows 7) when no user is logged on. Thanks

Forgot to say as well that continuity of service by staying with current suppliers through into the next contract period could be important for some / many schools, if they don't want to have tooo much disruption.

Just to return to the RM offering. As has been said, their keen pricing appears to be tempting. First I must correct something I said in one of my earlier posts. I mentioned that RM would be using Virgin. Well, it appears after a meeting we had with representatives from Derbyshire LEA yesterday, that it would more than likely be TalkTalk in the particular part of Derbyshire we happen to be. That figures as Virgin told us at the Pride Park meeting they don't have a presence at all in this area. What we're seeing here is a typical RM approach where they use a 3rd party service, rebadging it, and adding their mark up. Whilst it may appear to be a good offering, the question still has to be asked "Will it be what schools need in the way of reliability etc?". Now whilst I cannot answer that, I can only say that if, and it's a very big IF, we did go to them there is NO way either me or my Head would use their email / filtering services because RM let down my Head's previous school's email badly for an unacceptable period of time and from my point of view anything RM has touched on things we've had to use i.e. Kaleidos VLE and QCA testing (Arghh - pulls hair out!) has almost been the "kiss of death" or pretty unusable. In speaking to our LEA yesterday I think there are a few things to consider: 1. Potentially staying with the EMBC offering, primarily with KCOM as the core network provider (application extras via Synectrix /Capita and others is more open and not likely to have an impact on pricing for all) appears that it may benefit primaries, especially if we viewed it as being in a type of co-operative where a large presence of schools benefits other schools i.e. primaries. 2. If someone drives a JCB shovel through the link or some other disaster, how resilient will the network be whether from KCOM or another provider outside of EMBC. In speaking to the LEA yesterday, it would seem there is a reasonable degree of resilience in the EMBC / KCOM infrastrusture. 3. Taking ourselves away fronm the EMBC offerring also potentially means coming out of the Education network / Janet. There could be some services that some schools use that could be lost as a result i.e. the Pathe Film Library. Now I know that these points don't cover al questions on this issue, but they are important considerations. Whilst price is important, does anyone want cheap (if, indeed, it can be called cheap!) for cheap's sake. Surely a sound reliable service with good response when there are hiccups. Also, some secondaries that I am speaking to are of the mind that we don't really want to leave primaries floundering if our presence helps.

This is a very important point you make SMEE. The lack of real time figures is about the most unhelpful thing that is happening and it is nightmare for those of us with the responsibility to suggest a decision let alone poor resource strapped primaries who don't have the time to wade through the ambiguity of it all.

Don't know where you are JonWPS, but RM said to us thaere would be no setup fee - that maybe helpful to you. It all depends what you have in at the moment, I think. Our line was upgraded by EMBC / LEA / through BT about 2 years ago. But then if Virgin (on behalf of RM) supply their own line they would have to do some sort of install...??