maniac

I suggest a good company to approach would be cunninghams - EPoS Systems Cash Registers Their website focusses on Epos, but they also do the other systems you're interested in and are usually willing to work with you to integrate systems you already have into their back end. We don't use them ourselves, but we are looking at them as a possiblity for our new build. They had a good demo of all the bits and pieces they offer at Bett and it all seemed to work pretty well from what I saw. Mike.

Dropkick Murphys are one of those bands I put on every now and then and listen to for a few weeks, then don't listen to them again for 6 months or so. Nice to see some new material from them

Not sure why the machine should be re-naming its self as the name of the origenal machine. Anyhow, it's quite easy to disable that service, you can do it on a global or individual client level. Log into the fog console, and click the 'hosts' tab and search for the correct host that you want to stop re-naming its self. Click the Edit icon at the end of the line Select service settings from the left hand menu Un-tick the box that says 'hostname changer enabled' this will stop the FOG client re-naming the machine. Save the settings. The client will need a re-boot to pick up the new settings from the FOG server. If you want to disable the renaming service globally, you can do that from the Services menu, select hostname changer from the left hand menu, remove the tick from the box and save the settings. Mike.

I'm not sure that there's any official guidelines. As a general rule, if the students are having to move their heads a lot or look steeply upwards in order to see the whole board, then it's probably too close. Also depending on the type of projectors you have, if there's any danger of them being in the projectors beam when standing up at those desks, definitely too close. We have one or two smaller rooms where the desks are in my opinion a little too close to the board, but we advise the teachers to use the desks in at the very front of the room only if there's no other room. Mike.

Not seen that one, but had several other ones recently that seem to have installed themselves onto locked down machines somehow, despite having up-to-date spyware/virus scanners on the machines as well. Quite scary how easily this type of software is able to get onto PC's these days.

I'd love to flood wire our new building, but the reality is under the funding agreement in place we only get to have a certain number of network points in the building (1.6 per student) so we have to be careful where we locate them.

Our new build specs are 7 per classroom split as 3 high level - 1 for projector and 2 more for possible wireless AP's (to give flexibility on locations for them, not all will be used) then 4 low level - 2 either side of the IWB. 1 will be in use for a fixed teachers PC leaving 3 for other possible equipment. Larger spaces such as science labs have more put in sensible locations around the room - usually 4 or 6 more. To go with every low level network point there's a double power socket - normal configuration is a double network point with a double power socket either side. Fixed ICT areas are mapped out with the standard 7, plus 1 per PC and 6 additional spares in sensible places for printers and other equipment. Offices have 4 points per workstation - this might seem overkill but there's all sorts of office devices that could require a connection and you never quite know where it will all be.

Yes, I've never had to prove where I got an HP switch from when claiming under their lifetime warranty. The fibre converters on the old 4108 and 2524 switches were forever going wrong, but each and every time HP sent out new ones with no hassle at all, never even asked for serial numbers a lot of the time.

There you go.

As well as sometimes being awkward to transfer licenses across, converting to an academy can be a very convenient time to get out of any agreements that you may be signed into - we had one or two silly agreements that had been signed in the past that we worked our way out of, because the previous school legally didn't exist anymore so the agreement was void as a result. Had one or two companies challenge this, but they've all given up now.

I've got a Dell D600 laptop that our exams officer uses to run her timer application for exams. It must be 6 years old this year.

But if you're the only one who can get that pricing from Dell then it's not a lot of use to the rest of us is it, hence the reason I favour other suppliers because I don't need to be on some special elite pricing structure or a member of a 'premier service' because from companies like stone that's their normal service level and their normal pricing which is on offer to all of us regardless.

If it's going to be an energy drink, it's always Monster Khaos - that stuff is too nice. Only every now and then thou. Friend of mine practically got addicted to Rockstar and used to regularly drink 5 or 6 cans a day. He suffered as a result thou as he's now hyper sensitive to caffine and can't drink anything containing caffine now or he gets very ill, he's only 19 as well so beware energy drinks really can mess you up if you're not careful.

We considered giving old hardware to parents/students before when we disposed of our truckload of HP NC1100 tablet PCs we had. The general consensus was whatever you get them to sign, it will come back to haunt you in the long run so we donated them all to charity in the end.

As far as I see it you've made up your mind that Stone are rubbish, but some of your justifications for why you think they're rubbish seem rubbish themselves. No manufaturer can garuntee 100% realibility it's just impossible given the nature of ICT equipment. If you can show me a single manufacturer where you've had 100+ PCs or Laptops from them and had absolutely no warranty claims over the 3 year period I will gladly buy from them, but I'm still searching. Considering the number of machines AZC has, 30 calls a year is naff all. For the 300ish Dell laptops we have I probably raise 1 warranty call a week as minimum, and fix many more ourselves that are out of warranty. Do I think that makes Dell a bad manufaturer? no certainly not as whatever manufaturer I brought these machines from would probably have had a simelar call rate as pretty much all the failures are down to the componants and not as a result of the way they are put together. Also regarding warranties, it may be Stone who are responsible for servicing the warranty on the equipment, but it is the componant manufaturer who is responsible for ensuring the componants are fit for purpose. If a main board fails in a Stone PC, unless it was as a direct result of something Stone did to cause the componant to fail prematurely, then the fault is not with stone but is with the mainboard manufacturer. What attracts me to Stone is not equipment reliability as that's much of a muchness across manufaturers, it's the fact that I get the same after sales service and warranty that I do from Dell, but as a slightly cheaper price. I can pick up the phone whenever I like and get my account manager in person, I can ring support and get a call answered by a person normally within a few rings, that's what I like.

Turn off the DHCP setting on your router and set it up on Server 2003. Simply put the IP address of your Thompson router into your DHCP scope as the the default router, and point the forwarders on your Server 2003 DNS at your router as well and it should function perfectally happily. Obviously you need to have the server and router on fixed IP addresses within the same subnet, so set them as necessary. Mike.

Working in an Academy and generally enjoying it - if I wasn't then I wouldn't be here, simple as. The fact I'm enjoying it doesn't stop me applying for other positions to keep my current employer on their toes thou.

I can't remember, it's only 1 trolley of netbooks we have from Toshiba and I've only had to replace 1 screen so far. It was under £100, but I think we did find it cheaper from elsewhere in the end anyway.

I can get official Dell replacements for their D520/530 range of machines for the same as I can source them from elsewhere, I can get replacement screens for my Toshiba netbooks from Toshiba if I so desire as well. Admitedly I rarely buy from the manufacturer, but still it's nice to have the choice and not have to buy un-necessary bits just to change the screen. @antichrest - I believe they have finished testing it now, they sent me a replacement machine which I've been assured shouldn't suffer from the same issues as the previous one, 3 days in and it seems ok.

See for me that's worked the other way round, with the exception of a bunch of L60 laptops which we had of Viglen 2 years ago which was a big mistake seeing as Viglen are unable to supply replacement screens for them on their own, and want to charge £170 for a new laptop chassis everytime we need to replace a screen. After a lot of ringing around I sourced the replacement screen from another supplier, but I shouldn't have to do that so that annoys me about Viglen. @hakko - I'm still surprised by this, as I've still never had major issues with Stone. The worst it got was with their recent NT200 laptop and its strange over heating problem, but this has now been resolved to my satisfaction. You will never get PCs that 'don't break down' that's an impossibility and seeing as Stone build their machines from relatively generic componants there's as greater chance of a Stone PC breaking down as any other brand. @bandgeekmafia78 - Are your machines the Older all-in-one machines with 17" screens? And are the problems to do with the logic boards failing in the monitors? If so, then there's a really good reason they can't get the spares, and that's because a rather large foreign componant manufacturer who produced the fairly custom screens for that model went under a while back so they cannot souce new parts for them any more. I don't really blame Stone for that, it wasn't a small manufacturer and a lot of PC producers got caught out in the same way. Mike.

Structured server names here, in my mind it makes it much easier. SA-DC01, SA-DC02, SA-ST01, SA-EX01, SA-SIMS, SA-SV01, SA-SV02, SA-SV03, SA-FOG, SA-XIBO and a few more. SV01 and SV02 are multi purpose servers for things like virus checker management, WSUS etc.

I would open up discussion with management as to why they have decided that's the best route for the school, and try and establish if they have really thought it through and not just 'jumped on the bandwagon' so to speak. We have a LOT of laptops in our school, and while I really dislike our heavy reliance on them and the work it causes us, at the end of the day the strategy is very much down to senior management and how they wish to use ICT within the school. In our case it's down to space, and the fact virtually every room is used in a timetabled slot all day every day, there are very few free rooms and therefore departments require ICT that works in their rooms whenever they require it, rather than having bookable facilities which we simply don't have space for. Whatever you do, if you do go down the laptop route get a 3yr warranty as a minumum as hard drives and screens do tend to fail in laptops when they get much older than 2yrs, and make sure management are aware that generally speaking an estate of laptops will have a larger financial burden on the school in terms of maintenance and will probably need replacing before an equivalent desktop PC will. Batteries rarely last longer than 2-3 yrs maximum before the runtime becomes too small to be of any use, and vandalism in my experience is not only higher, but costs more to fix. Also remember that a laptop even with the best battery in the world won't last much longer than 2-3hrs on a single charge (although some machines are able to run longer than this) and they must be charged or they will be useless to anyway (getting them put away on charge is our single biggest problem) If managed well laptops can work, but they do require a different approach to desktop PCs and a realistic expectation of what they can actually do. Oh and a decent managed wireless system is an absolute must! Mike.

If money is tight, take a look at the second hand market. I recently bagged a Canon 450d with a load of accessories, decent flash gun, couple of len's and a good tripod for £400 the lot which is a bargain! Camera might be 2-3 years old but it still takes good photos. Obviously there are risks involved with a second hand camera, but there's some good deals to be had if you hunt around.

I have looked at the throughput and stats on the router for re-transmissions and it's surprisingly good, you can happily play on x-box live through it and the lag is very low. This is more by luck thou, as if there was anything else powerful in the vacinity it would affect it I expect. When I ordered it, I was very skeptical about whether it would work with the budget kit, it was more of an experiment than anything, but I was pleased with the results as it turned out much better than expected.

m25man's idea looks better than what I've done for the same problem, but I may as well tell you as it's another way of doing it. I've linked a friends flat back to his mums house probably about 150m away, and I did it for £70 using really cheap access points and external attenna from TPlink. We thought we'd see how far away we could get it to reach before we put the second set in, after installing the first one on his mums roof. I'm not sure on the exact distance, but it did approaching 500metres which was as far away as we could get from the house and still have line of sight. It went further than that, but the speed started dropping off once we were out of sight. I used two of these TL-WA701ND With two of these TL-ANT2409A And to extend the antenna cable if needed TL-ANT24EC3S Set them both up in bridge mode, line of sight on the attennas and the connection was flawless. Incidently the access points come with a crude form of POE injector for powering them, dead handy when the access point needs to be in the attic, and you've not got a powerpoint up there. Mike.