maniac

Simple. We make sure SIMS is running on a well speced server, our LEA tests all SIMS updates before giving us the go-ahead to install them, and we make sure that staff have the correct privledges on their laptops for updates to install. We never have any trouble with updates, very few problems with SIMS itself, it runs quickly and is generally trouble free from a technical perspective. Mike.

Yes we had the same problem. Some of our larger areas like the library had 3 APs put in them for some reason which was totally OTT. Just because the room is bigger doesn't necessarily mean there's going to be more machines in it, but the company who installed the system 4 or more years ago obviously thought this would be the case. As long as there's an AP in the room, the coverage should be fine. Even our school hall only has a single access point, and coverage in the whole room is fine. Mike.

Not local to you, but I have an old Acer Travelmate 210 that I was going to bin the other day, got win 2k on it. You're welcome to that if you want it, but you'll have to pay for postage. I don't have a power adapter for it I'm afraid, but I know it works. PM me if you're interested. Mike.

I would always go for the 1 per classroom option, as the thing to remember with wireless is that 54mbs is divided between all the devices using the access point, i.e 30 laptops and you're talking less than 2mbs per device, and that is the main reason for slow logon times. If you have one big access point serving 3 or 4 classrooms, you're talking smaller and smaller bandwidth availability per device, which will slow things down even more no matter how good the signal is. Mike.

I use MLH and you can still get it for free if you can find the right part of the site with the form to fill in. I have no objections to paying for it however, as you then get proper support and access to updates. It's a great helpdesk system, with a whole host of useful features, and it just works! Mike.

It screwed up my browser earlier (Firefox 2.0.0.16) required me to shut down and re-load it. Should have screen captured it really. Instead of coming up in a popup window, it came up in the main browser page, but in doing so managed to get rid of the toolbar and address bar some how! Ah well, I'm counting the days until it's removed from the site TBH, I know it's generating some revenue for BETT, but it's damned annoying!! Mike.

We want to produce a simple form that we can run off in bulk that has a incrementing serial number on the top of it. I'm sure there must be a way of doing this in word, but I can't seem to find it. I know I could achieve this by using mail merge and an excel spreadsheet with a single collumn of numbers in, but I'd rather find an auto-number type way of doing things if possible. Googling produces some results, but nothing that appears to work or do what I'm after. It needs to be as easy as possible to print out more of these forms in the future, without having to edit a spreadsheet etc if possible. It's such a simple thing to do, I'm sure there must be an easy way! Anyone got any ideas?? Mike.

If the school is wanting to move away from sims because it doesn't offer the functionality they want, I'd say that's a good reason. If however it's because of technical difficulties, or reliability issues (which it invariably is) I'd say they may want to re-consider and maybe invest in getting SIMS working properly insted. In my experience if you've got a good spec server to run SIMS on and it's been set up properly, then it is a very reliable platform. The thing to remember is there is no consistantly good MIS system, where one system is strong, another system is weak, where one system works, another system experiences problems, it's all swings and roundabouts. So basically I'm saying, don't just take their desire to change at face value. If you have the oppertunity, examine why it is they want to change, you could come out smelling of roses if you save the school needless expense. Mike. Oh and by the way I'm not a sims advocate, but I have witnessed first hand how disruptive it is to a school not only changing MIS system once, but then changing back again a year later when they suddenly realise their new MIS system costs more to run, and isn't doing anything more than the old one was.

Although RM are just utlising the software restrictions that exist in group policy anyway, they just have a fancy front end to control it.

I always use the BECTA ICT technical job description tool to build job descriptions. It's not perfect, but it's got most of the important roles and responsibilities at different levels listed and gives you an idea at what level you're currently working at. Becta Schools Mike.

Never thought of changing the shortcut attributes to hide unwanted ones, that's a clever way of doing it. Might have to have a play see if I can achieve this with a VBS script as it'll be much easier than copying icons like my old script does, and much less network traffic generated as well. Mike.

The way I achieved this was by using a VBS script to copy shortcuts from a shortcut bank on the netlogon share at startup to a local directory on the machine. The script was written to copy a basic set of icons, and then a supplimentary set depending on what OU the machine was in which contained icons for specific software installed on that group of machines. I then re-directed the start menu to point to the local location so you only get icons for the programs that are installed. I think this is simelar to the way CC3 does it. I expect a script could be produced that checks for the existance of specific EXE files and copies the relevant icons if you didn't want to do it by OU, but this would be a little more complex than the way I did it. Mike.

My guess is the subnet not being large enough to take in the 10.60.30.x address range from 10.60.20.x I'd guess as above it is set to 255.255.254.0 try changing the subnet on one of the PCs to 255.255.240.0 and you'll probably find they will talk to each other. Mike.

If E-portal is on the same server and you keep the same server name and drive mapping for the drive you run CMIS from the same, then you shouldn't have any problems as the IP number and Domain shouldn't matter. If E-portal is on a different server, or you change the server name then you may have to re-establish the link to the CMIS SQL database, and create a new connection file for CMIS which is pretty straight forward. I'm sure Serco support will help you, their support has improved a lot recently, they seem more able to deal with slightly more technical questions like this than they used to be. Mike.

Try burning it at a slower speed, ususally find this helps with those sorts of problems. Mike.

hey, not so high on the age I'm only 27, but I have fond memories of computers like the Amstrad CPC, spectrum and BBC micro. learnt to program my Amstrad in the late 80's/early 90's when I was only about 10. Then again my father was also into programming our amstrad CPC, he even had a game published on the covertape of Computing with the Amstrad magazine (or Amstrad Action, can't recall which one now) Havn't seen that vid for a while Mike.

I can whole hartedly back that up. 5 years ago I started my educational ICT support journey as network manager of a middle school with 200 computers to look after on a salery of 12.5k. Network manager was merely a job title, as it was just me on my own, I didn't really manage anything, just basically did what was asked of me. Had a pay rise while there, but decided to move on after 2 years to a technician role at a large secondary on a better salery. Worked my way up to 'development engineer' in this school and there was a pay rise for me there as well, but I reached as far as I could go in that position and decided after 2.5 years to move on again. I'm now network manager of a small academy school, on more than double what I started my first ICT support job at 5 years ago, and above all else on the whole I really enjoy my job. I think this is a fair rate for the job I do. There's no doubt I wouldn't have achieved salery wise and knowledge wise what I have in 5 years had I not moved on when the time was right. I learned so much more by moving on to new places than I ever would have by staying in one, and have made a lot of new friends and met lots of interesting people in all the places I've worked. Stay in one place too long and it can become mundane and for want of a better word, boring. Mike.

We had a few of those at my last school, and they were quite durable. Personally thou I've never liked the cabinets where the laptops are held vertically, I always think they're more likey to be damaged being stored like that. Mike.

We use Lapbank trollys. I've found them to be some of the most robust and sturdy laptop cabinets I've ever come across, but they are expensive. Lapbank secure laptop storage trolleys and safes with charging and networking options from Loxit Products Mike.

Give them a call, they're usually very helpful. Mike.

I'll see what I can do. The idea was to keep the program simple and thus no settings to program in, but I know the script I've used as part of my program has the ability to read groups and OU information as well as usernames so it might be a fairly easy to change to make. I will add however that this program is a personal project that I've decided to make available to other people who might want to use it, and as such I'm not going to spend a lot of time improving it, as it serves the origenal purpose I designed it for well. Mike.

We used to do something similar about ten years ago when I was still at school on the last day of every term. Back then we used the tannoy system in the school to broadcast it using a crude system of a tape player wired into the line inputs on the tannoy amp to broadcast a radio show recorded earlier in the day. Takeover Tannoy it was called, always went down a hit! Mike.

Yes, but doing it that way relies on an up-to-date list of computer names in the batch file. I add and remove workstations to and from my network on a daily basis so this would be near enough impossible to keep up to date, I also have well over 400 workstations so the list would be long. The brilliant thing about bizzels program is it's ability to use the RM ini files as a station list so a) any new workstations are automatically added, and b) I don't accidently shutdown my servers or staff workstations. For me (when I eventually get it to work that is) it provides the ideal solution. Mike.

We're expecting Ofsted soon as well as we recently became an Academy and they didn't visit last year in the first year of the academy, so they sure as hell will this year. Luckily everything is doing OK at the moment, but I'm willing to bet as soon as it gets announced everyone will suddenly find equipment that doesn't work and expect us to fix it within 2 days. Ah well. Mike.

For those that were interested, I've posted my Easy Password Reset software in a new thread. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/23952-easy-password-reset-software.html Mike.