maniac

We've tried XP on one, and the performance was quite poor although it did work. It only had about 700mb free on the 4GB storage, and that was slowly ebbed away at while the machine was working. Also running XP on them is obviously more expensive licensing wise. We'd prefer to stick to the linux install if possible, we can then use remote desktops to provide a full working environment for the students. I had already found the eeepc wiki, but because I know absolutely nothing at all about linux, even that is difficult for me to understand because the language and procedures are totally alian to me. Anyone got opinions of the training that I found above?? Cheers, Mike.

I found this company offering training on the Asus EEE PC, which I'm interested in as SLT love them here and want to buy lots of them! Problem is none of us here know anything about linux, so at the moment we're all struggling a bit trying to follow on-line guides etc. What do people in the know think. Is this course worth it and does it seem to cover everything I'm likely to need to know about them?? Opinions gratefully received. Mike.

Hey there, I'm in the process of writing a simple digital signage application, which is essentially some javascript displaying in a fullscreen webrowser which scrolls the contents of a HTML file up the screen. That side of it works well. I've also written a simple interface to update the contents.htm file using FCKeditor, but at the moment to get it to display the new contents requires a manual refresh of the webpage, which isn't ideal. (the screens for this are going to be fairly high up on a wall, and the PC is going to be the other side of the wall) What i'm looking for is some javascript or simelar which will automatically refresh the page only if the contents.htm file has been changed. Is this possible? I know I could use a set timed refresh on the page, say every 5 minutes, but the javascript takes a while to get going when you load the page, and I don't really want it doing this every 5 minutes if it can be helped. The contents are likely to only be updated once or twice a week. Any ideas gratefully received. Mike.

Any ideas how I can change this? This was the default settings on the machine when I plugged it in, and there's no where obvious to change it apart from editing the modem initialization string, which I can't do for some reason, as explained above. Mike.

Hello all, firstly sorry for not being around much recently, not been too well (that is if anyone noticed I was missing in the first place?) Wasn't sure what forum to post this in really, it's a mix between hardware and software, so I decided on the hardware forum. Also apologies for length of this post. . . . Anyhow, I've got my hands on an Asus EEE PC for testing purposes at the moment, and I'm trying to get it to work with a 3G HSDPA modem for broadband access. The modem in question is the huawei E220 which is natively suported by the EEE. All well and good so far. The problem comes when I try and connect to the 3G network using the modem. Everything is fine up to a point, the modem is talking to the PC properly, dials up and connects, but then right at the last second the connection is dropped with an error; The following is the entire log from the modem when it tries to connect. ATV1 OK AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","three.co.uk" OK ATDT*99# CONNECT Serial connection established. using channel 10 Using interface ppp0 Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB0 sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1 ] rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x0 ] sent [LCP ConfAck id=0x0 ] rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1 ] sent [LCP EchoReq id=0x0 magic=0x4a2c4172] rcvd [LCP DiscReq id=0x1 magic=0xc8ca1c] rcvd [CHAP Challenge id=0x1 , name = "UMTS_CHAP_SRVR"] sent [CHAP Response id=0x1 , name = "guest"] rcvd [LCP EchoRep id=0x0 magic=0xc8ca1c 4a 2c 41 72] rcvd [CHAP Success id=0x1 ""] CHAP authentication succeeded CHAP authentication succeeded sent [CCP ConfReq id=0x1 ] sent [iPCP ConfReq id=0x1 ] rcvd [LCP ProtRej id=0x2 80 fd 01 01 00 0f 1a 04 78 00 18 04 78 00 15 03 2f] Protocol-Reject for 'Compression Control Protocol' (0x80fd) received Modem hangup Connection terminated. The problem deepens. As it's something to do with compression I thought I'd try switching off the compression used. To do this I worked out I needed to edit the modem initialisation string in the hardware properties, which is fine compression is turned on, &C1 which I was going to change to &C0 to turn it off. Problem is when I goto apply the changes, the machine gives me two errors saying the driver and country aren't slected and exits without saving the changes. Other problem is there is no driver or countries available to select from the relevant drop down boxes! I'm stumped, can anyone help me get this to work?? Cheers, Mike. (Moved to *nix since it seems more relevant)

That reminds me, must get some lightbulbs on the way home. I'm not sure what brand to go for thou, can anyone help? mike.

I would use SATA discs insted of IDE and buy a controller card if the server doesn't support SATA. SATA offers much better performance than IDE for budget storage, and you can do things like RAID with them, which you can't normally do with IDE. Mike.

No warrenty I'm afraid Acer being decidedly un-helpful, refered me to their premium rate support line, which I can't call as 09xxx numbers are banned on our switchboard. I've rung the local laptop repair place we use, and I'm taking one down to them later as they've never seen this problem before. They've got the proper Acer Diagnostics software so hopefully they can tell me what's wrong! Mike.

OK people, I'm at my wits end with this problem, really want to find a solution to it. We've quite a few Acer 4150 laoptops in this place, and 4 of them have recently developed very weird problems with power, strangly all at the same time as well. Basically the battery won't charge up in the laptop no matter what you do. I've tried numerous different power packs and known good batteries in them, no result. The weird thing is even with the power pack plugged in, the laptop will only run from battery power and when the battery is dead, it turns off and won't power on until you put another good battery in it. If you remove the battery completely, then it runs from the AC input OK. As soon as you put a battery back in, it starts running from the battery again with the same results as the above. The only thing I'm getting is the battery light flashing red at me insted of staying on, so there's obviously a fault of some sort, only problem is I can't find out what it is, or how to solve it, I've spend hours googling for solutions. I've tried updating the BIOS, made no difference and I've re-soldered the connections on the power connector on the laptop incase there was a broken joint caused by the power lead being pulled etc. No difference. I've checked the CMOS battery voltage incase that may have been a problem (It has been suggested on a couple of other forums I found while googling) the voltage was OK. If anyone has any ideas, please share them however daft they may seem! Many thanks, Mike.

Let me see. There's the 'E-portal's down' ones. Note that's not a question, that's a teacher telling me that it's down. (when infact there's nothing wrong with it, they just havn't turned on their wireless on their laptop.) 'Is the internet down' is a common one, we don't get that many problems with it, but the sight of one 'page not found' message is enough for some. 'Urgent!!' How many times do I have to tell people, putting that word at the end of your ticket or e-mail does not make me do it any quicker. I prioritise my work, not you! 'I need . . . ' when infact it is not a need, it is a want. There's loads more, but these few are pretty common. Mike.

I hate these all in one things. Staff in our school have a small obsession with them, often it's just lazyness on the part of the member of staff not wanting to goto reprographics for copying. We spend a fortune on toner for the ones of these that have managed to find their way into school, waaaay more than a proper colour copier costs to run. The only good thing about these devices is normally the scanner funtionality is networkable, meaning several people can share the one unit in an office for scanning purposes, however to take advantage of this, each machine must make its own connection to the device, you can't share it via a print server. Mike.

Why do you need IIS and apache on the same server?? We do have this on our web server, Apache is on port 80, and IIS on port 8080, with a reverse proxy setup through apache to display the content from IIS through apache. The only reason I have this is our website is ASP, and it's difficult to get ASP working on Apache. If yours is for simelar reasons, I suggest reading about reverse proxying in Apache as a potential solution. Mike.

I'm there on friday for my school with my ICT-Co-ordinator (Amazed they let us both out to play on the same day!) and on the Saturday to help on the stand. Might pop by and introduce myself on the Friday so you can see what you've let yourselves in for! lol Mike.

I'd sponsor him too . . . Providing Grumbledook gets to do the cut! Mike.

Something linked to the microsoft qualifications would be good, as I've always found it difficult to find a source that is reliable to get training for these qualifications. Sure there's plenty out there, but some is rubbish, others are very over priced and if you're new to that sort of training it's difficult to know who or where to trust for the right training. Non-technical training, well with goverment policies and health and safety requirements always changing, these are two obvious areas where training is useful, but surprisingly difficult to obtain! Mike.

The main website is ASP.net, but it's reverse proxied through an apache server. The website URL's aren't too bad, but the URLs on Exchange and E-portal are just silly sometimes. That was her main 'concern' (Absolutely paranoid about the image of the school even down to things like this, but if you look at the history of the school, you'll understand why) Like I say, started off wrong on this thread, I was never too fussed about it, but I was asked to do it and thought 'yeah I suppose it'll neaten things up a bit' Might look into URL re-writing for the website if it's not too difficult, gotta be better than what we got at the moment. Mike.

Request from above, should have re-phrased that, I don't personally want to mask them, I was asked to and I couldn't think of any arguments not to. (Because they have seen it on other sites, they wanted it on ours too.) You've now given me 2 good arguements to put it back to how it was before. Mike.

The site is appauling I know, nothing to do with me, making the best of a bad situation shall we say. I really really want to re-design it. I won't tell you how much the school paid for it (it was 1000's) I know that technique died out, but I really want to mask the URLs if possible and this is the only way I know to do it. Didn't realise it would cause problems like that thou, my web designing knowledge is only limited (as you can tell) I didn't get any warnings when I looked at the site, it even appears to stop the certificate warnings coming up, which is quite scary in a way, as I thought it was impossible to do that. May have a re-think. No problem with being blunt, constructive critisicm (as yours was) is always welcome. Mike.

To keep my website looking neat, i've got it opening the entire thing in a frame, so the URL at the top always stays the same, I think this looks more professional, and hides the paths etc. used to a limited extent. http://www.nbc.medway.sch.uk is the site address. I've also got E-portal and OWA on the same server on https, but they are opened in the same frame. When viewing OWA and Exportal in this frame, the browser doesn't report a secure connection, but when you look at the pages being loaded, they are coming from https source (they must be because both services are only available on https) You can get the front pages fo both services under the 'staff' section on the site. My question is; are data transmissions on these services still actually encrypted when they are open in the frame like this, or would it be adviseable to have the links for these services opening up new windows rather than in the frame? Opinions and ideas welcome. Mike.

I wouldn't get the Samsung G600, the screens break rediculously easily on these, and you'll not get much sympathy from samsung when they do! Had mine precisely 2 weeks before I managed to break it, back to my good old 3 year old D600 now, which is still soldiering on! Mike.

Did you want me to call you a taxi? Yes pre-paid to the BETT Exhibition please . . . . We've seen the before picture, make sure you post the after one too. If it's done at BETT and you can't make it, no worries, you can watch it live on the Webcam! Mike.

I rekon bit of a trim, dye it black and with a little bit of work you could very well pull off the emo look You'd fit in well at the school I work at anyway! lol Mike.

Sorry, i couldn't resist. I'll get my coat . . . . . . . .

I think the main thing we had problems with was getting it to display videos, it only liked certain formats, which was a pain! Then I expect other simelar systems would be the same on this, there's only so many video formats you can support I suppose, it just created a lot more work for us! I find the pallete of colours you can use for text and backgrounds is limiting, and it makes it hard to match colours of backgrounds on things like the news ticker with that of the main background. Building even the simplest page layout requires a reasonable level of technical skill to understand what all the different componants are and how to use them, Even I find it confusing as do my fellow workers. We were hoping that we would be able to train other admin staff to do this, to take some of the workload of us. After all creating a fancy presentation for the canteen isn't really what our job role is. Unfortunitely due to the complexity of the system, it's unlikely we can do this. I find it tricky to use with simple functions like changing the channel on the digital card hidden away in non-intuative places. I mean it is a reasonably good product I suppose, just I think it could be done better, and I have had demos of other products that certainly seemed easier to use. Also bear in mind how much it costs, and the fact it's really a very basic PC in what I consider to be a cheap looking system case. I was disappointed when we received it, so I suppose I am focussing on the negative points. The above is my opinion only, others may well have a better experience so I'd recommend getting a demo of one if you're interested, or better still if they're at Bett, pop along and see them! Mike.

How did you picture him?