steveg

Does the contract definitely allow tethering? A lot of the cheaper mobile contracts with large amounts of data don't. Steve

We are a 500 pupil primary and nursery school, and use ipads pretty extensively, and have done for a while now. They are certainly used more heavily than the windows laptops we have available. From an IT and management point of view, they are very easy to manage, setup and maintain. A good MDM solution lets you do most things these days, deploying apps is a matter of minutes, and getting a new set of 16 ipads I spend more time unpacking them and wiring the trolley than I do setting them up. I'm not sure if you can quite lock them down enough against a secondary school pupil yet, but we certainly have no issues. The key thing is ensure that there is an issue that wants to be solved, and that ipads are the best solution for this. Want to primarily look at office documents and type stuff up? Windows or Chromebooks are going to be a much better bet. Have a range of apps that you want to use with the children, or a lot of online content you want to access, ipads may well be the answer. In education we are here primarily to teach skills, not specific technologies. I personally was pretty anti apple products in general, but when we looked into it, they provided the best option, so we went with them. We still have a range of Windows desktops, laptops and touch screen devices, and these are by far the more time consuming technology to support. We will start seriously looking at Chromebook devices when time permits. Some things we have learnt along the way: Where possible get different coloured cases for the ipads, and match these up to the trolleys - I wrongly assumed that a large clear label on the ipads was enough! Get the staff ipads - staff confidence is key, and if they have and use one all day every day, they are much more confident getting the children going with them. We allow them a small amount of credit to buy and test apps before we deploy them, and this works well. Provide training early on, and small refreshers as time goes on. We run a range of sessions throughout the year covering all abilities - there isn't a more mixed ability group than teachers when it comes to technology! Steve

We use filebrowser - they do an education and a business version, both of which can be configured via mdm with the network shares you want to connect to. I have it set up to map to a DFS share, and then add or remove drives to this as required, so I don't have to re-configure them when any servers change. We looked at foldr and it looked great, but was too expensive for us. Steve

It's on my list of things to look at, just too many other projects on the go at the moment!

We use Ericom Connect here to allow staff to rdp to a Remote desktop server in a browser, also has clients for Windows, Mac, ios and android. Seems pretty popular with staff and is very reliable. Steve

I went for 3 of the EAP115 ap's in the end, so only 11g, but more than fast enough for what I want. So far I'm really impressed with it, I'd installed the controller software and configured it in advance, so just had to adopt the 3 ap's for them to pick up the settings. One needed an extra re-boot for some reason, but after that it's been working perfectly. I only have around 15 clients on it at any one time, but it hasn't had any issues at all, roaming between points is super fast - before my phone would try to cling on to the weak signal of the previous ap, rather than jump to a stronger one nearby. Steve

We are in the process of making the move from Impero to Netsupport this summer, having been with Impero for just under 5 years now. So far initial impressions of netsupport have been very good, and dealings with their support team have been positive, it was also very competitively priced, with the features of both pretty similar. Around 18 months ago Impero went quite dramatically downhill, they discovered some security issues, rushed out new releases, and didn't have adequate levels of support available, all of which made for a pretty poor customer experience. In fairness to them, they don't hide away from this, and have openly admitted things weren't right. Over the last 6 months things have improved - they appear to have stable software, and dealings with support have been positive and efficient again. Was just a little too late to keep me as a customer this time, but I would certainly look again in the future. Steve

Thanks everyone, think I'll order 3 and give it a go! Steve

Has anyone tried the tp-link managed wireless? Is it any good? I'm looking for new wireless for home, but as cheap as possible! (I wouldn't normally consider tp link!) I live in a large bungalow, with a separate annex, so need 3 ap's to cover it all. With the current sky router and 2 extra ap's (an old sky hub and a netgear ap) the roaming between points is really poor, so something managed is the way to go. I'd normally go for unifi ap's but, the tp-link eap115 points are only £35 each, and the controller software is free. They are only 11n, but my broadband is only 50mb, so that should be fine. The cheapest from unifi is almost double the price. Steve

Have you seen that it is ending, and the accounts are being taken over by VleBooks by browns books? I haven't looked at it at all yet, just had the letter and flyer through about it. Steve

We had one here with ADT when I started. They would clean the cameras, check the alignment, and make sure all were working. It also covered breakdown of the equipment. For 14 cameras they were charging £1800! I promptly cancelled it, site team clean them when required, and nothing has broken in 3 years so we are definitely better off, could replaced the whole install twice now with what we have saved. Steve

Can I ask how you went about collecting all of the emails from various staff mailboxes, or were they just from some key staff? Steve

Alienware one looks good, shame the resolution isn't quite 4k, I think at that price I'd want it to be! Samsung one looks good spec, but I think curved is a must, and preferably looking a bit nicer! Steve

Can anyone recommend a good quality large (around 32") 4k curved monitor? Must be good for gaming, but also for text - it's not for me, but my brother who plays games a lot and is a developer. He hasn't really set a budget - any price is fine really if it is worth spending the extra on it for better quality. Thanks Steve

I've just got one of these: https://www.comms-express.com/products/geist-watchdog-15-p-un-environment-monitor-c-w-temp-humid-dew-point-sensors-poe/ Fairly basic, but seems to do the job. Emails me if there are issues. Only thing I don't like (and this may just be me having not read the manual yet) is that I don't seem to be able to have different email lists for different warnings. (i'd like it to email me if it gets a bit warm, and lots of people if it gets very warm!) Steve Steve

Turns out it takes 194 balloons! Made my kids help me blow them up and took them in over 2 days. Steve

That would be less effort, although somewhat more expensive!!

It's a shame amazon don't sell ready inflated balloons..... :-) I'm going to borrow a large compressor

I would like to still be friends with them when they get back!! I like the way you think though! :-)

So if I get about 150 to be on the safe side, that should be plenty? A good friend of mine who is a TA is away on the year 6 camp, and has stupidly left her car keys with me. Seems to good an opportunity to let go! Steve

How many balloons do you think it would take to fill a Vauxhall Meriva? Steve

We used to use reflector a few years back, and changed to AirServer, would never go back. I think from memory reflector needed a major update to work with a new ios release, and wanted us to buy it again. Never had a single issue with AirServer. Steve

I'd ideally like to go for a bigger brand than a custom generic one, I know any company can have issues, but feel more comfortable with one that has been around a while. Also useful when googling any issues, there are a lot of other users with the same server out there. I'll give Insight a call and see what they can do. Thanks Steve

Going to be purchasing a new server in the next week or 2. Does anyone have any recommendations for suppliers? Got the last one from Server Source, and am very happy with it. Have had a quote from them and Ebuyer so far, with Server source being considerably cheaper, I'd like to find another supplier that may be competitive with them. Would be happy with second user kit as long as it has a 5 year warranty. Thanks Steve

Call it "The Cloud" everything is going to the cloud these days, and will really confuse them when some stuff is in the actual cloud! :-) Steve