steveg

We have the same here now, except 16 laptops which have hybrid drives which I couldn't justify replacing. Most are crucial drives of some description, have had 1 failure in the last 2 years so not too bad really. (around 200 computers) Also managed to get rid projectors from everywhere except our interactive floors and 2 halls. Steve

I used photolapse when I did ours, really easy to use, available from a number of places such as The Portable Freeware Collection - PhotoLapse (haven't checked the site, but the picture looked the same as the software I used!) The results of ours can be seen here Steve

Thanks for all the input guys. Is the i7 6700k better than the i7 5820k, which is a 6 core model? I cant find comparable benchmarks for the 2. Why has everyone gone for a very expensive cpu cooler? Is this necessary, don't plan to overclock it or anything! What is the difference between the different GeForce 980 cards? Thanks Steve

NVIDIA card would be preferred, has a g-sync monitor on order. Steve

1 of the 2 tb ssd's will be for games, the other will be for development environment. I have questioned it, but apparently it's what is required. Wont be raided, just 2 separate disks. (currently has over 1.3tb on his games drive) Steve

After all the great advice last time I was building a pc for my sister (still working well :-) ), I thought I'd ask your advice again, this time a pc for my brother! Budget is around £2500 ex vat, not including a monitor, keyboard or mouse. Core spec needs to be: Intel based minimum 4 core cpu, ideally 6 or maybe 8. 32gb ram, with ability to upgrade to 64. 512gb ssd boot drive 2 x 2tb ssd's for data 1 x 4tb standard hdd for backup Graphics card capable of 4k gaming. The reasons for the above spec are it is going to be a dual use games and development pc. Will have vhd's hosted on the 2tb drives, one for games and one for the development environment. Will need to run some virtual pc's when booted into development build. There is a little flexibility on the budget if an increase is justified. Thanks Steve

I think from memory, if you install it on a 64 bit system you have to use mklink to make a linked folder in the c:\program files folder to link to the 2simple folder in c:\program files (x86) Steve

We had a very similar sounding problem to that, and received the advice below. I tried it a couple of weeks ago and so far the problem seems to have gone away. It was intermittent so hard to know for sure if it has fixed it! Please follow the steps below to reset your floating tools: 1.Click on the SMART Board Tools/SMART System Menu icon in your system tray (next to the clock) and select Exit from the menu 2. You must have hidden files and folders set to visible in order to perform the next step. You can ensure they are set to visible by following these steps: Windows Vista/7: Open your Windows Control Panel and then open Folder Options. Click on the View tab, ensure that "Show hidden files and folders" is checked and click OK. Windows 8: Open your Windows Control Panel and then type "Folder Options" (without quotes) in the search box and select Folder Options. Click the View tab and select "Show hidden files and folders" in the menu and click OK. 3. Browse to the folder location below that corresponds with your operating system: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\SMART Technologies\SMART Board Drivers 4. Delete all of the files in this folder 5. Launch the SMART Board Tools/SMART System Menu by following the steps for your operating system: Windows XP, Vista or 7: Start menu > All Programs > SMART Technologies > SMART Board Tools Windows 8: Press Windows Key + Q and type "SMART Board Tools" or "SMART System Menu" (without quotes) in the search box. Click on the SMART Board Tools/SMART System Menu application that appears in the results. Your floating toolbar will be reset to default.

I believe it does, but only from within Impero apps - they have their own browser, so if you force the use of that for internet then it will. As far as I know it wont work within other apps. Steve

I took mine there once to have an oil leak diagnosed. They said it was all fine, the dash cam footage showed them pull the car up to in front of the garage, get a hose out and spray it under the bonnet, close it again and park it back in a different space. There was actually a leak which I got fixed at another garage! Steve

Last time I asked their support for one they didn't! I have requested that they make one, but not sure if they have or not. They have a list for a lot of things, but not this yet as far as I know. We have made our own, but it is far from extensive and is a work in progress. Steve

I contacted them about this, and apparently you can do it. This is the reply I got: Hello Steve, From your email, I understand that you would like to know whether you can show Prime Instant Videos to your students using your own account. I can confirm that you can certainly show Prime Instant Videos to your students in school days using your own account. You can identify videos included with your Amazon Prime membership by looking for the Prime logo and the "Watch Now" button on the video's detail page. To browse Prime Instant Video titles visit: http://www.amazon.co.uk/piv I hope this helps. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

The new hp inkjets are really good. We've had a X576DW in the main office for over a year and been impressed with it. Probably wont want one quite that big, but the innards of the smaller ones must be similar. It has 1 a4 sized print head, so throws pages out at quite a rate, and the cartridges are huge and last ages. Steve

We have a stack of 4 2920 48 port switches for the core, half of which are poe, and then a couple in other buildings with 10 gig fiber links back. Been in since the summer and been very happy with it. From memory I think 5 48 port and 1 24 port, stacking modules, cables and some kit to get 10 gig into the servers came to about £10k. Steve

I will restrict the email account to only receive emails from internal staff accounts. The plan is for it to be used as part of a display in our nursery. All the staff have an ipad, and frequently take pictures of the children or work, print them off and display them, changing them every few days. It's the speed of having their work up on the wall for children that age that is key for them and has a big impact. The idea therefore is they will email the pictures to a display email account, it will download them, and have a slideshow of the last 20 pictures it receives. That side of things is fairly strait forward, it was just getting it to download them that was the issue. Thanks Arreks, I will give that one a go, the ones that I found when I googled were all macros for outlook, which wasn't ideal. Steve

Does anyone have a way to automatically download attachments for a 365 email account and save them to a folder. I'm sure I've seen it mentioned on here before, but cant find it now. I want staff to be able to email pictures to an email address and they are downloaded and saved to a folder. Should be fairly easy to script, but if someone has already done it will save me some time :-) Thanks Steve

You can go strait from the old server to the new one with no problems, no need to install any new versions of sql on the old one. If you are using sql express on the new one, just install the server os and patch it etc, then let the sims installer install sql for you. When you run the migration on the old one, it will detach the databases and you can copy the files over to the new one, it will then attach them onto that server for you. There is a guide on doing the migration, as you will need to do things like moving the document management server as well. If its virtual to virtual just make sure you backup both before you start and you cant really go wrong! Steve

You can have directory sync on the same server, it's just best practice to have it on its own, it's touched on briefly here Installing DirSync on a Domain Controller :: Exchange Online :: Microsoft Office 365 :: Exchange Server Tips & Tricks :: KBase Tips :: MSExchange.org Steve

365 is cloud based so no hardware in house. If you want it AD integrated, the best solution would be to use directory sync, which you would set up on a separate server (virtual server is fine) in house. This would provide same sign on - users would need to login to email again, but it would be the same username and password they use on the school network. The other option is to use adfs authentication, although I feel this may be more complicated than you need, and you can always change to this in the future. Steve

I've put in a number of netgear switches in the past, from the cheap gig unmanaged ones up to the layer 3 managed ones with 10 gig uplinks. All have proved to be pretty unreliable, had huge problems at one school, and regular failures across the others, I wouldn't touch them again! Entire network here is hp, and haven't had a single problem. May have just been unlucky, and current kit may be ok, but I'd be very cautious of going back there again! Steve

I've never known it go wrong using the db attach utility. To clarify what I said earlier, if you use sql management studio to do a backup, and then the restore on the new server there are often problems with user accounts etc. Using the db attach utility at both ends of the process and it all goes swimmingly! You can always re-attach the database back to the server you took it from after you have copied it if things go wrong on the new server. Steve

We looked into foldr in the past, but it was too much money. We now use Filebrowser Business on all of the ipads in school. Using our mdm solution (airwatch) I can push out settings with the app, so it is pre configured to connect to our network. I have set it to connect to a dfs share name, which has all the shares anyone may need to have access to in it - nice and quick to update then in the future, if a share moves. You can of course set it to connect directly to a network share if you prefer. When any member of staff uses it, it just prompts for their username and password for the network, and they can only access files as per their network permissions. It costs about £4.50 per device if purchased in bulk, which was far cheaper than foldr and has no annual costs. Getting all the devices set up with an MDM solution really is the key to a simple life with ipads. I wasn't keen on them when we got our first ones 3 years ago, I recently had a budget meeting with the head where I was pushing for another 32 of them, which will bring us up to around 150 in school. I will often get an email in the evening from a teacher asking if they could use an app the next day, if its not on the ipads I can have it deployed onto a whole class set within about ten minutes from my computer at home! Steve

Use the dbattach utility to detach from old and re-attach to new. Lots of things don't go well if you just restore a backed up database (user accounts for example) I guess you could use the upgrade utility and use the opportunity to move to sql 2014 at the same time? Could potentially save you another job in the future. Steve

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for your help, it's now built and delivered, she is very happy! Went with the upgraded power supply as recommended above in the end. One of her games that she previously got 20fps on she now gets 299 :-) Will obviously drop when she gets the higher resolution monitor when it's released, but still very quick, can barely see the loading screen on most games! Steve

Going to change motherboard to this Asrock Z97E-ITX/ac Socket 1150 DVI-I HDMI DisplayPort 7.1 CH HD Audio Mini-ITX Motherboard - Ebuyer As the other one only has 4 sata connectors. Steve