steveg

I put in a stack of 4 2920's just a few months ago as our core, 40gig stack links between them, and 10gig links to the servers it runs very nicely. Got a 10gig link over to another building with another 2920 in it. This worked out as the best value option for us, and is going to last us a good few years. Steve

We have 6 colour mfd's and 2 colour copiers in the whole school, all on contract, just pay lease and cost per page. Toners are ordered automatically, any problems are solved same or next day, never been happier with printing! We're a primary school, 17 classes. Steve

I thought VMware did a free physical to virtual convertor which ran standalone, and the Microsoft convertor supports converting vm-ware files off-line? Steve

Can you use the tool from vm-ware to do physical to virtual, and then use this to convert that file to hyper-v? Download Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 2.0 from Official Microsoft Download Center Steve

Download a piece of software called showpoint, it should do what you want want and is free. Steve

If it's anything like the old Panasonic systems then there are 2 extra cables connected on a digital extension, analogue normal phone uses 2, digital one uses 4. You'd need to find the install manual for that system to find out what extras you would need, or look at wiring for the other digital extensions. Steve

I normally just use thick sheets of mdf cut to size (make them fairly big compared to the bracket, there is plenty of room behind a board) and then fix to this. If its for hanging a heavy item, such as a tv I'll use mdf but make sure I use longer coach bolts and drive the plugs right into the wall, so the bracket is still fixed to the wall, but spaced with the mdf. Steve

A new i5 / 4gb / 500gb mac mini I just over £400 ex vat, add a non apple monitor / keyboard + Mouse and you can come in well under budget? Steve

There is an owa app (from Microsoft) which lets you do it. Steve

As part of some building works we are going to put a large display screen in the staff room, with the intention of displaying our whole school shared calendar. Can anyone recommend a good way of doing this? The whole month view is useful, but we have so many things on there that it will also need to display the week view, and ideally switch between the 2. The calendar needs to remain reasonably private, so I cant publish it online anywhere. We use office 365 for the calendar, and there will be a windows pc attached to the screen. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Steve

Did you managed to get this done? Do you have any contact details for the correct department? I've got to create 48 accounts for new ipads and don't fancy doing them manually! Thanks Steve

Did you enable any legacy options on the server in order to get it to boot / see the drives? I'd normally favour Raid 6 with that many drives, to increase the likelihood of a recovery in the event of a failure. Steve

My desk is currently in the corner of the main hall, along with all the contents of 2 classrooms and an entire nursery! Major building work going on here, so the office where my desk will be is currently having a wall removed and a new door cut into the heads office! On the plus side, I do technically have a 182 square meter office at the moment :-) Steve

I've installed 6 e70's so far, and have 13 of them being delivered today. I think they look much nicer than a lot of the other screens, although they could be slimmer. The new model looks great, but 65" is just a little too small for us, so we've stuck with the e70's. Don't forget to factor in the cost of the 5 year warranty, as they only come with a 2 year warranty as standard. As others have mentioned, the speakers are useless, Roth audio are making a new version of their Sub Zero II soundbar in white, specifically to go with the E70 - the install kit even comes with the optical cable to connect it up. We've ordered these, lead time is about 2 weeks at the moment. Final thing to consider is they are very heavy, - 74kg, so u need a sturdy wall to take it! Steve

Worked out best value for me recently to put 4 2920's in, with stacking cables between them, in a redundant loop, so 40 gig between between switches. Then used a 10 gig fiber link to another 2920 in another cab, and 10 gig direct attach sfp copper cables into the 3 main servers. All seems to work pretty well.

Might be worth looking at some of the mid range NAS's that you can get - the synology one that we've just put in for additional backups has a lot of options for supporting CCTV cameras, might be a much quicker and easier way to set it up - all done through the web interface. Not sure how much extra the licences are, but the RS2414+ box we have supports up to 35 cameras when the licences are added. Steve

It caches the most recent x amount of emails locally (but still remain on the server) and then if you do a search or something, it gives you the option to continue searching on the server. I have a pretty large mailbox (35,000 items) and it seems to cope fine. Not sure where it stores the local copy, but would assume this is in the profile - we don't use roaming profiles so never been an issue, and staff primarily use the same machine to access emails, so once it has downloaded the local copy its pretty quick. The first time you use it on a new pc with out the local cache its a bit slow for a few mins. Steve

We're planning to skip 2012. There is a 6 month overlap in support for 2008 r2 and 2014. We purchased 2008 r2 outright, and will probably look at doing the same for 2014. Steve

Dell already are, got some laptops from them about 3 weeks ago at a very good price because of this, just need to speak to your your account manager, was no mention of it on our premier account. Steve

Just wondering if anyone can recommend a 3g router with built in modem for home use? It must have external antennas for the mobile signal, since it will be used in quite a weak signal area. External antennas for wireless would be good too, but not essential. I've seen a few around that tick all the boxes, but are all in excess of £150, ideally I'm looking for something less than £100. May be asking a little too much there! I already have one which makes use of usb modems, but it is very unreliable, so am looking for one with the 3g modem built in. Thanks Steve

We used to have a wireless link to a nursery using ubiquiti kit and it was solid for the 18 months that is was in, before they moved. - Not a single call out to it in the whole time it was in. Link was approximately 1km with line of site over the top of houses and an industrial estate, speed was between 30 and 50mbps. We now run one using the same kit (the mini dish ones, not sure what the exact model is) back to my house, which has a few trees in the way, but still works. Again been very reliable for the last 6 months. Steve

I'd leave out the monitor for now, spend more on the core spec if you can borrow or steal one from somewhere for now? I'm still using an old dell 19" one at home and it does me fine. Would mean you can upgrade to a new monitor in the future without having to throw out anything you've spent money on, and would make the budget for the pc stretch a little further. Steve

Sounds good to me :-)

Please note the closing date for applications is 9am on Tuesday 20th August.

Please note the closing date for applications is 9am on Tuesday 20th August.