steveg

We've got 5 of these printers accross 3 of my schools, and have just ordered another for a fourth school, not had any problems with any of them, and find them to be pretty good on running costs. - we get around 6000 pages out of a 12000 page toner, which the way they print in primary schools it pretty good! Steve

All of the netbooks we use are on the network, and are generally very reliable. - There is no problem with 15 being switched on at once and all logging in at the same time, and all save to the network and browse the internet fine. In our younger year groups the machines logon automatically with a shared user account - we found this can cause issues as it never gives the network a chance to start. To get round this the user account doesn't have a logon script, instead there is a batch file on the local machine that runs in startup, which waits a few seconds, pings the server, if it gets a response it then calls the logon script from the network, if there s no response it assumes the laptop is at home and stops. We use an HP procurve managed wireless network. CPLTD - I will pm you details once we've finalised the exact numbers and accessories etc. Steve

We have a lapbank with 15 Acer aspire one D150's in and they have been very good. None have been broken or damaged after a term of use both in school and going home every night, and out of all the laptops we have they seem to have the most reliable wireless connection. They are currently being used by 5 and 6 year olds! We are just starting to get quotes in for the next lot now, looks like we'll be getting another 60 or so of the same model. Steve

Primary school, 420 pupils, 7 black and white lasers and 1 colour laser. This year i've set the budget at £1500 and when its gone no one will be allowed to print anymore. Previous years it was around £2500 a year. Steve

Is there a reason why you can't install the printers during logon, rather than having them already installed? This would force it to connect as the current user. Steve

SEGFL do have the same option, the address is admin.safetynet.rmplc.co.uk you'll just need to request a usernme and password. Steve

A 500watt power supply in a pc doesn't mean it uses 500 watts of power. My sisters gaming pc with top spec graphics card, 3 hard drives and a load of other junk in it only uses a touch over 300 watts when in use, and just over 200 at idle, it has an 800 watt power supply in it. Would have to be quite a high spec pc / server to draw 500 watts constantly! Still that works out at over £200 odd quid a year. Steve

Maybe I just like it to run really really fast :-) lol Might be a bit over specced, but I like to try and future proof, especially if you buy it with a 5 year warranty, and to be honest that sort of spec doesn't cost the earth these days. The size of the database is also quite relevelant here, i've been in some big(ish) schools that have a 1 - 2 gb sims database, but only 1 or 2 users, while one of my smallest schools has 12 users, and a 250mb database. Does the server do anything other than sims? Steve

We use interactive education's (company behind the Genee brand I believe) previous generation of interactive whiteboards, and wish we didn't! I can't comment on that particular model as i've never used it, but with the exception of whiteboard pens (which we can't get anywhere else) we will never buy anything from the company again. Steve

Shouldn't need to be that powerful then! Only real reason to upgrade would be that your existing server is probably out of maintenance. I'd say for that few users, assuming you don't have a huge database, a quad core xeon, 4gig of ram and 3 or 4 15,000 rpm SAS drives in a Raid 5 should be fine. 8 gig of ram if your going to run a 64bit os on it. Steve

If its just day to day backups you want then i'd agree ntbackup should do what you want. If you want an image of the whole server why not look into vmware? Steve

It is most likely it will need repairing under warranty then, if you can't see any obvious damage to the front there is little that will interfere with a smartboard. Steve

Had exactly the same error with one here, unplugging it from the pc, plugging it in again and re-calibrating seemed to fix it. Not sure what actually caused it. Steve

I can't comment on either of them as haven't had any experience with those particular models, if the budget will stretch to it i'd say go for something like a netgear wg102 or wg302, although if you are planning to replace it all with a managed system in the future, they may not be worth the extra money now. Steve

Not sure what the quality would be like, but there are a lot of battery powered wireless cameras on the market that output via phono / svideo, that you could combine with a cheap capture card?

In theory yes, you can replace it with a non identical disk. It will only use as much space from the new disk as the others use. for example, if the others are 100gig disks, and you put a 500gig in to replace the failed one, it will just use 100gig of it. If the new disk is significantly slower then it will also slow the others in the array down. Steve

It depends if you want a wireless "system" i.e managed whole network, or you just want 1 point to use with the 10 netbooks. If its just the 1 point then i'd suggest something like the netgear WG302. If you are after a managed system to cover the whole site and allow for expansion then have a search on this forum, as its been covered several times before. Steve

Primary school, 450 kids. Aprox £15k this yea, smallest budget we've had in the 5 years i've been here. (has been up to £55k in the past) Broadband etc is paid for out of a seperate budget, so only comsumables (aprox £2.5k has to come from this, leaving £12.5k for maintenance, hardware updates and new developments. Its tight this year, but the whole school has had a major drop in budget. Its just enough to maintain and update what we currently have. (aprox 190 computers) Another school I support has aprox 170 kids and a budget of £16k, as well as a seperate comsumables and broadband budget! Steve

We've got one of these in our hall KeySonic 2.4Ghz Wireless HTPC Compact Keyboard with Integrated TouchPad - USB - Ebuyer Works pretty well from 8 - 10 m away, and is pretty cheap! Only problem with it is it really does interfere with wireless networks. Steve

Thanks for all the suggestions, quite a few different things to look into. The mac option is intersting, but we have no mac expertise in the support team at all, and while it would be great to educate teachers / pupils in something other than windows, we really just dont have the time! I will have a look into ubuntuStudio, although initial impressions are it may be a little complicated for some of our youger kids (its a primary school). Hadn't thought what i was going to do with the old machines to be honest, we'd probably be open to offers if anyone is interested? It would be base units only, as we are keeping the monitors. They are p4 1.8ghz, most are 768mb ram, cd-roms, and most have agp graphics cards of some description, can get the exact spec tommorow if anyone is interested. There are 16 of them.

The only leases we have are for sets of laptops, as they are paid for monthly by parents, and the school didn't have the money to pay for them up front. This year however we have managed to find enough, and it will be the first set we've got without leasing them, which will probably save us around 10% in leasing costs. Pro's are: You can buy kit that you just couldnt afford in the current financial year. If you lease almost everything you know your IT hardware is going to cost you x ammount per year, and all gets replaced every x years. (you can achieve this anyway with buying new kit at appropriate times) Con's are: It costs more overall. (I think i'm right in thinking business can somehow save tax or something leasing kit, which is a benifit schools dont get? May be totally wrong there) Next year's IT budget will be significantly less as you'll be paying the lease from this year, so you can get caught in a cycle of only being able to lease future kit. Unless you really have to i'd try not to lease anything, as in the long run it will cost you more. Steve

Thanks for all the input. The current machines really arent upgradable - they are p4 1.8ghz, and now have 768mb ram after we upgraded them a couple of years ago to make them last this long! They are all small form factor dell's, so can't take standard expansion cards etc. I think I will have a look at a few other suppliers to see what they can do. Do ICT-Direct sell any higher spec kit? Most of the stuff on their website seems to be older cheaper stuff. Anyone got any comments on Pinacle studio 12? I've had a play with the demo and it looks ok to me, just wondered if there was any alternatives that may be better or cheaper? Thanks

Thanks for all the feedback, I'll look into the oem issue, but sure I can work a way around it. I agree that the 3 year warranty on a dell is nice, but it would mean a huge drop in spec to get a dell for that price. The processor was from misco, I think ebuyer also have them in stock. Steve

We are going to be replacing all (17) of the computers in our IT suite this year, but are on a pretty tight budget. One of the main things we want to use the suite for is video editing, so they are going to need to be pretty high spec machines. We intend to use Pinacle studio 12, unless anyone can recomend a better video editing package for primary school pupils? - We have tried movie maker but it isn't good enough for what they want. I have looked at the pc's offered by Dell, as we have been exclusively dell in the past, but they dont seem to be very good value at the moment, so I have looked into building our own, and for our budget can get the following spec: Amd phenom II x4 940 4gb Ram 160gb hdd DVD-RW 512mb Geforce 9400 graphics card Tower case and 500w branded psu Multi card reader Vista home oem. £406 per pc We already have LCD monitors, and 17 copies of Vista business upgrade. Our total budget to get 17 pc's and 30 copies of the video editing software is £7500 (and that is stretching it a bit!) Has anyone else built their own computers? I know they would only be covered by the component warranties, but we are well staffed and could support them in house. Any other suggestions would be welcome! Steve

If you've got a spare ups it may be worth setting that up on 1 pc and leaving that pc on 24 / 7. - It will then tell you the exact time the power cuts off, and will also tell you if you get any major fluctuations in voltage. (asuming its a reasonable ups!) Steve