steveg

I'd have a look at the dell range, the 5310n should meet your needs, and for the budget you should be able to get it with a 4 year onsite warranty. I've been using the previous generation 5300 for 3 years now and haven't had a single problem with it, although we only run about 500 - 1000 pages a month through it, it should handle 4000 - 16,000 at 48ppm, and is cheap to run. Steve

I have installed one of these in a nursery. They are pretty good - I haven't had to go back since I installed it 4 months ago, but keep getting feedback that they use it every day. Install is fairly straight forward (when they ship the correct overlay). They have custom brakcets made for most of the different screens availible. They are very expensive though for what they are - the overlay was aroung £1600, combined with a good quality screen and the mounting brackets your getting near to £3000. Does look good though! Steve

Have you tried re-starting the server, and removing its network cable, then re-starting the service? May sound strange but I have had a similar issue before which this resolved - I think its something to do with a client starting up a copy of the database server, and it wont start if it finds another one running on the network. Steve

If the registry entry works if you hard code the username, could you not add this to the logon script, to enter the appropriate username at logon, as you can use the %username% variable in a script? Steve

Try disconecting the server and accessing the IP address through a web browser. 192.168.1.1 is the default address for a number of pieces of hardware, most of which will have a web interface. Might give you a clue what your looking for. Steve

They do just about work, but they aren't brilliant. We used to have 2, but now have interactive whiteboards throughout, and they are broken and at the back of a cupboard somewhere.

Make sure you have a list of all the new responsibilities you now have, and any "extras" you have done for them. Also try and demostrate what you could be earning elsewhere. I work in a primary school, and since starting here 4 years ago the network has grown to 5 times the size, and I now have 2 part time technicains working under me. Each year I have explained what extra responsibilities I have taken on, and have always been given a rise. This year I was moved up an entire grade in 2 months - I gained 2 points as part of my review, and a further 2 points when I mentioned I had been offered another job! Just present your case to the head, and back it up with details of everything you do, and how this has changed. They will be able to find the money from somewhere if they need to.

How big is the site you want to cover? How many wireless devices are you likely to have in use per room?

Not sure if it applies to it running as a web server, but I know for accessing file shares etc, xp is limited to maximum of 10 simultaneous incoming connections. Maybe a little limiting. Steve

I've had sky for almost year now, and the day the contract runs out, will be cancelling it. After the install our phone stopped working, after 15 fault calls to BT, including them digging up the drive and half the street to run a complete new line, they concluded it was sky's fault. Sky disagreed. "If your broadband works, then its BT's problem, there is no way our equipment can affect the phone line" Eventually got them to agree to a re-install, problem solved. (If insist to speak to somone in tier 2 support, then they are reasonable) As for the broadband service itself, we have to re-set the router about once a day, as it just grinds to a halt. Very ocasionally we can manage a week with reasonable service. At my girlfriends house the service is more reliable, alghough the install still took 2 months, as they kept failing to send out the router! - It is possible to use your own, by extracting the username and password from the netgear one. I think its a case of you get what you pay for. If you want a good quality service, with good support, then you're gonna have to pay for it. If you just want a basic service, which works most of the time, go for sky. I would assume their installations will be a little smoother now, as they have caught up with the backlog. Steve

If you have netgear print servers, which allow you to connect the printers to the network, can I ask why you have then installed these printers onto PC's as print servers, and not onto your main server? Steve

I think at the end of the day, it is a junior role, but one that should lead to a good career, and the money reflects this. I assume they are not going to be expeting a huge amount from the candidates initially, but this would be an ideal way to develop skills, - education IT is one of the few areas where you do not need to specialise - my day to day role can include everything from server support, managing staff, front line support, wiring network sockets, to helping with stage lighting. There aren't many other jobs where you can gain that range of experience. If whoever gets the job is still on similar money after a year or 2, then yes, its badly paid, and chances are they will move on. - This is usual wherever you work, unless you have a very good employer, the only way to move from "junior" money to a reasonably salary is to move elsewhere. I started on £10k 6 years ago straight out of school, i'm now working as a network manager with 2 members of staff supporting 4 schools, and earning considerably more than that! For an enthusiastic school leaver, who has some experience of IT support, I think its an ideal job, and reasonable money. All depends what they are expecting from the candidate really. Steve

Have a look here http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=pes_hardrive&thread.id=25663 Steve

If your on a really tight budget, these aren't too bad http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/119339 We've had one running for over a year now, and had no problems. £25 for a 24 port 10/100. If the budget will stretch I would go for http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/114169 £209 for netgear 48 port 10/100 and 4 1000 ports. Steve

Be careful setting access points to channel 12 - some drivers for wireless cards that dont have country specific versions dont support this. If you have one access point per class, then you can probably turn their output power down, so they do not overlap quite so much. I haven't used hp access points before, so not sure how you do this on those, but it should be fairly obvious. Steve

The 2 url's you need to permit on your filter are: *.messenger.hotmail.com *.messenger.live.com Steve

From a bandwidth point of view, you can have as many pop3 accounts as your host will supply, overhead on this is not going to be significant really. If everyone is going to have outlook open all day, you can always adjust how often it check for new emails, but I really dont think this will be necessary. If your exisiting hardware that exchange is installed on is old then you have few other options - one being web based, such as RM Easymail. Have you spoken to your LEA to see if they offer any email hosting? Personally I like having things in house, and have recently installed exchange into the primary school I work at. If you do have spare hardware availible, there are free email servers you can use, which have been discussed on here before. Steve

I'd also go for the built it yourself approach - a quick machine slung together from ebuyer (bored during my lunch break), comes in at £747 - with the following spec: Intel quad core 2.13ghz 2.0gb ram basic asus mobo 2 x 500gb sata disks geforce 8800gts 320mb graphics card Antec case 650w power supply This was really quickly put together, but gives you a rough idea of the price of doing it yourself, obviously just add a monitor, and pull optical drives out of your exisiting machine. Other place I would have a look at would be the Dell outlet store, there are sometimes some pretty good deals on there. Steve

Couldn't you buy a 1tb sata disk, such as http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/129306 And then just put it into an external usb enclosure, such as http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/124166 I've never used either of those devices before, but would have thought having only have one disk would make it both quieter and more portable. That enclosure is described as "low noise without fan" on the manufacturers website, no idea about mac compatability though. Steve

Came accross this for the first time at the weekend! Set your display to the theme you want, then open up display properties, and go to the appearance tab. Click the advanced button, then from the item: drop down menu, select "caption buttons" and adjust the size. Not sure what the default is, mine are set to 23. Then just ok / apply your way back out. They may look pixelated until you re-start your computer. Steve

Have you tried re-directing the restore, and then manually copying the files into the correct location? Steve

If you want something fairly robust and simple, the Digital Blue Snap! cameras are pretty good. Seen them in use in a nursery by 3 and 4 year olds, and all have survived so far! I think they are 3 megapixel, and around £80 each. Steve

Our dedicated exchange box (almost a year old now) is: 2 x dual core xeon 5110 - 1.6ghz 2gb ram 3 x 15000 rpm SAS hdd Supports 350 mailboxes, and to be honest could be half the spec and would still run fine. Only thing I'll upgrade in the future is the ram. Any preference on the supplier? How email intensive are the users? 200 staff mailboxes that are used every day will be very different to 200 primary school pupil accounts that are accessed 2 times a term. What is the spec of your exisiting box? Maybe run performance monitor on this for a few days to see how heavily utilised it is. Steve

Our pupils laptops which go home are insured individually, at a cost of 13% of the purchase price of the laptop for 3 years cover. This covers theft and accidental damage. The policy has an excess of £70 for screen damage, and around £40 for everything else. Our staff laptops are not insured, we've never had one stolen, and it would work out cheaper for us to just replace any that were damaged or stolen. Steve

The main primary I work at has a set of 15 or 20 wireless laptops for each of years 1 - 6. I know a lot of people dont like them, but we have used soley Acer laptops for the past 5 years, and have had very few problems with them. Although their support isn't brilliant, they are excellent value - the last set I purchased came with a 3 year warranty with accident damage cover for an extra £25! The very first set we got didnt have Wi-fi built in, and ran with D-link cards. All of the others have built in Intel wifi, and are generally very reliable - only problem we have is kids switching the wireless off via the button on the front. All of our laptops are taken home every day by the Children, so do take a fair bashing, but have generally survive pretty well. Most of the problems are just keys going missing, and with replacement keyboards costsing £20 this isn't a big issue. One thing I would say about Acer is their supply of spares can be somewhat slow - 3 months is the longest I've had to wait, but now we have so many I just keep a good stock of spares. I did have a look at the RM One notebook, but the best price they could do for this worked out at over £200 a laptop more expensive, and just isn't worth that much more. We use Cisco Aironet access points (the 1200 series) to provide complete site coverage, using 7 points. These have proved to be very reliable, but are a tad expensive. I have also had good experience with Netgear access points in another Infant school, who use 2 sets of wireless laptops. Only company I would never touch again is D-link, after installing some of their earlier DWL-2000+ ap's, they might have improved now, but I wouldn't go there again. Steve