Iain.Faulkner

Oh yeh, please could someone pm the name of the company who were badmouthing smoothwall? Although we can't make a decision on who we will go with for our filtering needs (should we go down that route) i don't like companies who do business in this way and would be grateful for the headsup.

Just to add my thanks as well, thanks for making me feel so welcome on the stand, really nice to meet everyone and to put a few faces to names. Pleased to get my hands on an Edugeek mug! the poster was an added bonus and will be up in the office tomorrow. I know what you all mean about the enthusiastic people on the same row as edugeek, i lost count the number of times i was accosted by them! Me: "it's ok i saw your stand yesterday, and i have all your information" Them: "ah so you'll think it's a great product then, and will be buying it when you return to work"! Me: "unlikely" walking off. I was also disappointed by the freebies, i've only picked up two mugs this year (thanks to edugeek and smoothwall :-) ) although i did get a nice thermal mug from IDNS, gutted i missed out on the hipflask though :-(

Lucky you! :-)

Hi, We're at pretty much the same position as you. I'm being told at this point we're going to roll it out to a selected group of parents who will use it for a trial period before we roll it out to everyone. My personal preference would be to roll it out year group by year group, after we have had the trial run. In terms of sending out usernames and passwords though....are you going to get parents to sign some sort of acceptable usage policy before you agree to send them their logon details (we're going to do this and also get them to give us up to date email addresses and mobile phone numbers)? If you are going to do this at a parents evening, then you may end up with a huge queue of people signing forms which may discourage some. Sadly for us, we don't have the facility to text to parents (our headteacher doesn't like them) nor am I convinced that we have up to date email addresses for all parents, so for us I think we're going to have to send out multiple letters. One with the AUP, once returned we'll then send out another with username and then a third with password (what a pain!!). In addition though, I think I am going to aim to provide support for parents at the parents evenings and any other events where it may be relevant, at which point people can ask questions and I can run demo's as well. Like you though I'm also concerned about the quality of our data. I haven't run any of the housekeeping processes as yet so I'm hopeful that this will reduce the amount of issues that there may be. Just a random one for you, although I might speak to you about this on the train later. Have you done much work on "Personalising" the SLG? One of your deputy heads has raised as an issue that the SLG doesn't look like it's ours and woud like it to. Hope this is of some use :-) Iain

Definitely try and get him to be a Manchester City fan :-)

For some reason this year I've made several resolutions... 1) - Lose 3 stone (although in reality I haven't set a limit on what I want to lose. I just want to weigh what I did when I left high school). 2) - Get the golf handicap down under 20 - currently at 25 so there's some work to be done. In reality though I'm playing to 21/22 and those new clubs I've bought will make a massive amount of difference (that's what I'm telling the gf anyway :-) ). 3) - New Job 4) - New house - must complete resolution 3 before 4 is possible :-)

I'd forgotten I'd replaced my golf clubs this year....I do love my Taylormade Burner 09 Driver and the Taylormade Burner 09 Irons I bought this year (not forgetting the Vokey wedge and Odyssey Putter as well :-) ), made such a difference to my game. Just moved golf clubs and now I can't wait for the new season to start!

I'm gonna have to say my i-phone 4 (along with the angry birds series of games :-) )

14. Stuart Pearce?

Thanks for the responses so far. Apologies, I meant internal cards though not external (remind me to sack my typist!). MBird, thanks for the keyboard recommendation. We have in fact looked at these as a potential solution, but unfortunately I think they are going to be out of our price range (although I think this would be my preferred option having had counterpoint recommend them to me as well instead of replacing soundcards).

Morning all, Is anyone currently using Cubase Studio version 5? Our music department is keen to bring it into school along with some new midi keyboards, however I've read a lot about latency with onboard sound cards. If anyone on here is using this software, can you recommend me an external soundcard so we can avoid this issue? Cheers Iain

Hi Tech_Guy, We did something very similar to you about 15 months ago. We implemented a brand new network infrastructure, moving to a virtualised environment with brand new servers, implemented a couple of SANS and replaced nearly 400 desktops. We used a company called Ergo Computing based in Nottingham (should be close enough for you :-) ), and at every step of the process they have been excellent, I cannot reccomend them highly enough. Although we didn't use them for wireless, they do offer that solution as well and they do have a track record of providing laptops (although I couldn't say for sure whether they can provide a leased option for laptops). Aside from Ergo, the other company who scored very highly in our tender process were Stone computers. As a company they came across very very well and even though they just missed out on the contract with us, I would still reccomend that you talk to them. Both companies have a proven track record in providing solutions to the Education market (Ergo have just been recently announced on the Becta approved list of suppliers). If you want any contact details for either company, please drop me a pm and I'll let you have them. Iain

I think your OH Dad was a bit unlucky then by the sounds of it. My VW T2 Bay is awesome, had it six months now, never had a fault with it(other than those we knew about when we bought it) and we comfortably get 200 miles out of a tank of petrol. You're right that the bed isn't the best, but we use an awning attached to the side instead where there is more than ample room :-)

Absolutely spot on Tosh with regards local profiles :-) Thanks for the suggestion as well, I'll take a look.

Surely they can't do that?

Hi, Didn't want to hijack the other thread regarding shared desktops so thought I'd best create my own. We use shared desktops and start menus which are administered through GPO. Essentially we have a seperate GPO for teaching staff, admin staff and students and as a result the GPO's are user based. Our teaching staff are all allocated a school laptop, however, as a result of the shared desktop their laptops pick up the desktops as set by the GPO. This isn't ideal as obviously once the laptops are being used offline, the shortcuts and start menu no longer function correctly. Is it possible to setup a gpo which will overwrite the user based policy so that we can allow teaching staff to setup their own personalised desktop on their laptops? Has anyone successfully achieved this? Hope this makes sense. Many thanks Iain

I'd love them to try this, I've got no annual leave left until it resets in April :-)

Yep same here.

We had the same thing last weekend....two IT Staff, three caretakers and one in the main office, all other staff off work. I really enjoyed receiving the email from the head which said "thank you all for your hard work so far this term, enjoy your the long weekend"....made me feel great that did.

Just seen this, might of use to someone. Alderley Edge School for Girls

You'll have an amazing time! Madness are truly phenomenal!!

It quite simply has to be s-gon, purely for this reason.... What's the fastest cake in the world?? S-gon! S-cone just doesn't work :-)

We've had the Hitatchi SANS in place now for about 15 months....unfortunately they have not been as reliable as I would have liked. We have 2 SANS in place and both have been replaced and then the replacements have also had to be replaced (faults with drives and power supplies). The user support leaves a lot to be desired as well...take for instance the last two replacements we were sent, both were incorrectly configured with the wrong number of drives, as a result it was impossible to use their data migration tool and we had to wait for another replacement to be sent through to us.

I've got the perfect place in mind for it :-)

Woohoo!!!