36Degrees

We use Sun's Secure Global Desktop which is linked to our Thin Client system's servers which are basically terminal services servers. Only problems to date have been environment related (power off across village, air con failure so servers overheated, etc).

Done. Good luck.

SIMS support is the only thing we pay for from the LEA so I got them to do the install and migration at Christmas. Took a load of pressure of with workload and worry!

Yup e.g. a very highly paid member of SLT who thought they should have a high spec PC in their infrequently used classroom & another in their office plus have a high spec laptop to leave at home all provided by the school!

To go to 7.136 we needed to be on SQL 2008. I believe this was released in September last year and we were probably the last school to have this done within our LEA (December) as we needed a new server first.

What sort of service do they actually provide? Would it be possible to PM me with whatever details you can? (Obviously I wouldn't expect you to provide the actual cost outlined in the quote!)

SmoothWall but then that goes through the LEA's NetSweeper.

Any major purchases (i.e. over £1000) I have to get three formal quotes, for really major purchases (10s of thousands) then they have to be by sealed quote opened by myself and the bursar at the same time. Day to day I look on the websites of BT Business Direct, Insight & Probrand. 99 times out of 100 Probrand are cheapest at the moment and therefore get my business. When I need toners I send out formal quote requests to IDNS, Insight & Probrand. They seem to take in turns to be cheapest on those items.

The idea is to provide netbooks and internet access so that they can access the school's VLE as they then won't need any software on the netbooks themselves. I'd thought about installing some sort of "Parental Control" software on there but hadn't thought about the dongle being used in another machine! Pretty logical when you think about it...

I've been asked to investigate providing internet access to disadvantaged pupils. The obvious solution is to use mobile broadband so I wondered if there was anyone out there already doing this? If so what issues have you encountered, how has it worked in practice, etc.?

Congratulations on the new job! I had to do that once when I resigned, after amending the job description and person specification, proof-reading the advert and going through the application forms with the HT! It always made me laugh that as I doubt it would happen anywhere else. My usual question is one about priorities e.g. "Nobody can print in Room A and you are about to deal with it when you are told 2 pupils can't log in in Room B next door. Which do you deal with first and why?" People may have a different idea of which should be first but it's more about their reasoning where priorities are concerned.

+1 for Keep Kids Safe. I don't use system but I know from all the admin staff that do that it is easy to use and I know when I have contacted them with an issue I have had a really rapid response. Unfortunately I don't know the costs involved.

We have SIMS extractors running for Frog VLE / Website and keep Kids Safe text messaging system I'd posted here originally as I hadn't been able to speak to anyone at Cunninghams (couldn't get past receptionist!) but I now have and the guy was really helpful so it should be sorted soon. Thanks for the response anyway.

Our Impact system is separate from the main network and ideally I'd like to keep it that way, plus I don't really want to install any more SIMS extractors.

Is there anyone out there who knows the Impact system quite well? We need to change the User IDs for almost all of the pupils so that we can link Impact to online payments. The ID needs to be their UPN but when the accounts have been created each year a different format has been used every time! My theory is this: Export all user data in a CSV file Change the User ID of each pupil to match their UPN Delete all records from the database Re-import the users from the amended CSV file Can someone confirm my theory and also tell me how to access the database to create / import the CSVs? I admit I only had a quick look but the only report options I saw are for printing only, not exporting.

Closed yesterday but open today and it's snowing quite heavily!

At my last company you got 20 days plus Bank Holidays and you had to allow enough for the Christmas shutdown as this was compulsary. On the other hand, if you worked in accounts you weren't allowed time off over Christmas as it was a American owned and year end was December 31st.

My journey to work is always the same - I can carefully get out of my village without too much issue on to the main roads and then everything is fine until I reach the small town where the school is. Then it's just an ice rink with no roads gritted, including the slight hill where the school actually sits. It's just enough of a hill to make it a toboggan run when ice has been covered in snow and then it freezes again. As to the driving 25 miles to work, which is what I do, the reason is very simple; I need the job. If there were employment opportunities where I live then I would have applied for them. There aren't so both my wife and I have to travel in opposite directions and we can't afford to move house even if we could find jobs in the same town.

Also did you run adprep /forestprep and then adprep /domainprep? The forestprep is required to amend the AD schema.

.. projected onto the whiteboard ..

It's funny in some respects to see these old chain emails being resurrected every couple of years!

LEA Helpdesk inform their Technical Support who inform Synetrix if necessary. They then contact Kingston Communications if it is hardware related and an engineer then contacts you if it can't be resolved remotely.

That's also what we would prefer. I'd also like to be able to speak to them directly and not get the "you tell us, we tell A who decide it's B's area who then determine the issue is with C's equipment and they have 3rd party support so D's engineers will contact you".

That one doesn't run Server 2008 AFAIK (it definitely doesn't run on 64-bit) I use Magic Disc on our 2008 machine although this isn't for Terminal Services. Magic Disc

It is vital that they do otherwise it is a battle you will never win. For more years than I care to remember it has been identified that we print too much and therefore waste money but as SLT won't drive the issue staff take no notice.