36Degrees

Definitely! A lot of the staff still haven't grasped the concept of distribution lists so will email all contacts regarding "Year 7 tutors only" etc and this means I get it in my account and also the helpdesk's. If there aren't at least 3 emails every morning in each account I do a few tests.

Go into a Waterstones or other big book seller and have a look at the different books available from various publishers so you can get an idea of their style. I always preferred Sybex books but I know others who used Microsoft's official books, Wrox, etc.

Subscribe to a really expensive Sky package, buy a new TV because their "old 26 inch one wasn't big enough", buy an iPhone for themselves and significant other, get a new car because "the old one was 3 years old", etc.

I know that Nottinghamshire are / were looking at going directly to Synetrix and merging various broadband links to create "one County, One Network". As they identified significant cost savings with this I would be interested to know if it will still continue.

Although we have signed up for Google Apps for education it is mainly used for email. There are a few members of staff that use Google Docs but not many. Since last March there have only been 2 occasions where we have had major issues and both of these have been due to our internet connection being lost, once for a full day. With email I have to confess that I cheat slightly as I have configured Outlook to communicate with Google Mail. That means that even when the internet does go down I still have access to all previous messages and can compose new ones in readiness for the connection being restored.

Whatever the cost of the specific projector plus the ceiling mount and VGA cable. The actual installation is carried out between the site guys and ourselves as we usually save a lot of money that way.

Daily (full) backups are done Monday to Thursday, encrypted and taken off site by myself or the tech when I'm not in. There are then 4 Friday tapes that back up the same as the Daily plus a few other things that aren't massively important and / or rarely change which are also encrypted and taken home on the appropriate Monday. When on site one set lives in a fireproof safe, one in a fire-resistant cabinet and the other 2 in different rooms at different ends of a completely different building. * Edit: and our auditors that this was a perfectly good solution when they visited earlier this year.

I'm not sure now as it was some time ago but I know there were certain mechanisms in place for transferring data between the schools and the LEA, mainly financial as I recall. The only one I know for definite now is that our SIMS data is backed up remotely by the LEA's ICT support team.

Just be careful! I know when I looked into it some years ago the cost of broadband within Nottinghamshire was already taken off you by the LEA and therefore if we had gone elsewhere we would have effectively paid twice. Also, the LEA would only allow connections to their servers through the RBC line or an approved BT line.

I assume the screensaver isn't controlled by a domain GPO? If not, have you tried giving the user temporary admin rights to the PC, logging on as them to disable the screensaver and then removing admin rights?

We're served by Severn Trent and traditionally they have declared a drought if it hasn't rained for 2 minutes. However, I live about 5 minutes drive from the Lincolnshire border where I think they have Anglian water. I remember several years ago when ST had imposed a hosepipe ban and were also discussing other measures that they were considering introducing that Anglian made a statement along the lines of "if it stays like this for another 6 weeks then we may have to discuss the likelihood of a hosepipe ban"! Most in the area were of the opinion that ST should spend a portion of their profits on stopping leaks then we could be in the same position as our close neighbours...

We too are making redundancies but only amongst the teaching staff. However, some support staff have requested a reduction in working hours and these have all been agreed - I believe in the past it has been nigh on impossible to do this. I shall need to speak to my boss about this as he deals with the school's finances and it would be interesting to find out if Nottinghamshire has made any announcements on this.

Can I also leave it until the night before the reports are due to actually start doing them and blame the ICT Support department for the fact that I can't access the system from home, despite the fact that yet again I haven't followed the instructions on how to do so? Why do I get the feeling we're going around in ever decreasing circles?

Thanks penfold but it still means I get frustrated, especially as I then see it that I am the only one putting any effort in. I'm sure if one of their pupils were as bad they would be constantly berated for laziness, etc. Still, "c'est la guerre"!

Certainly feel your pain with this one and unfortunately, if your staff are anything like certain ones here, you may as well go and bash your head against a brick wall. To date, with various systems, we have: run CPD sessions, which had a very poor level of attendance done full training on INSET days to small groups carried out one-to-one at a convenient time for the individual arranged one-to-one training which the individual doesn't turn up for produced "cheat sheets" on how to troubleshoot and solve simple problems produced colour, laminated guides for every member of staff on how to do something and carry out simple troubleshooting emailed a list of things to check first which they say they have done, yet when you arrive the power is off, switch in wrong setting, etc. told them on the phone to check something which they then swear is as you said it should be, only to find after walking the length of school that they didn't actually check it Put "how to" guides on the system and emailed all members of staff several times, telling them where the guides are Now we just realise with certain people there's no hope (the previous head actually tried to train one member of staff to show them how easy it is without success!) All we do thereafter is deal with the issue but if there is a lot of other things going on at the time they are lower down on the priority list than they would normally be.

The only surprise there is that it has been deferred to 2011. We now also know that there will be a million "avoid the VAT increase" sales over Christmas and New Year!!

Also, with the QuickStart edition you can only back up the server BEWS is installed on to a device physically attached to that server i.e you can't use any remote agents. Furthermore, I don't think you can add any additional agents such as SQL agent, AD agent, etc.

BEWS v12 doesn't support SQL 2008 but v12.5 does - this makes me even more certain that v10 won't.

As BEWS is currently on v12, if you have been informed it isn't compatible with SQL 2008 (which I find strange) I would be fairly certain it isn't compatible with 10. I think we bought 10d way back in 2004! *Edit: OK, so I forgot there's now Backup Exec 2010!

Not necessarily a hater (yet!) but definitely not a fan. I'm already hacked off with the World Cup and it hasn't even started yet. Is anyone else starting to receive questions about watching the England v Slovenia game at 3pm on Wednesday 23rd June in classrooms?

We're only just evaluating it now and this process is already way behind schedule for various reasons so up until now I have installed it on VMWare and read a small portion of the guide. We are only Windows & IE here (for pupils anyway, staff have the option to use Firefox) so all I want is them to log on and then have their internet filtered effectively or take it off them completely for a period of time.

This may be a stupid question (brain not working well at the moment) but does the user have to log in to access the internet when using SW?

Aaah, now I understand - especially with you being at RAF What-A-Shame!

I just assumed that you were an Avionics Engineer in the Royal Air Farce and would know what a plumber was...

Ooh, a scope dope and a fairy! Well for 12 years I was a plumber and yes I do know the entire alphabet!