JRowley

To be perfectly honest the most you can do is keep ringing up for updates, took me 6 weeks to get my issue resolved thanks to BT incompetence, don't let that be the case for you.

To be honest that is just the tip of the iceberg, what I really like is the device collections. Sure you will have your computers laid out a specific way in AD but what if you only need to deploy something to computers that have a specific piece of software installed or specific piece of hardware? Well no problem just create a device collection that has a criteria which matches that specific piece of software/hardware, then deploy the software to that collection. Job done!

It can deploy pretty much anything, the nice thing about it is that if you have an msi for example it will pick up the installation information and as you might expect it can just install it in the background like normal. However if you have a .exe you can create an application which has an installation type which runs a script, the script can then run the .exe for you with any parameters you need to make it silent. This is somewhat long winded I'll admit but obviously msis are preferred.

Sounds similar to what broke my connection in that basically there are a set of boards one for traditional broadband the other for FTTC, they probably got confused being from BT and like with mine, couldn't find a spare connection on the FTTC board (or in my case disconnected me so they could use my connection for someone else, and left me disconnected without telling anyone, thanks BT.), so they will have to install an additional board to have the capacity for yourself.

SCCM is really great for this, it can be a bit of a pig to get set up as above, but it is simply brilliant once it is. Complete flexibility in all areas.

Never heard of the plans, have no idea what the teachers will do with them to be honest, we already have a set of raspberry pis.

They should really just have responsibility for the network taken away from them, it's a complete shambles.

And I agree with that, it should follow the normal procedure and if that involves suspension then so be it. The problem I have is people reading an article which speculates that he has assaulted someone and then taking that as fact. It isn't fact, it has never been confirmed by anyone at any level of the BBC (and has been denied by multiple people). People like to run with things, I'm just saying that people should wait before passing judgement either way. Those defending him should wait and see what the investigation brings up, and those condemning him should do the same. We simply don't know enough about it to make an judgement or decision. He's just been involved in something that has resulted in his suspension, we don't know what yet.

Perhaps though plug sockets on airplanes and trains are becoming increasingly common, in fact where I am I can't get on a train without it having a plug socket by the seat, well except on the local service, but that's not long distance travel.

The petition has now reached 400,000 people.

Right but just because it works for you, doesn't mean it will work for others. Personally I watch because of that trio, I might not watch it without them, certainly I wouldn't be bothered about it if I miss it or watch it on catch up.

They can suspend him for any number of things, pay, behaviour, conduct, assault, attempted assault, a heated discussion. Until the police get involved then nothing is confirmed and there is nothing but speculation.

We don't actually know it was credible, we know basically nothing about this, if there was an assault, or attempted assault then where are the police? There is far too much speculation being thrown around.

Completely irrelevant really. Top Gear isn't just paid for by the license fee and isn't purely available through TV any more. It also doesn't make the slightest bit of difference what their age or living arrangements are. The petition has reached 350,000 now, it seems change.org is now struggling with the number of people accessing it, or some 'Good Samaritan' has decided to ddos the site to prevent people signing.

If it's supposed to be 40Mbit you should guys should all band together and keep at them, ring up daily until it's fixed. If they have to run new cable to resolve it then that's their problem. What does your contract say about them failing to deliver it? Surely you are in a position where you could rip up the contract as they simply aren't delivering it.

Get on the blower then! 9Mbit is basically unworkable for a school in my view, do they have any plans to upgrade to 50Mbit or above? If not I would move asap.

Sort of, but the idea of reducing overall size would be to fit more in, not reduce the size for the sake of reducing the size. All that's filled the space is batteries, it feels like a waste since I can't think of a time when I would be without a charger for 9 hours.

Well, slow for our needs. Depends where you are situated of course, if you are in the sticks then it's not that surprising I suppose, we are in a large town.

To be honest CPU hasn't made a major difference in a long time for general day to day tasks, the real advances for CPUs have come in the form of specialised task improvements (such as physics, encoding/decoding video, encryption), reduced power consumption, reduced heat production. But upgrades come in cycles anyway, 12 years ago it was CPUs, then came RAM, now SSDs. We are running out of bottlenecks that need solving to be honest, I guess the next one will just be power consumption/battery capacity and overall component size.

We moved as the connection provided was slow (20Mbit) and unreliable (went down once every two months, sometimes for hours, other times days). Switched to Virgin Media on a 50Mbit fibre package with options to go above that if we need to. It costs slightly more than what the LA were charging however it has definitely been worth it. The internet has never been down during working hours, and has only been down once since it's installation last summer.

The BBC have a big problem here really. They have to be seen to be doing the right thing with regards to Clarkson, however Top Gear today is Clarkson, Hammond and May. The show may well survive without Clarkson, but I doubt Hammond and May would stick around. A more likely scenario is that they all leave and create a new show on Sky or Channel 4. Also even if they did stick around I would expect Top Gears rating to fall through the floor globally, 350 million viewers currently, how many will keep watching without him? Half would be the best they could hope for. Lets be honest here the BBC have just lost all control when it comes to Top Gear, it's become way bigger than they are able to deal with. Double mini roundabouts. *shudders*

We have a NM, an assistant NM and myself a Technician. Didn't see your other questions, we share a single small office with a single phone. Generally speaking when something needs doing we work together on it if needs be or the person with the most experience in that area does it. We don't use a helpdesk, while it might make organising workload easier in some cases 99% of the time the jobs we get can be fixed in 2 minutes or less, a helpdesk would just make the whole process take longer and would get in the way of helping people. Anything that might take longer we can just make a task in outlook to track internally.

Same as above, wasn't any trouble at all doing it this way.

If you go here on an O365 admin account - https://portal.office.com/Commerce/Catalog.aspx You can 'purchase' the Alumni licenses for your tenant, I don't know what/if there is a limit on the number you can buy in one go, but you could buy 1000 to begin with. Then once you have leavers you can add the license to the user using PowerShell, and presumably remove the old licenses as well. I don't know the license name for PowerShell as I haven't looked at the Alumni one myself but it should be fairly straight forward. Definitely agree on the zero touch approach!

Depends really on what you want to do, Microsoft offer a basic license for Alumni for free - "Exchange Online (Plan 1) for Alumni", you would basically remove all other licenses from a leaver and give them this. It would give them access to emails, contacts, calendar, you know the basic stuff but no OneDrive/Sharepoint. You can have as many as you want I believe (someone please correct me if this is incorrect). So if you want to keep your Alumni in touch this would be your best bet.