will_

Thanks for the suggestion, Steve. I've checked the page counter and it's only 16,000 whereas the fusers are (I understand) specified for about 100,000 pages (at 5% coverage). How difficult are they usually to clean? The other discovery that may be significant is that the failure seems to be non-linear: if I print a page of pure black, it comes out almost perfectly with just the occasional white spot (in the same repeating pattern). It seems that it's only the mid-tones that are coming out too light.

What would cause an HP LaserJet 3052 to do this? It's supposed to be 50% grey. I've tried giving the toner cartridge a shake but it hasn't helped. It's a brand new (third party) toner.

I wrestled with this for ages. I got it to automount shared mounts but I'm afraid I gave up on the home directory in the end. This was a couple of years ago so it may be easier now but I wouldn't hold your breath.

It's whether they'll automatically join as you type that's the question. See the demonstration.

Thanks. The Sassoon Joiner fonts look very promising. Does anybody know if they will work on Promethean boards (ActivInspire)? Apparently it needs to be compatible with the OpenType standard.

Hi all, I've been tasked with finding a font that will support our handwriting policy - i.e. joined up. CursiveWriting.org looked promising but, having spoken to "them", it turns out it's a collection of fonts that are mashed together by some VBScript in Word, so can't be used in any other programs. (Sure, you can create in Word and copy 'n' paste into another program - as long as it allows multiple fonts per text box - but that's hardly convenient.) I'd like to be able to type in a handwriting font straight at the whiteboard (Promethian at the moment, but I'd rather not lock myself into any particular brand). Any recommendations (or otherwise)? Thanks, -Will.

Yes, I suspect that's where we're headed.

Doesn't sound harsh at all. I'm a teacher by day but a techy at the weekend.

This is the information I was after. Thanks. Wow, I had no idea the updates had become that frequent! I agree, that is ridiculous. Thanks. I might ask, although I think I know what the answer will be. Would Chrome have "it's own" GPOs, or would it respect IE's?

It's not really the edits that concern me (yet) - read access would be a good start!

I asked our county-supplied technician recently why we could not install Firefox alongside IE on staff laptops. I understand it's a personal choice, but I prefer it because I find it less prone to the appearance of endless toolbars and the latest new dialogue box that seems to appear weekly. He didn't have a problem with the element of personal choice but said that Firefox could not be used because it does not use / respect Group Policy Objects (GPOs). I understand what GPOs are but have had only limited dealings with them. My question is whether it is really necessary to rely on client software (i.e. the browser) to enforce security restrictions. Is this not a task better achieved with restrictions at infrastructure level (i.e. the network / proxy / ISP - which is also provided by county)? I am talking about staff-only machines, if it makes any difference.

It was implied by a senior member of staff today that our pupils should not have access to Wikipedia. (They don't at the moment.) I didn't recover my composure in time to ask why. Does anybody know of any reasons why pupils should not be able to use Wikipedia? I'm in a primary school.

Meh. Same problem I had last time I tried. Ho hum. Thanks for the update.

Any success with this? I may be looking to do the same thing.

Okay, fair enough. I thought this would probably be the answer but it was worth a shot!

Has anybody found an alternative? We have some Windows machines with Clicker but the boxes at the back of my classroom are 9-year-old relics that I rescued from a skip and are really only up to Lubuntu.

Central Processing Unit

But I'd still have to do something to every client, wouldn't I, so that they'd print via the new server rather than via the old network cable? Skip to EDIT! I was going to say... That's interesting. I hadn't considered that. Having said that, the printer itself has 1GB RAM and 17GB's of free hard drive space do I doubt it's running out of room. My assumption was based on observing the rate at which documents spool from the print queue to the printer. "Ordinary" jobs are fine but when somebody sends a load of photos it'll pause for about a minute between each page, during which time the network link light flashes furiously and the "sent" figure in the print queue slowly rises to the "size" figure. Having said that, a 100Mbit link ought to be able to spool data at 100 / 8 bits per byte / 2 for overheads and real life = 6.25MBytes/sec, which should clear even a document of, say, 20MB in only a few seconds. We've just (this week, during half term) tidied up a lot of the network infrastructure, so I'll see whether this improves matters before investigating much further. EDIT: Just realised - silly me - it's almost certainly the wireless link over which staff laptops print that is the bottleneck. We've just upgraded that (from a hopelessly inadequate Netgear setup to a hopefully all-singing, all-dancing Ruckus setup) this week, too, so that might improve things.

Thank you all for your advice. Plexer: PM sent.

I have a small (6Ux550mm) wiring cabinet to fix to a brick wall. It will contain one switch and one patch bay - nothing heavy like servers or batteries - and will be well out of reach of small people. The cabinet has four holes on the back face. I was planning to use four wall bolts, rather like these. Does that sound reasonable?

Would that (or any USB-based solution, for that matter) not entail updating the drivers on all our machines? This printer is used by everybody.

Does anybody know if it's possible to retrofit gigabit (copper) networking to our NRG (Ricoh) MP C3000 photocopier/printer/everything-box? We've just upgraded various parts of the network to gigabit only to discover that printing photos still takes ages because the machine itself is the bottleneck. I suppose one option would be a USB cable to a print server but we don't have any servers within a USB cable's reach of the machine.

Here's one: Phihong POE Single-Port Injector POE20U ¦ use-IP Ltd The price looks a bit too good to be true. Is it? EDIT: I was also consider a 4-port Planet model but I've just discovered it's only 100Mbit, not gigabit.

That's interesting. Is that along the lines of "it shouldn't make any difference but it just does" (rather like "Windows shouldn't have crashed then but it just does")?

Well it turns out that's the only one I can install - the cabinet isn't deep enough for the HP or ZyXEL! So far only person has voiced any concerns about Netgear, and has not expanded on those concerns other than "ekkkk! - horrible".