rok

Hi Everyone, We are a small primary (8 classrooms) and looking to upgrade our current simple wireless network. As we are likely to be introducing more mobile technology, eg tablets, in the near future it sounds as if some form of managed network would make sense. I guess we need to be able to support, ultimately, up to 30 devices connecting at the same time, and then being used within a single classroom. The available in-house technical support is not a network expert, so simplicity of management would be a benefit. Of course, cost is always a factor. I have been trawling the site and it appears as if the cheapest and simplest option would probably by one based on Unifi, and that the more elaborate solutions would be unnecessary for a small school with, say, 10 access points. Is this a reasonable conclusion? Assuming we go for Unifi, would it be installable by any old network support company, or is there some sort of Unifi-authorised installer list? As you can probably gather, this is a all a bit of a dark art as far as I'm concerned, so any guidance would be welcome.

Sorry, I should have been a bit clearer. The "sales pressure" is actually a drip-drip of suggestions ("ah but with CC4 this would be easier...") rather than anything more forceful. I'm looking for real experiences for use in calibrating the sales patter. Thanks.

This is my first post, so apologies if the answers to my questions are somewhere else on the site. We are a one-form entry primary, with a decent central fileserver server (also running SIMS) and around 50 classroom PCs, of varying specs from exceptionally weedy to not all that bad. We are about to buy a new server for use as the central fileserver (and use the existing server for SIMS only), plus a bunch of new PCs. We currently operate entirely vanilla Windows. We have previously avoided any RM tie-in. We are, however, under a certain amount of sales pressure to "upgrade" to RM CC4 alongside the new server. I would be very grateful for information from anyone who has experienced the move from vanilla Windows to CC4. In particular, things like: - What are the licensing costs for CC4? - What is the minimum PC spec, if there is one? - How long did the conversion take? - Was it worth it? [i should probably come clean and admit to my own bias against educational software, ie software produced for and sold into the niche educational market. In general, it seems to me that educational software is expensive, low function, old fashioned and unreliable, compared to the mainstream equivalent. RM EasyMail or Outlook, anyone?] Any help and advice would be very welcome. Thanks.