Sarconia

I've never actually used TimeTabler myself but have supported quite a few schools who do in transferring their timetable which was created in TimeTabler into SIMS.net. It uses the same curriculum matching wizard as Nova T6 so the export of the timetable into SIMS.net looks virtually the same, I've never had any problems with it and niether have the schools who use it.

I've had a look on SupportNet to see if there are any solutions for this one and I'm afraid there aren't, chances are that if there were ever a solution around, it's been archived. I can't ever remember having that problem... although it was a very long time ago. It might be something like a simple setting/field that's not filled in in the FMS database, however it might also be something considerably more complex. How many financial years are held in this FMS database? It may be worth creating a new FMS database for the 2010/2011 financial year and then simply just accessing the old one if you'd like to view what went on in previous financial years. This would save you the £700 fee at least.

Come on now Mike! It's time to break that self-imposed ban, you've got a lot of knowledge to share which would help us all Don't worry about other members of this forum... I think a certain person may have accidentally fallen in their own swimming pool anyway!

Yeah, it's normally pretty slow for me as well. I don't think I've ever got more than about 40K/s.

What day does your previous academic year end? If it's the 31/08/2010 then your next academic year should start on 01/09/2010 and run until 31/08/2011. Whatever you do, don't leave any gaps inbetween academic years otherwise you'll end up promoting your students twice, once into the gap and then once again into the academic year. Put the start of term in and then put all of the days where students will not be attending down as either summer holiday or an inset day. Timetable wise, it doesn't really matter when you send the timetable from. I usually send the timetable from when the courses start in early September until the courses end (that's usually about halfway through July). As the end date selected here transfers across into Course Manager, getting it wrong initially can be a pain here as it has a few knock on effects when trying to do your Census.

Yeah, I'm a bit of a fan, the best bit about it though really is the multi-player co-op mode. Why can't more games have this as an option? Other than that, I'd like to see a few more characters to play as in the next one, maybe each with their own special weapons?

That's exactly what they did in my hometown at numerous junctions and roundabouts. People still continue to attempt to sit side by side one another though, it's just that now doing so made it a bit dangerous as you're likely to have a minor prang. Then again, they've not got a clue round there, the council put two exercise bikes (in a useless attempt to get the local people exercising) in a box in the middle of the local field once, within less than a month they'd been vandalised and had been declared unsafe for public use.

Couldn't anyone just find a workstation which hasn't been upgraded (I'm sure there'd be one in a fair few schools, especially as Staff have been on half term holiday and probably haven't even logged into SIMS yet) and then copy the Quick Letter Template back over to all of the other workstations which have been upgraded?

The Spring release has been out for quite a while now! I wonder how long it took for anyone to notice this problem? I've not had any of the schools I support report it to me... but then again, it's only been applied to the Primay schools that we support so far. If it were the secondaries, I bet I'd have been inundated with angry calls from customers whose favourite saying is "Think Again!".

I'd cycle around but it'd only take me about hmm... 3mins to cycle to work. I'm not sure if it'd be worth getting out my helmet and super-bright flourescent yellow cycling jacket just for that... I might as well just carry on walking everywhere.

My car is an old banger which has done surprisingly well for itself. It cost me £500, 4 years ago and the only expensive bits I've ever had to replace were 2 tyres so I didn't really include it as it hasn't cost me that much money. Although, if you've spent thousands on a car then, it could rack the price up a fair bit.

I don't really know much about aviation but it seems to me that if there is even a slight chance that it's unsafe to fly then planes shouldn't fly. There's not really much chance of surviving if a plane did fall out of the sky so it's simply not worth it when the risk is almost certain death.

You definitely have to shop around. I wasn't particularly impressed when my renewal which was £20 more than the previous year came through... despite having gained another years worth of no claims. I shopped around on various price comparison websites and managed to chop £50 off the price of the renewal, down £30 from the previous year, nice

In SQL Server Management Studio, just run this query on your SIMS database: select * from sims.db_update_log This will tell you exactly what patches have been applied, including the date and time.

The prices of fuel are ridiculous but driving is still often cheaper than public transport. This is why I still own a car... For a fairly standard 75mile journey from my place to my parents house, here's how it breaks down: By train it costs £16.70, takes 1hr 5mins and involves one train change, note: that's an off-peak train fare. I can walk to the station which I depart from as I live right next to it, so that's not an issue, however my parents house is a good 5 miles away from the train station at the other end, with all of my baggage (most likely a suitcase) it's not possible to walk. I could get the bus, however it was £2.50 for a single fare the last time I got on it (a few years ago) and takes a good 45mins to get there. So that'd bring the cost and time up to £19.20 and 1hr 50mins respectively. By car it costs me £16.15 and takes 1hr 30mins (on average). Now I've calculated this as follows: It costs me just under £10 to do 75miles (that's what it costs me roughly when I fill up from having a full tank, I'm also assuming petrol is £1.20/ltr) About 60 miles of this are on the motorway. My car is a bit of an old banger and does approximately 38MPG (not the worst but by no means the best either). Now I've also taken insurance and road tax into this equation, my insurance costs me £31/month but I only drive 500 miles a month so that one 75mile journey is going to cost me £4.65 in terms of insurance and £1.50 in road tax (£120 road tax for 12 months). Bearing in mind that I've not got the most economical car, or drive that many miles a month and I'm in a fairly high car tax bracket, it still manages to come under the cost of the initial train fare. I get to drive exactly to my parents house, I can take whatever I want with me (no worrying about suitcases being swiped... or where am I going to stash them on the train). I can drive at any time of the day and don't have to hang around for "off-peak" train fares and I can blast my music in my car to my heart's content. If I take more than one person with me in the car then it costs even less. Overall, it's simply so much more convenient than going on the train and it works out to be cheaper too. If I've missed any other car taxes, give me a prod. I've not included an MOT in the cost because I can't remember what my previous one cost! (I dont think it was that expensive anyway... £50 or so and it's only a once a year cost). I've not included any other car expenses such as break-downs and so on as the last time my car broke down, I bought the parts, hijacked my dad's tools and fixed it myself. (It would've cost about £500 in labour otherwise... took me a good 3 weekends to sort as well, so it wasn't exactly a small job). Haynes manual + the internet for the win!

Yeah, that's right. I've been using a D-Link (forget the model number, sorry) Wireless N cable router for about 2 years now, I've never had any problems with it and it is in constant use by both of my parents laptops, PS3, 2x Xbox 360's, the Wii, PSP and pretty much all other wireless devices, there are about 4 phones which are permanently connected to it too.

I have recently moved house and having to set up a new Broadband service has been a complete and utter pain in the arse. I wanted to get Virgin (as I have a serious dislike for ADSL connections... and after hearing about numerous nightmares from friends with ADSL connections, I've always tried to avoid it plus I mean, anything that is going down an old fashioned copper phone line/up the pole from the 1970's can't be that fast, right?) but as I live in a shared flat now and one of the other people living there already had it, for some dumb reason, they point blank refused to install it for me... yes, a business actually didn't want my money. I then tried activating the phone line which already existed in the house by using the post office as their service seemed to be pretty good value, however, they failed to even activate the line, despite telling me that it was active every time I complained that it didn't actually work. So, definitely don't go with them! I then decided to sign up with BT as a last resort and it hasn't been a smooth ride at all, they've wasted my time, I yelled at someone in India after asking politely to speak to someone in England and being told "they'd only tell you exactly the same thing" which was a complete load of... as when I did finally get through to someone in England they agreed with me that I actually had a problem, I was then left waiting for an Engineer for half a day which never turned up. Eventually, a few days later, an engineer did turn up and my line was installed, however my internet doesn't work properly even now. I can't work it out, half the time webpages simply don't load... yet I can stay connected to the Playstation Network and MSN so it seems like an intermittent DNS issue, still, it's most likely something at their end messing up which will only take "insert X number of phone calls here" to resolve. I've gone into a bit of a rant there, sorry! It's just that all of these companies seem to be one and the same, they're all useless. Maybe give Sky a go... I've never tried them and nobody else here has bashed them yet.

Definitely buy it and install it locally. It's actually quite nice to use and you can imagine the headache all of the staff and students would give you if the Internet did happen to go down for a day or two.

Ah, that must have changed since I moved a few of mine over then. I had a few databases which fell head over heels a while ago when I tried to put them on a 64bit instance. I did have a look on SupportNet but I couldn't find anything which said when the support of 64bit instances started.

I'd definitely go with a 64bit OS and 64bit SQL for future proofing purposes, although I don't think SIMS works yet if you install a 64bit instance of SQL, so just make sure you install a 32bit instance for the SIMS database and it'll be fine.

When you rush out of your house in the morning, down the steps and jump over the wall... as you've been playing too much Mirrors Edge the night before...

I personally don't use BackupExec but I do use both of the methods that you have described to otherwise back up my data and I've never had any issues restoring the database when anything has gone wrong before.

Another advantage to having Lesson Monitor over Attendance is that with LM you can have both AM/PM registration and a timetable on the teachers timeline, whereas with Att only you can either have one or the other. There are many more reports in LM than there are in Att which does allow you to pinpoint whether or not students have been skiving, ill together with siblings and lots of other things. Imagine if the students in a senior school found out that they just had to turn up to AM/PM registration to receive 100% attendance! I think a lot would suddenly "disappear" from the other lessons throughout the day. There are also other functions (which may not apply to you, as it's a middle school but Earliest Marks is a useful function for 6th forms) but copy lesson marks to session is always handy as then you don't even need a morning/afternoon registration period as it uses the mark from the lesson which you've set up to count as the AM/PM reg.

The MP for the area in which I actually voted, voted in favour of this bill. D'oh... ><

I'd say that your driving instructor is in the wrong. I was taught to drive about 5yrs ago and was never taught to get into 1st gear whilst slowing down, I was always told to stay in 2nd gear until the car had fully stopped moving and then to change gears as 99% of cars can still take off in 2nd gear without any issues as long as the wheels are still rolling. I don't think it's too good for the engine of your car either... once again, most cars would definitely jolt somewhat if I put it into 1st gear whilst still moving and I don't think the driving test instructor would be too happy sitting in a car that was chugging around each time you came to a stop! Added note: Engine braking is fine but in a good car... you'll notice that if you simply don't put your foot down when in gear, the engine will hold you back somewhat, the same applies to going down a hill in 2nd or 3rd gear. Still... unless it is a hill of extreme proportions... (like when you're travelling to Alton Towers) it's very rare that you'd use 1st gear to engine brake.