Ashers

I used to drink loads of tea and coffee, previous job Gas Engineer, One in the yard to start the day, terrible machie coffee, then a couple in the Cafe for breakfast, then 10 jobs a day so 10 cups of tea or coffee, then a couple at least when I got home. Found out that I was sensative to caffine about 15 years ago so started on the decaffe, and after a lot of research I have found my favourite brands for both decaffe tea and coffee. I have stopped drinking it at work, I now drink squash and at the moment I am finishing off apple and blackcurrant (fruit and barley) and tomorrow I will be starting the Pink Grapefruit.

Sophos AV and firewall, and I scan every two weeks

We have V2 of Impero and it is great, easy for teachers and loads of features all in one tool. We paid about £2000 for a site license as many desktops as we like and I think off the top of my head 20 Teacher consols. We were offered an upgrade to V3 for about £1000.

All done, and one question about your statement above, did this include the increased cost of data centre space, power consumption, air conditioning etc?

We used the paid for version of papercut, it has paid for itself many times over.

Sophos WSA to add another

This has been a problem for us for years, we installed Impero class room management last summer and this has a feature that locks the screen when it detects that a network is not available. The problems with getting the PC to shut down is that if you have a switch failure then the it will log all of the students off.

I used to work in corporate and these were one of my suppliers, they used to be quite approachable, give them a call and get them to remove you from their mailing lists

Well said, that's why I letting the county bods deal with those decisions.

The problem still comes to where they store your data, In the US I believe that the law means that the severs must be on US territory (not sure if this was a federal law or a particular state). The universities in the article were all UK based (Article) I know other Universities have gone down the Google route, but if a Uni can't get the information from Google to satisfy them, then I'm guessing I don't have a hope in hell. I haven't gone through the process myself, but the county have spent the last 8 months or so looking at a number of solutions, including MS and Google. The decision seems to be Microsoft, the final trials are going on at the moment, so should find out their decision in the new year.

Setting up the domain etc is quite easy, have you looked at changing your email naming format instead. Also remember that google scans all emails and uses the information to build user profiles etc, possibly other things that they haven't yet openly expressed. Also you need to consider your data security / information retention / administration / email monitoring. I recently read a report in a magazine (can't remember which magazine at the moment) where a University looked at Google and Microsoft as their email solutions, the biggest point against Google was that they could not say where the data was held, and that not all the users on the domain would be held in the same place. They asked the same questions to MS and they said that they could arrange a visit to their data centre and actually show them the devices that held the data. This changed the way that I was thinking of going.....Security comes first on my list....

I've looked long and hard at a number of "Solutions" for reducing printing costs, but after completing my own calculations I've found that the best way was to put my own printer management software in (Papercut - chosen after advice from other Edugeekers) this made the biggest cut, then spending a lot of time finding the best toner supplier, mine is based in the Isle of Man keeps beating other supplier by 5+%. The final part which I came to late after setting up Papercut, was work out the cost per page of the Printer before you choose which one to buy, I went for the one with the cheaper cartridge, but then found it only printer half the pages of the other printer, so ended up costing more to run. Hope this helps and get in contact if you want to hear more of my printer cost reduction woes......

OK I'm not in Surrey or an independent, but only a short train ride to Basingstoke and we do run SIMs on site at the moment. We have 1500 students and 120 staff, we have just under 700 desktops (Admin and Curriculum). We run and host our own web and Moodle VLE site, We are just about to run a pilot on our video streaming service, and if all goes to plan we will be piloting our TV recording service a few weeks after. We run a web based helpdesk, an SSL VPN to give users secure drive access from outside of school, USB encryption and laptop encryption as part of our data protection installations (which includes document content scanning, looking for removal of confidential information from the network). I know there are other services we run, but I can't think of them off of the top of my head. Let me know if you are interested in a visit, the school is open late most evenings and I can make myself available, I will just need to give our site staff notice. Could possibly arrange a Saturday morning as well, but not until after the Christmas break.

How did you get around the data scanning issue with Google and what about keeping potentially confidential and personal information on unknown servers, possibly not even on the European continent?

I have a female apprentice, who is due to finish and be fully paid up member of the team next April.

We use the GP to restrict drive letters and then we use all of those that were available. We then use Sophos endpoint to block all removable data devices, but other USB devices are OK. We also block the front USB ports in the Students PC's in the PC BIOS. Basically USB data devices are banned from students PC's. Students need to use email or the VLE to get work in to the school. For staff, we use Sophos endpoint to authorise USB devices and then ensure that these can only be read if they are encrypted, we authorise other USB devices, cameras and audio recorders, but as read only. I am hoping to ban USB data devices next year altogether, we have installed Barracuda SSL VPN for drive access for staff (and network server access for support) and once we have had it cleared by the exam body, we will extend the drive access to students.

We use Barracuda SSLVPN for remote access, it works great. (Barracuda SSL VPN - Secure Remote Access From Any Web Browser) The file share part of this was originally, SSL Explorer (SSL-Explorer | Download SSL-Explorer software for free at SourceForge.net) available as a freeware, before being purchased by Barracuda, I know it hasn't been updated since, but it could be a free alternative to look in to.

We've been using the Epson projectors EMP-83 for three years with network management and they are great. A central console that turns the projectors off, because for some reason the teachers find it too diffucult and email us if there are problems.

Always on the Friday, then Rugby on Saturday, recover on Sunday then back to school for a rest..............

I have a nice routine on a Saturday morning, a visit to the local cafe for breakfast and a cup of tea (or two) and a read of Micromart. I also still get Computing magazine, from a log running subscription. I also get a few RSS feed, including Mozilla, Microsoft, Adobe and Dameware. But the one I'd say I read the most is Sophos Labs.

Very good, gave us all a chuckle here, but where is Andy now?

We use Infotone, they collect and send us vouchers...... Infotone - Cheap Printer Ink Cartridges - Printer Toner Cartridges UK - 0800 026 8031 or 01723 581999

We installed the Sophos WSA1000 three years ago and it has been excellent. It integrates with AD and you can set it to filter by groups. Since we installed it we have not had any problems with Proxy sites as Sophos reads the code of the page and cleverly blocks them. The box also scans for virus/worms/trojans etc. The box also updates Sophos every hour with any site category changes that are made, these are then checked by Sophos employees to confirm the category change and if they agree then the update is sent to all Sophos boxes. On the reporting side there are limitations, but you can set regular reports to be emailed out and we have set ours up to backup the logs daily. These are in the squid format and we use a squid reader to get the information we need. When we have had a problem, Sophos have been excellent at solving the issue and keeping us informed as to what they are doing, most issues are corrected remotely, a remote access facility is built in to the box, so send Sophos a request, they ask you to turn on the remote access and once complete they turn off the connection, and ask you to check. The connection does time out as well. The updates are automatic, just choose a time and then choose a different time for automatic restarts and you really can set it and forget it. I have spoken to Sophos as we were planning to replace the box this year but after a chat with our supplier we decided that we would just extend the warranty, the extra speed of the new hardware didn't warrant the cost. But if we wanted to upgrade the hardware all that is needed is to run a backup and re import on to the new unit, job done. Just to let you know I don't work for Sophos, it is just that the Sophos unit has been a godsend and solved far more problems then we ever thought it would. If you'd like to talk more send me a PM.

Got to play with one last week at the Dell Enterprise Business Centre, it was just out of the box and there were updates ready to roll. Apart from that, and the fact that flash was a bit touchy before the updates anyway, it's functionality was great. We were looking at the streak as a possible solution for taking registers via our SIMs learning gateway, when on school trips (we already have a school phone, but as an upgrade is due) I thought a smart phone would be better and make this an easy solution. I'd be glad to hear what you guys think of them now you've had them for a short while.

We're in the same position as teejay, 605 Dell Desktops we have had 2 Motherboards, both Ultra Small Form Factors and both refused to detect DVD drives, and one HDD. All were replaced next business day. Of the 50 Dell laptops we have had one motherboard failure, suspect water spill after seeing the state of the chassis, but Dell replaced no questions asked and one LCD inverter failed, again both next working day. I inherited 56 HP desktops, without any extended warranty and they cost loads in replacement part before I swapped them out with Dells last summer. We have a mix of Dell HP and IBM servers, in terms of reliability we have had no problems with either the Dells or HP units, but the IBMs have been really temperamental, and Parts take days to turn up. We have 4hr engineer on site response on the Dell servers and next day telephone support on the HP and IBM servers. I have a great relationship with my Dell Account team, I get invites to all their technical seminars (luckily only 20 minute drive to their offices from home) and last week we went to their Executive Briefing Centre, to have a play with their new technology, including the Dell Streak, before it’s official release date. But it’s their support that I have found sells it for me, even with the issues of the Indian call centre, we have found that the email support, gets around the queuing and language problems. Hope it doesn't sound too soap boxy....