Ashers

We deal with the Dell education team direct, over the last couple of year we have had 4 account manager, but as they aren't the people that we deal with day to day then I haven't noticed a lot of pain during the change over. The biggest concern I have is that they are moving the offices from Bracknel up to Edinburgh/Glasgow (can't remember which off the top of my head) and we are getting a new account liason that we will need to break in. With the relationship I have built up over the ppast three years I know I'm getting great prices and for the last to major projects the resellers starting price was already higher than the direct price and after the usual arguing between the three of them I've always ended with something extra for dealing direct, be it price, add ons or a service. I think it's all down to the relationship you create with your account liason, forget the account manager, your liason will know what they can do price wise and just needs the account manager to sign it off with their finance team. Also my liason lets me know when target time is due and we sometimes put off an order til closer to the deadline, helps get the yes when you want to push the price.

Well I just scrape in at 37 this year!!!!!and the count down to retirement can start.....

It still makes me laugh when I hear people say that Gates stole the GUI ideas for windows 95 from Apple when Apple stole the whole thing from the techies at Xerox Parc. Gates was just the man in the right place when IBM came knocking on the door, but the main point seems to be that there has always been an alternative that you can use either with or instead of Microsoft as they were are still mostly are a software manufacturer. Apple have on the other hand had the hardware linked in to the software, and this is where the issue of the lockin has become an issue, use our hardware an you have no choice but to use our software. But from a business point of view, I don't think you can say that either of them has done particularly badly. Maybe not ethical but then most businesses aren't, even those that say they are! But that's a different post altogether.

Try this site, we've found a couple of solutions here. http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/

HP have some software that you can download that will find all of the jet direct boxes on the network and also all other HP networked printers. We use to moitorour HP kit. Not fully looked in to it, but we use the automatic firmware upgrades, which has solved a number of annoying problems. It also updates the priners firmware. From what I can remember from home, as long as it is not password protected you should be able to connect straight to the unit and reset all of the settings.

Dell education services are giving some high specs at good prices, we are upgrading our admin network this summer, they are all twin quad core processors with 4 or 8GB of Ram for under £1800 each, the hard drive sizes vary depending on what we are asking the server to do. Also have you thought about using the server as a fax server as well, I've just started researching the possibilities, but there is plenty of software that intergrates straight in to Exchange for sending and recieving of faxes.

What problems have you had with Dell, at my old school we had the next business day support and appart from some time in the que we never had a unit down for more that 24 hrs.

Did you say a French Teacher? If so you could look at working for a French company based in the UK, they pay a little more for fluent speakers and sometimes more if you can read/write the language. I have to agree with the other comments here, keep away from the training companies, local colleges can be good, just depends on their standards, but if you can self study then it’s the cheapest way forward. All the ComTia courses (http://certification.comptia.org/) are recognised and the Microsoft courses (http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/default.mspx) build up in stages, you can also use some of the CompTia qualifications towards your Microsoft qualifications. But I'd think about it very hard, my sister in law moved in the opposite direction to you and has said that she wouldn't want to move back? But each to their own

The BSA do this all the time, just ignore the letter. The BSA themselves have no right to come and audit your site, only the software manufacturers do. They can ask the BSA to do the Audit on their behalf but MS never use them (I've been on the end of a MS audit) they use auditing professionals. The BSA are a group set up by the Industry and quite often get attached to MS (who do sign up to the group) but the biggest pushers for the BSA are Adobe, Macromedia (now part of Adobe), Apple, and a whole list of others, not all of who appear on their website. They work on the process that if you reply then they will look further. Just ato let you know I spent five years as a software licencing manager, looking after 30K+ desktops, 10K+ servers and then there were all the laptops, PDA's etc........ So if you ever get a n auditing request contact me first, and I'll let you know how to handle it. MS got in once Adobe, Macromedia and the BSA were all sent away packing.

It's the link andyrite put in earlier based on the fotball world cup news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/en...081350.stm

We set up a laptops with the local GP set to how we wanted them and then imaged the others to match.

I've worked in two schools in the past year, both full time. The first was excellent, all new staff were introduced to the governors at an informal meeting and the IT and chair of governors would regularly come and see us and ask questions. We had one advantage in that we reported directly to a deputy head that was not afraid of saying no we won't do this until we (the IT team) have looked thoroughly at it. Also as someone mentioned earlier having a good relationship with the procurement team meant that any orders for IT based kit would not be put through unless it was counter signed by IT. It all worked well and every department ended coming to us first, which meant we could advise them on the best way to spend their budget on IT and even get departments to work together and get better deals from suppliers. My new school could be more different, the word no from IT send some members of staff crying (yes I do mean real tears) to the head and then us being TOLD that they get what they want, in the end it didn't work as circumstances changed and the teacher changed jobs and didn't care anymore! So we didn't do it. What got me was that we weren't asked as to why we couldn't/wouldn't do it! As for the governors, not seen or heard from any of them. We also report to the 'Director' of ICT, can't see the sense in that. We have to explain everything to them in layman’s terms (nice guy but not a geek) and he gets caught like most teachers by the sales pitch and we end up having to convince him again that we don't want that solution. Finally (I hear the sigh of relief) the SLT, in this school the, them and us really does prevail and maybe it is because the governors are so distant from the admin side of the school. It could be that my last school was exceptional, but the difference between the two is amazing. Well I feel a lot better now I've got that off of my chest.

I can't remember exactly the way to het this out but I remember that you lost data, if you can get in to the BIOS, which I think you can't then you can switch the setting off. Otherwise pop the HDD in to another machine that doesn't support the Password protected HDD and try a reformat. Apart from that try Dell Tech support, I think the Web support is free if not fast

At last something I can answer. Firstly all thick client machines with Office Installed need a licence. Then each user on the TS will need a licence up to the number of devices you have connecting to the servers. With this exception, any fat client machines you have connecting to the TS that have office installed locally don't need an extra licence. You don't require licences for the TS servers themselves. If you lock down the appication so that it can only be run by X number of users at any one time (don't ask me how) and this is less than your device count then you can purchase just that number of licences. I covered all this when I worked for the sofware licencing team at British Gas.

Tradmerk stamped on my butt what?

We had a similar situation when a projector that was fitted in our main hall failed, we got the scafolding out and took it down cleaned it tested it and all was OK. Then we put it back and it failed as soon as we turned it upside down. We couldn't find anything else wrong and out of desperation we replaced the bulb ad it worked. No idea why, but worth a go if you have a spare bulb.

We had a roaming profile problem a few weeks ago and got loads of replies, none of which worked. We came up with this solution after trying a few and worked out that it seemed to be the NTuser files. We rename the problem profile folder (we just added the standard .old to the name). Then made a new folder with the original name and copied over all the files/folders except the userdata folder (if ther is one) and the NTUSER files. I've done this with the user is logged on and not logged on and it seems to have solved the problem. Good luck!

There's nothing worth saving in my car (wife and daughter of course if they're in the car). I'd just let it burn......oh those lovely flames, they'll keep me warm....burn burn burn.........

The joining corridors definately, and a new cupboard without the seven servers making so much noise that I have to turn the radio up loader as the day goes on, and an outside window, I forget what daylight looks like! and finally a cupboard that doesn't open in to a class room, nothing better than having to walk through a class when the teacher is trying to teach and then two minutes later walking back through with a PC in your arm and their bas all over the floor......... Not too much to ask surely....... And no I haven't been thinking about this too much, Honest!

It looks quite simple according to the BBC website, (from an earlier post) "You only need a licence if you use your computer to watch programmes at the same time as they are being shown on TV. Before now, this has not been a major problem as very few programmes are available simultaneously on air and online. Computer users only needed a TV licence if they had a special video card that could receive TV signals." "This is to stop people receiving TV programmes for free on their computer when they would have to pay to see them on a regular television." "you are free to watch archived programmes or downloadable clips without a licence."

I know this doesn't cover the city itself but have you looked at hants web as it covers the surrounding areas? http://www.hants.gov.uk/education/eps/vacancies/index.php Most are under admin roles and then look for area 3, I don't thinks there are any advertised at the moment but there have been.

Don't listen to them, Dungeons and Dragons is real, it's lies I tell you lies!