ToyHeartsFan

It really depends upon the size of the school; smaller schools with only a small amount of kit would find it hard to finance / justify a Network Manager post. Although IMO it makes sense if a few club together and employ their own rather than hiring one of the LEA techs for a few hours a fortnight which is what happens in some schools. I'm an ICT Operations Manager in a 3 form entry i.e. 700+ primary that also has a small childrens centre onsite that I support. I used to support two schools this size on my own but I spent too much time fire fighting and the head wanted me onsite full time because I couldn't always drop what I was doing and run back if there was an issue at the other school. It might be simple things like a projector not working but not having someone onsite has a negative impact on learning if they can't use the equipment until your next scheduled visit.

It depends upon the spec and quantity. I don’t want old tat and I don’t want one off’s it takes far too long to create an image and set them up for that to be even considered. I’m not against second hand kit although it does have its draw backs with warranty, shorter life cycle etc… Without second hand kit I wouldn’t have been able to swap out the P4s in our Suite with core2duos (E8400). The main problem is finding machines such as the E8400 at reasonable pricing because unless you are paying a lot less than you would for say a new i3 it’s not worth it.

Using an App will limit who can access the information which isn't fair on people with older / basic phones. Not everyone has a contract and has the latest £200+ phone. We use groupcall to send bulk text messages to staff / parents when needed i.e. school closed because heating isn't working etc...

It sounds like the setting that was removed was in more than one place i.e. the gpo for student users and the gpo for staff users and that it was only removed from the student gpo.

I understand why you are looking at it we are all trying to stretch the money that bit further. I’m surprised you can save £50 per unit; it’s been a while since we purchased any new PCs i.e. March 2011 but back then we paid about £360 for an i3 with W7 pro oem, 4 GB ram and a 3 year warranty. That was with Tempus who since folded when their parent company went down the pan Not having EES licensing would add a fair chunk on for us as well i.e. we would either need to buy the pro version or buy upgrade licences for each machine which would wipe out any saving we would make. SSD drives are getting faster and cheaper and I would like to try one in an old PC to see how much difference it makes but there comes a point when you need to ask if it’s worth spending money on a 6 year old PC ( SSD + Mem upgrade + sata 3 controller + gig lan controller = worth it? Probably not! ). Also even our oldest PCs have 80GB hdds in them so 64GB drives do seem a bit on the small side.

Not all schools have / can afford EES licenses – we don’t but it is something we are considering but only because Microsoft is killing off XP. At a previous school I did once get someone turn up with a laptop with the home version of what ever OS was current, obviously I couldn’t connect it to the network (it was ordered direct from their budget with the permission of the head…). Self build is a bit of a no no, Microsoft don’t want you to do it! EES licensing needs a base OS. You are not an OEM i.e. you are not building then selling the PCs which means you should be buying retail licences if you are building new PCs or upgrading the motherboard. I was thinking about replacing the motherboards / processors in some of our PCs with something better but legally we would need to buy new retail licenses for the OS which makes the whole thing pointless. Ignoring the license costs I doubt you would be able to save much by building your own machines because you are buying in small quantities and not direct from the manufacturers so the margins in it are pretty small. You then have to deal with all the repairs warranty returns when hard drives fail etc…

Hi - Visualisers are basically a digital cam on a bendy stick / adjustable arm we have some Avermedia (300AF - I think!) but they have updated the model range since we got ours. The ones we use have got a USB connection so you can hook them up to a PC and take snap shots etc and a VGA in / out that you can connect to a projector / large screen and a PC so its easy to switch between the PC screen and visualiser image. They are not cheap but we have them hooked up to every class interactive board and our big projectors in our halls. If you are looking for a projector then we have started replacing our sanyo ones that came with the promethean IWBs we use with the casio ones that dont have bulbs or filters (XJ-M150). We havent had them very long but so far we are very happy with them. They are expensive but it makes sense when you take into account the cost of the lamps for normal projectors. We haven't had any new projector installations for some time so I can't really recommend anyone to fit the projectors for you but I'm sure someone will post some suggestions.

If you already have 4 DCs then I doubt it will make a noticable difference unless you are already having problems. Likewise gig fibre means it shouldnt take too long to build new machines onto the network. I once managed a small CC3 network and they had a single CC3 server doing everything (they did have a admin server for sims) it seemed to cope ok; it was the workstations that were more of a problem as some of them were out of the ark. I assume you will go over to CC4 before microsoft kill off XP / Server 2003 which means either this or next summer hol so its done well before the 8th april 2014 deadline for XP in which case you wont be running them long anyway so I don't think you will have any problems.

You dont say how many DCs you have and what the load is like on them i.e. are log in times ok at the moment on the normal clients or are things getting sluggish? Are your DCs just DCs or are they file servers, print servers etc as well? If you are dumping thin clients why not re-task some of the Terminal servers to share some of the load? I take FAST as meaning 100mb (i.e. 10mb was slow 100mb was fast) if you can I would want a gig fibre link between switches it might even fix the problems you are having with the thin clients.

Download the latest flash uninstaller - run it Download WINDOWS INSTALLER CLEAN UP UTILITY from Microsoft - install and run that - remove any copies of flash install the latest version of flash reboot PC

FMSLogo is free for educational use, the link I have doesnt seem to be opening but there are resources / other download links for it here: Logo Here are a bunch of online logo style progs I found ages ago when I was looking for suitable progs (I havent checked that the links are still working): Illuminations: Turtle Pond http://www.mathsnet.net/logo/turtlelogo/index.html TES iboard TES iboard TES iboard TES iboard TES iboard TES iboard TES iboard

Their age comes into it a bit but it is basic child protection i.e. hello john smith your daddy has sent me to collect you... You should use names or photos but not both; you MUST have permission from their parents / guardian – do not assume a teacher has this permission when they say hi can you put this pic / vid on the school website. The risk is relatively low with older children but you still need permission extreme examples: what happens if a violent estranged partner finds out where his ex is living because you posted a child’s name / photo on your website. What if some random person uses the details you post to search for them on facebook etc… and then start’s stalking them? Is everyone over protective and paranoid? Possibly, but do you want to be the one that got it wrong?

"It doesnt appear at all" "I can click on the shortcut that I dropped in the redirected folder and it works from there" Which to me says that the students / teachers are not getting the shortcut on their desktop but she can run the shortcut if she opens it directly (unc /mapped drive?) It could be in the wrong place; I once put a shorcut in what I thought was the correct share on a network that I wasnt familiar with (all the other shorcuts seemed to be there) needless to say it didn't work correctly and caused problems i.e. workstations started to crash I've no idea why or how it had been configured. Also we have multiple redirected desktops i.e. staff get one, early years get another, then KS1/KS2 and a limited one for guests etc... so it is worth double checking. **The shortcut could have the wrong permissions i.e. only domain admins can read / execute it.** - I would check this first One more copy paste error I've seen is where someone has made a shortcut on a workstation to a new app and instead of it pointing to say c:\mynewapp\exe_name it picked up the unc path somehow so all the PCs were trying to run the app on the workstation that was used to create the shortcut i.e. \\pcname\c:\mynewapp\exe_name Could there be any security permissions set somewhere? Could offline files be caching the desktop somehow and its not picked up the new shortcut yet? You are logging off / back on or rebooting the workstation you are using for testing after putting the shortcut on the server arent you? If its a vanilla network it should work, I've got a shortcut for testbase online on our redirected staff desktops and never had a problem (XP/ 2003 Svrs) but if its running any form of desktop management software all bets are off.

We have a few different models and I can't remember if xe40 is one of the ones I had to reset but I found a pic of a thermal switch (different model) so this is what you are looking for. Ignore the comment about them self resetting they don't (well not on any of the models I've come across). The ones I've had to reset were behind the side fan tucked just inside the power supply section and you needed a flat blade screwdriver to push the top down. where can I find thermal reset switch on my sanyo plc xu115? - FixYa And yeah no need to touch the lens / mirrors unless its full of dust and even then I wouldn't touch the internals only use an air blower. Insert usual if you break it / electrocute yourself disclaimer here.

Sanyo usually put them behind the fan on the side, you have to take the fan out to get at them.

But your quota will double when they upgrade your connection to 100Mb for free, 10GB for normal use is more than enough. If you want more than 10GB then upgrade to the120Mb tier (assuming it will be quota free).

Never got into minecraft but I assume your uploads could be an issue as well then if you are running a server as they have even lower limits in place for them. Fingers crossed then that they keep the new top tier limit free for you the fact that the table doesn't show a 120Mb tier does suggest to me that it will remain quota free but you never know with VM... Edit: just noticed that the upload limits are higher in the evening than the download limits on the higher packages which seems a bit strange but might help you...

It also might mean they are not putting a quota on the top tier but even if they do which will be a significant change for VM the download quota on 100Mb is surely enough? What are people downloading if they need more than 10 GB in the evening? Quotas higher than that would suggest to me that they are business users and should probably be using a leased line. 20000MB between 10 and 3 10000MB between 4 and 9pm

I’m on one of the lower packages but other than the 100Mb package didn’t they throttle them all anyway? They are doubling the speeds so as they get to your area and you get the speed increase I assume you also get the bandwidth increase i.e. 10Mb gets doubled to 20Mb and you then get the download limits shown in the 20Mb table. If you are on the top package already i.e. 100Mb then you will be moved to 120Mb which isn’t shown on the tables because the top package is the only one they don’t throttle. I’m not sure if they have changed the limits because I don’t have a copy of my old limits but the throttling isn’t anything new. I think my area gets upgraded June onwards but I’m not holding my breath because they didn’t give me the upload upgrade until recently and it seems to have had a negative effect on my download. I used to get a constant 10Mb download but now speedtest.net frequently tops out around the 8Mb mark. I will just have to wait and see what happens when I get the next upgrade…

Well I dont think the 8 year old ex admin server is or any of the others now - waves bye bye to Tempus but it is a good idea that if anything is under warranty (which other than a handful of projectors it isn't) then it should be the servers... Dual PSU no problem there our Elonex server has 3 psus and keeps my office nice and warm... As eco as I like to be the electricity bill does not come out of my meagre ict budget and scrapping working hardware is hardly environmentally friendly. I've just managed to replace our 6 year old ict suite of 3.2Ghz Pentium D's with refurbished core2duos so that should keep the eco warriors happy (dont tell them I'm thinking of keeping some to replace the celerons). 18.5 is what lickit (our old head called them that not me) want to upgrade from 10 to 100 because they cant offer anything in between; we are quite heavy users our teachers stream a lot of youtube clips etc... and I think our internet connection will start to struggle when we have an online MIS so I have started looking at the options I think the one currently favoured by manglement is sticking our heads in a bucket of sand and hoping it all goes away. PS we use online backup for admin but I worked out that if we wanted to use it for curric as well a restore would take about 4 days on a 10Mb connection (assuming no one else was using it)... What is this holiday u speak of I have never heard of such a thing now go get back in your server room

And Dual band We are getting a Ruckus system installed next week but if I was looking for an inhouse system I would have given this a look although the prices have trippled with the new AP so its not looking such a bargain any more.

Sophos say: "It is recommended, for security reasons, that Enterprise Console is not installed on a Domain Controller. This is in part due to Microsoft's recommendation not to install Microsoft SQL Server on a DC. It is also likely that additional security settings have been configured on a DC which could prevent Enterprise Console installing; one such problem is referenced in article: 116437." - You are of course free to ignore both sophos and microsoft (as link2ict frequently do when installing enterprise console) and install Enterprise console on your PDC if that is what you want to do. "multiple servers for single roles" "running expensive servers" They don't have to be single roles and they dont have to be expensive servers either; Why don't other schools use their old servers for none critical roles like we do when we replace a server instead of just sending them off for scrap especially when we are all supposed to be saving money? Things like Sophos and WSUS generate a lot of network traffic and disk IO if you are a tiny school then you might get away with it but it will slow your network down. WSUS is a godsend for keeping the workstations upto date but it hammers the disks in the server I really wouldnt want it on a PDC. We are a primary also but a lot larger i.e. over 700 kids so we probably have a lot more workstations than you do so spreading the load helps. Our Business manager seemed to think something along the same lines as you i.e. she can ignore the fact that the admin server is out of warranty because an online MIS is coming and it will be the solution to everything and they won't need to spend any money on servers... It will only cost 18.5k (per year) to upgrade our internet connection so we can use all of these new wonderful online solutions and then we can get rid of the admin server which would cost us a couple of grand every 5 years to replace, its going to save us a fortune isn't it

ECC ram has little to do with server uptime, the error correction in theory is there to reduce the risk of your data / OS becoming corrupted by a faulty stick of ram how often it makes a difference over standard ram I don't know but why would you take the risk on a server? Cloud based MIS solutions won't reduce the requirement for having more than 1 server you should already be running things like WSUS, Sophos etc... on member servers not on your domain controller. It irkes me that people think they no longer need servers once they move to an online MIS, where are you going to host the network printers, where are you going to host the MIS common drive, where are you going to host the MIS users home directories etc... Our MIS server is also a DC so we would lose a DC and increase the load on our PDC slowing down network logins as well. Our admin server gets backed up remotely every single night so the data they have is safe even if the school burns down, that is simply not an option due to the costs involved and the speed of our internet connection to even contemplate it for our curric server.

Intresting document and it confirms the points I made in my first post about opening a can of worms if someone changes ISP although I'm not sure what the ISP charges refer to as it says 5.5k for primary and 8.2k for secondary compared against 13.5k for a leased line (with less services) from someone else. We are paying something in the region of 6k for 10Mb connections and I have recently been quoted 18.5k to upgrade the connection to 100Mb next financial year so I don't know where 5.5/8.2k figures quoted come from if it was only 8.2k for a 100Mb connection then I think we would all have upgraded already. I understand that link2ict are currently unable to offer say 30 / 50Mb connections but they did say several times in the past that they were exploring the possability. The problem is a bill for 18.5k is hard to swallow but 10Mb is starting to struggle and my primary concern is that with online MIS systems in the pipeline that admin traffic will be competing with curric traffic and it could directly impact on the ability of our admin staff to do their job.

Yes thats fine. Your equipment is protected by an internal 2 amp fuse which will blow before the one in the plug does if a fault develops. The fuse in the plug is only really protecting the cables before the power gets to the internal fuse incase it gets damaged in someway. Because of the internal fuse the fuse in the plug is not as critical although it is good practise to have one rated as low as possible. Note: Fuses are generally there to protect the equipment from further damage if a fault develops, having the wrong rated fuse can increase the risk of a fire starting as the power drawn if a short develops can exceed the ratings of the cables / components. The mains fuse offers little protection to people from electrical shocks as they don't blow fast enough and the current ratings are too high which is why we use RCDs in consumer units these days which trip at around 30ma.