TonyR

Hi Specktecky Just seen your post here, looking at a similar problem and where to start. Please can you PM me a copy of the documents too. Thanks, Tony.

Hi Folks When drawing a square, corner to corner makes sense. when drawing a circle centre to radius makes sense. I know I can switch between Centre>Out and Corner>Corner using File>Settings>Tools - "Shape Tools">Create Shapes by Dragging From"...." But is there a quick way to add a "User Defined Button" to the tool box that switches between these two modes? Or would I need to create 2 (almost) identical profiles and add them as buttons on the toolbox? This would seem a pretty naff of doing it given how long my machine takes to switch profiles on the go. Many thanks, Tony.

Hi Folks I have a job that needs finishing and we have just got rid of the company that started it... (long story, just like their work ethic..) I have a new Library that needs finishing. The room has a central pillar, down which the network cables and power cables come. Around this is a custom made desk unit, basically a Y shaped desk with each leg being the same length. Each leg of teh Y is also made up of 2 thin tables back to back with a gap between them... I need to find some trunking that I can bolt down onto the tops to cover the gap between the tables (about 15cm wide) along all three legs of the Y shape. It doesnt need to come to the middle where the pillar is, it can be finished before that.. I then need to put some Network points and power points in there... What I really want is a good looking aluminium type which is triangular at the ends so that there are Data points and power points facing up and out towards the users sitting at the desks... But given my time scale I will consider anything... Fitting and wiring is not a problem.. so any suggestions please... Oh yes, I need to get it delivered to Portugal ASAP as well... Many thanks, Tony.

I guess just as it says please... Can anyone offer advice on good (preferably free or very cheap) solutions to shut down PCs at the end of the day. The Hardware: We run Vista Business, 7 Business and will soon have Snow Leopard on iMacs and Mac Airs. It is all networked. An ideal solution would have a central file/program on the server to state when to close down on particular days. Ideally with the option to run several times a day as we have some rooms used on different nights for night school etc. But I will look at anything as long it works... I know we could use the event scheduler but that seems a long way round of doing it on 120 machines. Many thanks in advance for any help you can offer here. Tony.

Hi Folks Thanks for the advice I will start putting together an urgent action plan and get things moving; i´ll post it here when its complete too.. One note I have already checked up on, our daisy chained UPS solution is possible because they are both APC units and the software when setting up the new one of the two suggests this configuration and runs through doing it. So the units know this is happening... clever stuff by the sound of it.. Many thanks, Tony.

Hi Folks, I am in desperte need of some ideas.. Over the past 2 weeks we have suffered from loads of problems, it started with a huge power surge, loads of buildings had power outages and when my network manger got into work on Sunday morning to see why our VPN was not responding, he discovered everything had faults. Servers (4 of them) were all down and when booted up 2 came up straight away, one took several attempts and one had RAID failures on 2 out of 4 and basically made it a write-off. ALL of the network devices needed to be re-set, all had returned to factory defaults including WAPS, Modems and Routers etc. We have a replacement server waiting HP to build it soon. Then we do the whole migration of datbases (SIMS Etc) as we had to install them all onto the domain server to get back up and running ASAP. We have also bought another UPS and daisy changed it, and tested it, to make sure we get over 15 minuntes for the main 2 servers. Then over the last 2 weeks we have had several power outages and lightning strikes in the area. We have several occasions on evenings when there has been one server, but not another on the same UPS report a re-boot due to power failure on a morning after. Tonight we had another power surge of some sort and all servers shut down. This time they did not re-boot as the main power fuse tripped... So, what to do? I have a principal who is livid and wants answers... well solutions really.... My initial thoughts are: 1) Bring in a specialist electrian/electrical company who can put in place some monitoring systems and help tell us if we are tripping systems internally at night time (we have issues during the day) due to flood lights and room lights being on OR if it is spikes/surges/cuts that are coming in from outside. 2) Put in some more surge protection. Currently everything is run off standard circuit breakers (trip switches / fuses). There is no specialised surge protection, perhaps there is something we need to invest in? We have individual surge protectors (5 socket extension leads with built in surge protection) on every PC and had none of these trip or cause problems. Is there something like this that we can use? Please can anyone offer any suggestions? Thoughts? Many thanks in advance, Tony.

Please can someone point me in the direction of a dummies guide to understanding fibre optic cables. We have a cabling guy who is putting in our new network fibre optics to link buildings and across one building. He speaks of installing a 4 channel fibre optic but keeps asking about 65s or 157s or similar.... I get the basic of what a fibre optic is and how it works, the supposed unlimited bandwidth etc. The installation will be linking 3 HP switches in serial... But, what is all the technical explanations for current cables etc please? Many thanks, Tony.

Hi Folks, thanks for the replies. I have just been round them again checking. 1) There is no other electronic devices or cables near by, in the walls etc. only the ones for the projector and the IWB. 2) The wobble is not happening on Menu - the Menu actully makes it stand out even more as it is dead still. 3) No induction loops etc either. I have also now got shadows appearing on some of my projectors. (Epson 440s).... 1) I think the shdows are most likely to be bad quality cables, I have fitted powered VGA splitters (VGA Video Splitter - 2 Port | With Audio | Compact Design | StarTech.com Europe) to nearly all my units now and this has got over many of the poor colour and loss of signal problems. BUT I have also had some wall mounted socket distribution boxes fitted recently and some of the shadowing has started after these have been fitted. I think it is most likely to be some kind of ghost image created by a badly terminated wire somehow... but no idea what to look for? Some of the cables need to be replaceed as I am left with some 10m cables being used for 1m runs... 2) The wobble... again, I think some kind of bad termination or poor quality cable. I might try running a brand new cable without putting it in the trunking and see what happens... maybe the mains cable in the trunking are also causing problems to the signal... Many thanks, Tony.

Hi Folks, hope you can hope me out here... I have 5 Epson EP410W´s installed in classrooms (some are the education model 410We). They are all suffering from a very small, but very distracting, image wobble. Its only a few pixels... but... We are running various different monitors on the different PCs. Some are running at 1280x1040 others a more wide screen format. Each PC uses a Converge AV ST122LE usb powered video splitter to maintain colour and brightness. Any suggestions please on what to do? Many thanks, Tony. NB: We use the same VGA splitters on other older projectors and on various Epson EP440s without any problems.

Hi Folks, thanks for the advice. The dimensions I will need to get get but layouts like this look good. My problem is getting desks made, we are in Portugal and the quality of some jobs are pretty naff here, other stuff that is imported is very good but expensive.. I guess my first battle is to figure out what height of desks I need... any ideas? Thanks, Tony.

Hi Folks I was hoping you might be able offer some ideas... I am looking at putting some new desks and chairs into my Primary ICT Room... The existing ones are too high for the Prep and younger grade students. I am thinking about some desks that would be aimed at Year 3 so that they are useable by Year 5 but also Year 1..... I need to keep the CPUs off the floor.... Can anyone please point me in the direction of suppliers for things like this. I am happy to consider all sorts of things as I also need to redesign the room to take 20 instead of 17 PCs. Sorry the picture is so poor. Any ideas greatly received... Many thanks, Tony.

Thanks. Ok, at the moment we have two buildings linked with one fibre optic link. At each of the link is a HP 24 Data Port (Cat 5/6) with one Fibre Optic point which is used to do the join. I would like to have a location in the physical middle of the school where all my future fibre optics come to. This is not the server room though as that will have to be physically in a building that is on the edg of the network. I only have experience of switches that have 24 or 48 Cat 5 data points and 1 Fibre Optic unit (with Tx and Rx on 2 cables). In my mind it makes sense that in the physical centre of the school where all the new fibre optics have to come to that I have some kind of switch that just handles fibre optics data. From this switch I have 3 fibre optic cables running to the 3 locations on the outer edge of the school. On the far end of each is a new 24 or 48 port switch or possibly a stack of switches to accomodate the number of data points that each building has. (daisey chained to each other) Is there such a thing as a 24 or 48 port switch (for Cat 5 cables) that has more than 1 fibre optic unit in it? I.e. can take 4? Can this be at the physical centre of my network? I hope I am making some sense, Thanks, Tony.

Please excuse my lack of tech speak but I hope you get my drift.. We have a 160+ computer network of desktops spread across two buildings currently linked by a pair of HP 48 port switches with the older style (8 years old) fibre optic running between then. I am about to bring on line a new teacing building (154 data points) and shortly after that a new admin building (48+ data points). The original idea is to add two new 24 port racks with the new style fibre optic cables to one end of my existing system to turn this into a star shape with 3 switches at the centre each linked using short copper Cat ## cables. Each one will then have a fibre optic cable running off it to the 3 other location.. 1 already in place the other two new.. My problem.. the centre of this setup will end up with 3x24 data points which is overkill as the whole building consists of only 3 rooms, it just happens to be physically in the centre of the star for the other buildings... My idea... Can I put a fibre optic switch at the centre - for example a QLogic SanBox 1400 Series unit to do the fibre optic switching and then the existing local switch that is at the centre gets upgrades to the new style of fibre optic (cabling needs replacing as someone burried it in concrete...) this leaves me with just enough points at the building in the centre and then each building that is out on the edge can have what ever they need too... Please can I have some thoughts.. and ideas of what other types of units I might be thinking about to do the job. Many thanks, Tony.

Probably my mistake, my Network Manager knows all that stuff, I try to keep up to date... but... Thanks - I was thinking along the lines of a normal "style" windows log in screen when the device boots up, which connects to our active directory to check username and passwords... I think maybe it might mean these types of devices are not what I was looking for, I like the idea of a quick booting device which specialises in internet use etc but I can not afford to forgoe on user responsiblities and tracability of who has done what and when on them.. perhaps I need to look at some other tablet style device that will work with Active Directory... Many thanks, Tony.

Hi Folks Can anyone advise please, I am looking into getting some tablet devices for our new learning resource centre, and I need to quote in the next two days to the CDM committe to approve finance. I have 3 questions: 1) What would people recommend - the scenario is 5 devices, located in a learning resource centre, (small library, small school). To complement 5 PCs and 5 Apple Macs in their. These will be used primarilly for web based research and online apps. Ideally I need them to force students to log in to the school network so I can verify who is using them. AND. to allow them to store onto the school network in their user name areas. (Currently windows server 2008r2. but will be 2010 soon). 2) Security - Does anyone know if any of these have a lockable solution, i.e. a cable that can be attached? 3) Charging / Docking - Do any have a docking station that will do the charging for me rather than cables. I am thinking of one next to each of a small (5) collection of comfy seats. I have seen the Samsung GT-P1000 Galaxy Tablet. This seems resonably priced and 3rd party companies make charging/docking stations but no idea about security... Any thoughts VERY much appreciated. Many thanks, Tony.