Paid_Peanuts

I can't believe that of Toshiba! - Sorry to hear you have this issue. Also to mention we haven't had the laptops long enough for any battery issues. no doubt these will start to appear in the next year or so... oh joy.

We have - ready for it, 26 laptop trolleys with 15 in each! And to be honest if you get things right in the first place you should be fine. We password protect the bios with a strong password and enable wireless within and prevent user disabling with Fn+wireless buttons. Through AD lockdown they cannot get to properties of WLAN/LAn so no trouble there. We use Cisco 1242AG network points for coverage with WLAn controller - no problems there. I do say to the staff in the department that gets the trolley that any damages to the laptops the department must pay for! - Amazing how much more care they take over them then!

have a look at the Dell MD3000 (iSCSI) SAN, alternatlivly look at IBMs DS3300 (iSCSI) or DS3400 (FC) SANS. All the above can take a mix of SAS/SATA for speed/storage. All can take 3 extra expansion shelves for increased storage and all based around LSI storage controller - so look and feel almost identical. As for servers - Dell PowerEdge 2950 with any mix of RAM/CPU and the IBM equivalent is 3650x Depends how much space you want in SAN and mix of hard disks (expensive bit) and how 'beefy' you want to make the servers. Did you have a budget in mind?

In very rare situations, on high-end systems, shadow copies for shared folders might be lost due to very high I/O activity. This issue was experienced by very few customers, and addressed by the latest VSS cumulative hotfixes: KB 833167 and KB 887827. See their associated web pages for more details

We came across exactly the same! There is a MS webpage somewhere which says if it is a drive of a high I/O then shadow copies can be lost. The work around for this is to implement Data Protection Manager.

Can anyone suggest which software we look into for podcasting? We have no macs in the school so it would have to run pureley on XP clients. We are a secondary school where we would like the option to be able to do video podcasts also - maybe capture powerpoint slides with audio - is this possible? I have been told to look at podium - is there anything better out there? thanks in advance.

we had this with one of our PE 2950. We downloaded the latest version of the Dell installation cd from their website and downloaded the latest ISO image of the OS from Microsofts MVLS website and used them together - suprisingly this worked.

We have experienced very similar things happening with our HP 2605dn printers. All we do is navigate to web browser - reset print server. Then if all else fails remove from print server and re-add. Usually fixes 9/10 issues. These problems usually happen once the printer has been turned off for 2 weeks or so like in the holidays.

Follow the advice about RAM above. Ideally go for a quad core processor from Intel - any speed really depending upon its intended use. But if it were me i would stick with a big name like DELL, HP, IBM and get a 3 year onsite warranty and you shouldn't go too far wrong.

Lets just says it's addictive!

A rather boring MkIV golf ferries me back and forth to work during the wet months. Its when the weather gets warmer this little baby comes out: http://www.phillipmccallen.com/new-bikes/ProdImages/DAYTONA675B.jpg thats when the fun starts!

Just purchased VMWare ESX server 3.5. I would like some recommendations on good books on how to install, best practices, pitfalls etc. Does anyone have any experience with any of the literature out there and could they suggest any which are worth a read. Thanks in advance.

CoD4 GT5 Prologue R6 Vegas 2 PSN: cyclodog

GT5 prologue on the PS3 is still pretty good - with all the physics turned to professional its still realistic. But it has to be Call of Duty 4 on the PS3 - good bye life! PSN: cyclodog

I know we are going to run ESX over 3 servers and have the rough specifications of those sorted. Its more the storage solution i am interested in finding out about as this shared storage is going to be for all virtual servers running accross 3 ESX boxes.

Hello all, We have a budget of £40-45k to spend on some new virtualisation kit. If I lay out our scenario can people suggest kit we should be looking at? Scenario: 2000 users of which 200 are staff storage capacity of 4-5 TB for file storage storage capacity for 2000 exchange boxs (30mb students, 200mb staff) Good enough IO on storage to handle exchange for 2000 users and file shares We run: 3 file servers 2 domain controllers SMS server MOM server application server sharepoint server SQL server If i have missed anyother info off people need please let me know. I am awaiting a response from Dell and IBM to what they reccomend and would welcome peoples comments. Cheers

Can anyone suggest a good TV tuner card capable of recording two channels at once? The card is to be used with Vista. Thanks

On the back of this thread can any one suggest a good TV tuner card which will enable us to record 2 channels at once?

I hadn't come accross them before - any one with any views on how to proceed with the licences?

I am currently investigating the renewal of our Schools Agreement and trying to find the most cost effective way of moving forward. Our scenario is we have 1050 machines we have to licence - all running Windows XP with Office 2003. Pretty basic stuff, we then licence a few server 2003 licences, SCOM07, MOSS07, ISA2006 all on the same schools agreement. We have been quoted £26.58 for our Desktop all languages (C28-0002) licences totalling £27,909 Which to me seems expensive as this is an ongoing cost annually. We have no plans on upgrading any of the server/workstation operating systems nor do we plan to move to Office 2007. Can any one suggest a more suitable licencing situation? If we have to pay a few more quid for the licences now rather then paying/leasing the licences again next year then we would do that. Can people also let me know how much their licence renewal cost is for C28-0002? Thanks in advance

I have a requirement for an A3 colour network printer - can any one suggest any specific model or have any experience with any to suggest? The printer can be inkjet or laser (dependant upon cost), it is going to get a fair bit of use so TCO is important. Thanks in advance.

We use Cisco for our wireless - pricier then your netgears and the like but worth every penny. We use AIR-1242AG access points with a 4400 controller. Money well spent in my opinion! Traded up from individual netgear AP's and some 3com and its a world of difference!

Wouldn't upgrading Office over half term potentially cause problems for students in the middle of their course work? I would be lynched if I did the same thing here! Also what is your reasoning for upgrading to Office 2007? BECTA have published a report saying both Office 2007 and Vista provide no benefit an educational environment.

I too am interested in the spec of media centre PC and how you have this setup (in terms of automaitcally converting to Divx and moving to NAS) as i think its about as close as were going to get instead of telling teachers to: "record their own bl**dy programs"

We have just been asked to record TV shows onto DVDs so that teachers can show them through their laptops/projectors. Does any other tech department within a secondary school do this and by what means do you do it? As we get terrible TV reception here my argument would be to have Sky+ installed so we can record easily. What are peoples thoughts?