pantscat

Ok - fair enough. In that situation I'd go for Office 365 for email - takes away the hassle of running Exchange which is pretty resource hungry, even for a small number of users. Plus you get the opportunity to use SharePoint and Lync if you want to. I've been trialing it here with a view to using it for our Students... it's very very good.

I'm intrigued as to why you'd say this? What's the justification? I'm a VMware advocate, but I'd have to say that for a small-ish school with a datacentre licence then Hyper-V would probably make more sense and would be scalable at less expense in the longer term. OP - is there any chance of getting a 2nd server? I just hate the idea of all eggs in one basket!

Do your laptops have TPM chips? If so, how about Bitlocker? We've tested out TrueCrypt here and are quite happy with the results, but we're also Sophos AV users and have noticed that we'll get their disk encryption product bundled in for no additional cost, so we're also going to be seeing how that fairs.

Can you write to the partition via any other protocol? (e.g. can you access the partition via CIFS/SMB?)

Buy HP, but tell HP that you're considering Netgear and something else... that way you guarantee that you'll get a really good bid price. That's what I did... saved an absolute fortune. If you want a recommendation of a really good supplier who'll help you out beating HP up to get a very good price, PM me.

@RabbieBurns - it's fairly interesting subject matter, I like the padlocks. But... the horizon is pissed and so it makes you feel a bit off-kilter!

Yes, what @difinity said. Avoid anything french... For around a £1,000, and given that you'd want insurance to be as cheap as possible, I'd be looking at Nissan Micras, Honda Civics and probably also have a look at mk3 VW Golfs (although check the gearboxes on these - they can be a bit crunchy!). All of these should be fairly bomb-proof and reliable.

That does sound a bit slow - you'll always get a tiny bit of a speed drop off, but that seems excessive. Are you sure it's not cabling or a duplex mismatch? (Or some other config issue).

@RabbieBurns - it's a Canon, yes? Set it to "Av" to control the aperture value, or if you're shooting completely manual then I'm pretty sure it's the cursor/wheel on the back of the camera that controls the aperture. Certainly does on my 60d.

An equally long-shot, but have you tried running it in Windows XP compatibility mode?

Ok - that's no great shakes. I'll probably start from scratch again anyway once I've evaluated it.

I notice that it's recommended to extend the AD schema before I install SCCM... but as I'm only evaluating it, will I miss out on much if I don't do it?

To be honest if it's a well-oiled ship and I'm assuming a relatively small site, and the two techs are very competent, then it could easily be done in 15 hours a week. Things would have to be setup incredibly well though... and yes, there will the odd occasion where service may be disrupted... but that's part of the deal!

Ah! Ok - good luck with the recruit!

Just curious - is this a job share?

I've heard some very good things about Nimble SANs - saw a couple of product demos in the autumn and the performance was amazing. I'm going to look at those next year when my Netapp is due for replacement.

Erm... yes, that's pretty much it. Don't forget to move the document store too...

Yes - that's correct. The exam is extra... but assuming it's recognised as an official VMware course then it's a great way to be able to sit the exam.

Thanks @TheScarfedOne - I'll fire up a new VM shortly and go slowly. I'll omit the update components until I need them, and yep GPOs are in place for WSUS. I suspect I may need to take you up on your kind offer as I get further along with SCCM! Thanks, A

Yes indeed... I found that there were quite a lot of hawkers around the popular tourist sites, especially around Sacré Cœur - one of the most popular ruses is to greet you and try and shake your hand with the aim of rather skilfully and subtly removing any rings or watch you might be wearing. So be savvy about that. Paris is beautiful. Don't worry about the Metro - it's easy, I've got no sense of direction whatsoever but managed fine. The open-top tourist bus is a lovely way to spend half a day or so - it's a great way to check out what you might like to see closer up and where these places are in relation to one-another. Don't be nervous about Paris - it's really pretty safe as long as you're sensible. Don't wear crazy jewelry/watches, don't walk around counting cash. Don't leave a camera dangling over one shoulder. Oh... enjoy the food. It's great. Go to Ladurée... (Ladurée | Fabricant de Douceurs & Gourmandises) it's a lovely place to have lunch and the macaroons and hot chocolate are fab. One of my favourite things to do is to find a nice café with seating outside and watch the world go by with a café creme... but try not to look too shocked when they charge you a fiver for it! :-) One last thing - Parisian waiters are hilarious if you won't speak french - very grumpy... so make an effort... they do appreciate it. There are some great phonetic guides to how to say simple things.

Thanks Chaps. I'll proceed...

Calling SCCM gurus... I'm keen to test out SCCM 2012 (mainly to see if I can use it to replace FOG as a zero-touch deployment tool), but I'm aware that it's not best practice to keep WSUS separate. I'm already using WSUS... so am I ok to install SCCM in my live environment or will it cause issues? Am I better off setting up a lab environment? Cheers, Ant

My first ever phone was a Motorola Graphite (one2one did some crazy deal with completely free off-peak calls...) Then I had... (most of the Nokia's identified thanks to this: http://www.fonearena.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/nokia_timeline.jpg) Mitsubishi G100e Nokia 5146 Sony Z5 Nokia 6310i (best phone evaah!) Nokia 6230 Nokia 6230i Sony Ericsson T630 (I think I had two of these in a row for some reason...) Nokia 6233 Nokia 6288 (also excellent...) ZTE Blade Huawei G300 LG Nexus 4

@nickbro has got it covered. You'll also need to be aware that you'll need to run ADPREP before you introduce a 2008(R2) Domain Controller - How to Run ADPREP for Windows Server 2008 Cheers.

It's a pleasure! Cheers, A