Roberto

We've got a mix of SSD and traditional drives in a few servers. The reliability of the SSDs seems about equal to that of the traditional drives so far.

I know my girlfriend wouldn't mind living in Aus, all other things being equal... but there's always an element of "the grass is always greener" in any talk about emigration. If the best reason to go somewhere else is "the weather's a bit rubbish here" then that's not a great reason; the weather can be rubbish anywhere.

Idiots. Especially the one yelling "Noooooooooo" over and over. He was on Radio 5 the other day and sounded like an idiot then too. People like that need to understand something: Stuff happens mate. You're supposed to be an adult. Deal with it.

I've been losing you was better than take on me...

I don't think there is. You can maybe lock things down to some degree (delegate rights, use policies to try and hide things) but a user account is either an administrator account or it isn't.

It might be a very good sci-fi action type film but as a piece of trek it looks rather misjudged.

Of course the daily fail are misrepresenting the meat of the comments they're quoting, that's how you know the article is a genuine daily fail article. But there are also examples on edugeek going back years (well before ipads were the current 'shiny') of organisations investing in that year's "shiny-du-jour" under the assumption that somehow something magical will happen and the students will find themselves better educated simply by being in the same room as the 'shiny' with no real thought of how to integrate this new toy into teaching and learning properly.

My first thought, and I know this is a bit lame, is whether or not there might be issues with the domain join. Without wanting to sound like I'm teaching you to suck eggs, can you access domain resources ok from the server? Can you map and view shares on the problem server from other machines when no-one is logged in? If the fundamentals aren't quite right then everything will stem from that.

We don't use free helpdesk software here as we've not yet found anything that's up to scratch for our needs, but I'd certainly agree that Spiceworks is worth a look. ManageEngine also have freebie helpdesk software and we use some of their other products and find those to be ok, so they might be worth a try too.

So much this. You can't reasonably say "I want staff to be admins except I don't" which is what this question amounts to, sorry OP.

Have you looked at the Microsoft Knowledgebase? This article seems possibly relevent: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2751452

Not so simple I'm afraid. My Principal employs me to get the college what it needs. Not him what he wants. He comes to me with ideas and relies on my professional expertise to explain what is and is not possible, feasible and affordable. That's a huge part of what it means to undertake a professional role in an organisation. Simply giving people whatever they ask for just because they're higher up the ladder than you is a short-sighted approach that, in a reasonably sensible organisation, is more, not less, likely to result in you no longer getting 'your payday at the end of every month'. If you go back to the original post from @gsk, their head asked them for 'a laptop' with various requirements, not 'a macbook' or whatever, and gsk asked here for advice on how to best achieve that. Not so simple, again; their head doesn't know what they want, just what they want it to do.

Can't comment on other solutions but I'll second the people speaking up for AB Tutor. It works fell for us...

We spend the same on teacher/head laptops as we spend on everyone else laptops, around £450 I think.

Indeed, we have 142 access points, and 6 more about to go up.

Directions to the exit.

I'm looking not to go. There's some important paint I need to go watch drying instead.

Inappropriate emoji are, in my opinion, not the issue here. The sentiment behind them is... I appreciate you don't agree but I don't see this as a technology issue, but rather a behavioral one. If a kid were to send a rude comment to me, I would be far more concerned as to the content of their message rather than the medium they're using to express it. If they were to write a rude word (or draw a hand giving the middle finger) on a bit of paper and hand it to me I wouldn't start calling for pens and paper to be banned. in any case, I see that @kierensaul has offered a possible solution. I don't know if its possible to enforce the custom keyboard they're suggesting with a MDM solution just to ensure that its properly locked down just to ensure that the fix is a robust one?

Actually they're implementing a standard that pretty much all the manufacturers are implementing. And it's a cartoon middle finger. Not something I view with relish myself but hardly the fall of western civilisation. Even if they did allow adult content on the devices in general (and they've been consistent in turning back that tide up until now) then you can still manage what is allowed on your particular devices can you not? I feel your reaction is a trifle over the top.

You just do that. Plug it in with the appropriate sized cables, and go. A HDD docking station like this one will make that a lot easier in fairness.

This is the thing. VLEs can be used well (we have some departments that use our Blackboard VLE extremely well and others not so much) but "Because someone else said we have to." is the worst possible reason to get something and the least effective way possible to motivate others to use something that doesn't appear to solve any of their problems.

Running Aruba here. It is complex and, I think, quite expensive. But sometimes your organisation's needs are complex. We've got two controllers and a clearpass server and it's all been extremely reliable.

So much this. We do provide a higher spec model to anyone who has a particular requirement, but all our laptops for all our staff and students are from the same range from the same supplier we buy everything else from at that time. It's impossible to support a mixed bag effectively.

No, thank you.

FE Jobs - IT Infrastructure Engineer at Luton Sixth Form College This would be working for me as part of the college's IT Infrastructure team, handling support of servers and back-end services along with some advanced project work developing and improving systems. I'm obviously biased but I think this is a good, interesting role as I'm sure @Norphy will be able to testify. Please feel free to inbox me if you have any questions about the role.