Roberto

It gets over 30 degrees _very_ quickly in my WFH office, which is a log cabin in the garden. It's lovely in the spring and the autumn but gets way too warm or way to cold very quickly in the winter and summer, so I have one of those aircon units that both heats and cools. Couldn't manage without it. Especially as the laptops we use tend to run hotter than the surface of the sun without any help from the environment. We did have aircon fitted to the IT classrooms when I worked for the college back in the day. When you consider we're dealing with the heating abilities of 25 to 30 computers per classroom plus, how can I put this, the potentially variable hygiene qualities of teenage students, it was generally held to be needed. We also have a portable aircon unit in the kitchen, Mrs Roberto runs a baking business from home and you can probably imagine what it would be like running an oven all day in the summer without that, not to mention some icing just not setting in the heat.

Bit of an odd one this - apologies if this is the wrong forum for this. I have family involved in a church who have just purchased an old community centre that they are planning to open as a church. It's a very "high energy" kinda place that live-streams their services, does all kinds of things like that. They're effectively a charity so have money (they purchased a massive community centre after all!) but having gone big on that, budget for the fit-out is, as ever, tight. They've asked me for advice and I've gone down for a look and I think its probably a very similar space, with the exception of the main hall where they'll hold the services, to a small primary school. So, I am planning to recommend a few vendors I know, such as Redway, but I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for a local supplier who is used to working on tight budgets. They're using stuff like Dante for streaming so they want some parts of their network to be faily performant, but overall I'm recommending they primarily go wireless so we need someone to quote to do the wired network for the Wifi and ethernet to a few strategic spots, active kit to connect all this too, and a cheap wifi solution. They're quite taken with ubuiquiti but not wedded to it. Also they're interested in door key-card entry systems.

We do that where I work. We do have 2 tiers of device and some people, those running complex mathematical models locally for example, are the few that have the top tier of device, but outside of that specific exception, the rest of us, CEO to cook and everyone in between globally is running the same device. Well maybe a localised keyboard…

I think its difficult to save money at the best of times, no one thinks they're wasting it in the first place, do they? I would expect that most of you have already taken most or all of the low-hanging fruit at your employers from previous budget cuts and restrictions. What's left now should be less of a "IT / Department X budget cut" and more of a "school or MAT-wide efficiency drive", which might mean some people having to give up what they want because it isn't what they need. This needs real leadership from the top, not just the head of whatever team.

If these are government figures then I guess whatever else these incidents were, they were ones people thought were worth reporting for whatever reason. So it's probably not something getting blocked at the firewall or mail filter with no issues, or an email going to Mr Miggins when it should have gone to Mrs Miggins but effectively no harm done (or at least, no complaint made), if I had to guess. Actually if you read the summary on the govt. website they're fairly complimentary to the education sector in general on this matter.

This is quite interesting / scary Schools under attack: The latest numbers and facts from the UK Government Of those included in a cyber survey carried out in winter 2023/24 and the qualitative element in early 2024. 52 per cent of primary schools identified a breach or attack in the past year 71 per cent of secondary schools identified a breach or attack in the past year 86 per cent of further education colleges identified a breach or attack in the past year All other education institutions were more likely to have identified cyber security breaches or attacks in the last 12 months than the average UK business. Further education and higher education institutions are more likely to experience breaches and attacks than schools, and to experience a wider range of attack types, such as impersonation, viruses or other malware, and unauthorised access of files or networks by outsiders Higher education institutions are more likely to be affected by cyber-attacks – 97 per cent identified a breach or attack in the past year. Just under six in 10 of the HE institutions identified that they’d been negatively impacted by a breach. An honest question - if you're one of the 48% of primary schools that has not identified a breach, for example, how confident are you that means there is no breach, rather than one you have not yet detected. If you're lucky enough not to be breached yet, do you really think you're smarter than all your counterparts at 52%, 71% or 86% in your sector, or just luckier?

Microsoft announced quite clearly when Windows 11 was newly launched that this would be a requirement. And people did kick up a fuss. Microsoft rightly get a lot of stick for some of their decisions but people complain when they refuse to update things because of legacy commitments and people moan when they do force an upgrade that won't support 8 or 9 year old CPUs. I think Dr Cheese has the right answer - buy Windows 10 extended support and use that time frame to transition to supported hardware. Frankly that price for edu extended support is a bargain, you probably don't want to know what we were quoted when we asked.

CyberArk password vault.

100%. The need to rewrite Outlook is totally not controversial in my book, even if the rewrite we've ended up with is controversial. When I was a Microsoft MVP some time ago now I spent time with the Exchange team. One of the PMs had a "rigged" magic 8-ball on his desk and whenever you asked him why Exchange did something dumb, he'd shake the magic 8 ball and the answer: "Outlook not so good" came up. Then I spent some time working withthe Office team and found people who felt the same way about Exchange, albeit without the cutesy gimmick. In both cases, it's legacy, technical debt that's the issue. Microsoft's ability for its OS to run 30-year old apps and connect to systems using 40-year old standards is at once its biggest competetive advantage and its biggest curse. Apple as a counterpoint, whatever else you think about them, are simply not encumbered by the need to remain compatible with OS/2, or deal with the code in an important subsystem that was written 25 years ago by someone who then retired 20 years ago and died 10 years ago, and which nobody understands or dares touch today. Apple get criticised for their relative frequent and heavy handed deprecation of old systems but I think it allows them to act and react much faster to both trends in system design and changes in customer desires.

I think the removal of com plugins in 'new' outlook is seen as a feature, not a bug. And to be fair, the old plugin model is a beast to support, probably a security risk, and is well overdue for its retirement. I wonder how long until we see similar versions of the rest of Office. I'm pretty sure Microsoft have them in test but I think they really would need them to be much closer to feature equivilency with the 'old' versions before they could even begin to push them out.

We had desks like that when I was a school pupil. In fact I had one at home to do homework for a while after my father, whose employer did a lot of work in schools, 'borrowed' a 'spare' one. Gave me a real smile to see that blast from the past of a desk to be honest! But the laptops in the place I worked were not in desks quite that old.

We have a number of Line of Business apps that depend on an olde worlde style traditional COM Outlook plugin. We're working hard to reduce that number and I've personally taken massive strides to cut the number of plugins like this that need to be updated and managed (and that's a huge resource saving across the 20-thousand plus installs we have so I'm very pleased with myself about that) but we can't just turn the remainder off.

We experimented with this when I was at LSFC and ended up with desks to which we had fitted a pocket/lip, into which a laptop we’d chained to that desk could sit when not in use. I know that sounds odd and I hated it at first but it got around the maintenance issue Drcheese mentioned with the fancier desk ideas, and actually worked really well according to the people teaching in those rooms… … and it’s boring but I’d suggest teachers thinking “wow, this is a great room to teach normal lessons in” may be more valuable in the long run than “wow, a 3D printer”, (or VR headset, or in-classroom Gregg’s or whatever other gimmick du-jure), “if only I knew how to use one, and if only it didn’t block half the class from seeing the whiteboard.

I’m kinda with Alistair for this. Really for key apps and processes most businesses operate a ‘change freeze’ at key times of the year - for example, Amazon operates a change freeze on its retail and logistics platforms around key shopping dates like Christmas. I’d always tried to do the same around exams, enrollment, etc when I was at the college. Didn’t always manage to make it stick, but things went better when we did make it stick.

Yeah, I got involved in BMS systems stuff when I was still at the college but that's beginning to be a long time ago and I've got no idea of the current state of play. I do remember the complexity and expense though...

I really couldn't say. I doubt it to be honest, it's meant to work with the kind of simple boilers you get in most homes. I would be surprised if there wasn't a commercial version aimed at commercial heating systems for businesses out there somewhere however.

Punishment for doing badly in a test? This head teacher is bad, and whoever appointed them should feel bad.

Thanks to everyone who helped with suggestions and observations. Just to update - picked up an old Lenovo SFF workstation from ebay, a Thinkstation E73 with an i3 4xxx series CPU, 8Gb of RAM and bunged in an old SSD I had. When I've got his apps installed he will be delighted hopefully. It runs XP and frankly will be a massive upgrade on his old device.

Needs to be in a Teams meeting room, or an online meeting, but I use Teams Premium and Copilot for M365 and it's been great. Manages online meetings with 60+ people with no stress.

I treated myself to a high-end custom build from Scan at at Christmas and am very pleased with it. I very nearly went with CyberPower PC so I’d say they’re worth a shot if you don’t fancy Scan. I got a nzxt h6 flow case, ASUS TUF GAMING X870-PLUS WiFi motherboard & Ryzen 9800x3d cpu, 48 gb ram (2x24), Radeon 7900xt gpu and 2x 4TB WD BLACK SN850X nvme drives. Look and behaves absolutely amazing. I play a lot of games and went large on a few options which you don’t need to do if you don’t want a beast!

Thanks - got something along these lines for £60 from ebay. I'm really hopefuly I can get something reasonable together for the old chap.

Thanks all. Some good news - managed to get a device that mounts many drive types including IDE as USB drives. The drive won't image due to errors but I've managed to get all his files off of it. Any reccomendations for a good place to get old / refurb kit that will run Windows XP? I know I could roll the dice on gumtree but would rather a bit more pedigree if possible...

The spare PSU's mobo plug does not physically fit the mobo. Not a huge surprise tbh! So I've ordered a IDE to SATA adapter to hopefully read the drive, and I have seen a few refurb units around that I can hopefully move the data to. Thanks for the advice.

Thank you. I have a spare modern Corsair psu, not sure if I dare risk it or not! I’ve found an IDE to SATA adapter that I can hopefully use to get his data off the HDD, if that works I’m honestly tempted to just order a refurbished PC from the XP era

I'm in a bit of a pickle. My 90-something FIL has an old HP Pavillion 750c Desktop PC. It runs Windows XP, it's not on the internet (so he says), I've never been allowed to touch it, until now, because it died in a power cut. At that age he cannot handle change well and as you can imagine, is utterly heartbroken. I have no idea what could be wrong with it - the PSU power light comes on but nothing happens when I press the power button. When I opened the case, the cooler fell off one of the motherboard chips where it had been held on with a twisted pipe cleaner. Needless to say, it has _never_ been backed up and he has loads of data that's irreplaceable and old games he loves and cannot bear the thought of losing. It's been a long time since I've opened a case and seen IDE drives and parallel cables. So what am I asking for - does anyone have a working desktop PC of a similar vintage - mid 2000s I'd guess, that I could purchase, or knowledge of a refurb place that might have something like this. I'm hoping I can transfer his disks to new hardware, back them up, and give him something back. I honestly don't think he could cope with any part of the operating system or apps changing so I can't just put his stuff on a new PC even if I thought it would run, so it needs to be something that can run Windows XP well for a few more years. I think he'd cope with a new physical desktop/case under his desk but not much more change than that.