sahmeepee

on a 255.255.252.0 (/22) subnet, you can use the .255 address, because it's not the broadcast address for that subnet, but i'm being pedantic

Looks to me like they've sidestepped it by allowing HTML as an export option for powerpoint. Notice as well that it says your software has to be capable of saving in open formats, not that you should necessarily use that capability. The current wording allows for the MS Office, .doc, .ppt etc. status quo.

I guess you do what works with your network or, more to the point, with your users. For us it's not such a big problem, so we don't enforce a policy. With volume shadow copy /previous versions restoring deleted files is pretty easy. I think 5 in 5 minutes is a good level to choose though: the time has to be short enough that it's not worth sending the pupil to the techies to get unlocked!

Wow, quite a lot to wade through... I'd say that enforcing the use of FITS is likely to be very unpopular with some schools - look at how many(few) have fully implemented it so far and it's been around quite a while now. Some schools won't be willing to hire an extra helpdesk employee, which would cripple the school's FITS implementation somewhat. I couldn't work out what shall/should/may-status this sentence had: "In most cases, institutions will want to offer parents access to their child’s work [...]", but it looks an awful lot like I'm going to be supporting another 2,500-3,000 users (schools have more parents than pupils) and their password changes. There are umpteen different ways that could be approached, but it's not a small task however you do it. "Many ‘smart cards’/ID cards also allow for electronic registration, helping to keep track of learners" is daydream stuff. If learners don't want to be tracked, their friend will carry the card around and the system/teachers will be none the wiser. There are other benefits to them (as mentioned in the doc) and we use them here, but not for registration. "This requirement implies that an institution needs to strive for a service that can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and that maintenance will be kept to a minimum and not scheduled to take place in the institution’s normal working hours." - how do they define normal working hours? Until end of lessons? Until end of clubs? Until support staff go home? Who is carrying out the maintenance if they've gone home? I try to keep maintenance after school and because I'm a kindly soul I work late (gratis) doing service packs on servers and the like. If they're telling me I "shall" do that, I shall need paying for it! I'll read the 69 page techspec when I've got a couple of weeks free!

I'd turn off account lockout. You can always look at ways of recording failed login attempts centrally if you're worried about serious hacking attempts. What happens when they start locking out staff accounts? Or your Head's account? No thanks!

The console command is for connecting to the session which is displayed on the physical monitor, as opposed to a terminal server session. If you try connecting with "mstsc /console /v:your2003server" you'll get the screen you'd see if you plugged a monitor into the server rather than a ctl+alt+del login prompt. I'm crap at explaining it, hope that makes sense! UPDATE: BTW, you're allowed that console rdp connection in addition to the 2 normal terminal services connections on a standard server, which can come in handy on occasion.

You can make a terminal server connection to one of your servers and log in with admin credentials. That won't let you make settings in config dialogs, but I'm not sure any of the suggestions here do except runas. In some cases you could probably make a shortcut to the program you want to run and under the shortcut's properties, shortcut tab, advanced, tick "run with different credentials". You can use iexplore.exe for file management under a different account but you need to F5 after deleting files for it to display properly. In the case of control panel applets you'll want to makea shortcut to the actual .cpl file and modify that - otherwise "run with different credentials" will be unavailable.

We use Websense integrated into ISA 2000. We aren't using any of ISA's web filtering abilities, but we do use it to control what network traffic goes in and out of the LEA network. We don't really have any problems with Websense. The reporting is pretty thorough and logs to SQL Server in our case although I think that's probably optional. From the OP's spec, it does everything except 4 (and therefore the "rooms" part of 2) with the way we have it configured. If teachers need to turn off web access in a room they can use NetOp here. They only ask about once/twice a year.

Take a look at: http://flickr.com/tools/

If you do that, you tend to get USB 1 speeds, I think because you're using your BIOS's USB support

OK, serious bonus points for someone that can give me a good method for booting off a USB pen (easy part) then accessing files on a USB hard drive at USB 2 speeds. I'm thinking for easy non-network ghosting. Super mega bonus points if you can do this with NTFS on the USB hard drive (ntfsdos might do that part)

If you have Outlook Web Access set up, try going to: http://exchangeservername/public/ And browsing there. (Try under a mail-enabled admin account first)

They've done these cashback offers in the past, but I've always suspected that there's a catch and I'll end up paying full price. I know they're big in America (it's known as a mail-in rebate over there), but they don't seem to have caught on in Blighty. Has anyone taken HP up on a cashback offer? Experiences?

If you're hellbent on using laptops for music, RME do some nice PCMCIA sound cards, but they might not be budget-firendly Our music labs have fairly high-spec Dells with m-audio audiophile cards in - good quality, good price, good drivers (i'm talking to you, Creative Labs!). Software-wise we have Cubase SX3, Sibelius and a few other bits and bobs. We had quite a few software niggles with SX3, but we got it on release date. People buying it now shouldn't have to run all the updates an suffer the side-effects. For furniture, we have desking with a raised shelf at the back. The shelf holds the PC and TFT and the keyboard+mouse when not in use. The music keyboards slide underneath that when they're not in use. Simple, cheap and works well.

That is one of my pet peeves. I take the time to send a guide to the BCC function of their email client. Hopefully some others do the same and the message sticks

How are you ghosting from a USB HDD? Do you have images on the HDD or is the HDD a clone of your drive? What are you booting from? We'd like this as a plan B for when ghostcasting isn't convenient.

good point! anyone tweaking the layout of the htm should be testing solely in IE because the vbscript will never work in firefox anyway.

I use Network Notepad too. It's fairly basic, but it seems he's recently improved some of the usability niggles. I'm still struggling to create custom objects for it mind you, transparent ones especially. Ideally I could do with a tool to convert $somevectorformat to .wmf

You have to put a sign in a prominent position (e.g. over the sinks) to notify people that they are being recorded. You also have to restrict access to the footage to only designated people, but that also applies with classroom cameras.

I didn't have to do any long-winded box ticking AFAIK. You can multiselect in their web pages with shift and/or ctrl though! For the ILA I did a csv, which was a bit annoying considering they were all set to the same number. (yes, that was back off-topic)

I have the Sitewatcher 2 widget which pings a handful of servers, but I plan to steal its code and make one that does HTTP GET and another for DNS queries as they have a habit of going down at our LEA. I like sitewatcher 2 because it minimizes to a tiny applet with green/red LEDs for status so doesn't clutter my screen.

Can I take back what I said about kensington locks? http://www.videogamepirate.com/random_stuff/kensington623.wmv (2nd hit for "kensington lock" on google)

They'll probably have a locking slot for using a Kensington locking device. You then just have to find a way of securely attaching the Kensington cable to the desk.

If you're under pressure, you could always try running the fmssetup.exe from your sims\setups folder, but my experience with that method has been bad (maybe try it out on a spare PC first). If it does go on OK, find and run fmsload next to get your fms version up-to-date.

There may be a connect.ini on your local machine, but you probably want the connect.ini on your network drive (in our case it's at s:\sims\connect.ini). The most reliable way of installing FMS is from your most recent CD then doing an update by running fmsload. Post again if you get stuck at that point as it seems there are a few bugs (surely not!).