steve

My sister lives in a SO house and is happy with it. However I have philosophical objections to SO. By buying into SO, house prices are being kept artificially high. The only way houses will become affordable is if people don't buy - demand will drop and so will prices. House builders are hell bent on keeping prices high, if people can't afford a full mortgage on a house, then how about half of one then. Where will it end? Owning a 10th? a 100th? We should stop seeing houses as an investment and go back to seeing them as a place to live. I also hate the obsession with property programs showing people trying to get rich quick from property. BTW I don't have a house / mortgage, I'm saving for a deposit and waiting until I can afford a place myself.

We get this too.

Well it all depends whats on the servers you want to backup. For the backup server its self you will need the Backup Exec Server product. For each other server you want to back files up from you'll need a Windows System Agent For SQL and exchange you'll need an Agent for each of those too. If you have 2 SQL servers you only need 1 agent, likewise for exchange. You don't need to buy support for these and you don't have to have any continuous annual maintenance fees, but obviously you won't have any access to updates etc.

I've done this with YHGfL and it works great once its all in place. First check you can see your email server via the web interface internally. http://exchange_server/exchange For external access you'll need a subdomain. We use webmail.school.LA.sch.uk Decide what you want it to be and find out who can change it for you. If you manage your schools domain name then you can do this yourself - typically you'll need to contact the company that manages it on your behalf - the ISP / webhost you use. You can use Nominet UK to find who manages your domain (the registrar). Before you setup the subdomain you'll need to know the ip address it will point to. At this point you need to contact YHGfL and ask the to setup a reverse proxy to the IP address of your email server where you can access the exhange web interface. Ask them to set it up on port 443 (https). Also find out from YHGfL what IP address you need to point your subdomain to and find out what format they want your certificate sending in. Pass the reverse proxy IP address from YHGfL on to your domain registrar. Now you need to secure your exchange web interface with a certificate. I use Cheap SSL Certificate, 256 Bit SSL Encryption, Buy Secure United Kingdom you can use someone else and just use the instructions on their site. They also offer a free 30 day trial too if you just want to see if it works. Once you have a certificate, as well as applying it to your server, you'll need to send a copy of it to YHGfL for their reverse proxy. They may ask for it in a funny format so make sure when generating your cert you keep bear this in mind.

Our LA has very few meetings for techies. Maybe one every 2-3 years

Robocopy has a huge number of switches you can use. I tend to use: robocopy.exe "source" "destination" /E /COPY:DAT /R:5 /W:5 /NDL /NP >"logfile.txt" Then delete manually after when I've checked the logfile. If you want something more graphical there's Robocopy GUI however that needs to be installed.

From and ipconfig /all you'll get something like: Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : my-pc Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/1000 CT Network Connection Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0C-76-28-A9-5B Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.14 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 212.23.3.100 212.23.6.100 Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 09 April 2009 16:55:45 Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 12 April 2009 16:55:45 For this computer there are 2 DNS servers: 212.23.3.100, 212.23.6.100 Check on a dynamic assigned PC and a static assigned PC the DNS servers are the same as each other (they'll be different to mine). Also check the DNS suffix on both PCs

Try pinging the server with the -a command (ping x.x.x.x -a) from the problem PC. This will resolve the name of the IP address. If it gives the incorrect name then some thing's wrong with your DNS.

Welcome ayoward. As Marci said, your input will be most welcome and appreciated. I've not heard of the training opportunities either, and as you suspect little filters through the LA.

For quite a few cisco IOS downloads, you only need a login for the site. Just register and check to see if you can get the IOS. Or post the specific model and I'll check.

O2 3G PAYG USB Modem

Nearest I could come up with:

Form website:

Sandwell - Agilisys - val unknown wiki updated

They are a real pain with this. We learnt the hard way - you can't buy replacement keys. Fix them on the inside of the case.

Hmm, if the total costs are the same it makes me wonder if they've done the costing in reverse. Company wants x profit, tupe staff will cost y, therefore we can spend z on kit. A TCO of each cost could be put together (and should be) to allow comparison of approaches. A good TCO will give a good outline of how well though through the approaches are - how often equipment it to be replaced, staffing cost, software licensing, etc. With a good TCO you should be able to see where the money is going and how long the life cycle is whether 5 or years more - my expectation is that most BSF IT hardware will be leased so you need to check if you terminate a contract they don't want everything back. Best of luck trying to make sense of it!

Its a while since I bought a phone system (but will be buying a new one this year) so don't jump on me if I'm wrong but ... The number of phone lines in the school isn't limited by the incoming line but by the PBX. Only the number of simultaneous external / incoming calls is limited by the incoming line. An ISDN 30 line can support between 8 and 30 lines into the school. The incoming line has only a small part to play in deciding whether to choose a VOIP system over a standard PBX. If using a VOIP system calls to the outside world are made via a VOIP to ISDN gateway. VOIP systems can use you IP network, therefore simplifying infrastructure while making the phone system more flexible and scalable. We are looking at a future partial rebuild and I see VOIP as the way forward for us. By replacing our existing (at capacity) PBX with a new VOIP system, we will be able to use our existing IP network to replace all existing extensions. And when we start building it will be easy to add these in as part of the IP network.

It may work nicely in NZ, but when I try it on my laptop it gives a BSOD every time I choose my tuner

No loss to us. Don't know where you've all been getting support from, but from my experience NEC have been poor. Never have parts in stock, insist on us jumping through testing hoops, 30% failure rate, poor build quality. Would have never used them again anyway .....

Saw this at BETT and it could be just what you need: Planet eStream

I've added this to the wiki and created a summary table of no. contracts awarded.

Unfortunately the HP CP3505n is now end of life, and they are very hard to come by :-(

We achieved the award last year. It was driven by the IT teaching staff and supported by an Assistant Principal. Us techies didn't see the inspector at all during their visit.

Down for about 3 hours again today. Sent the following to all staff: I got 6 emails asking what plan B was!! (For teachers - try remember how you taught before you had the internet) (For support staff - try going to a real shop/bank/travel agent)

Cheers tom, will try that tomorrow.