Sirbendy

I've got some staff with VMWare server and shared folders(early attempts), but as I say, Player is now my preferred solution..you can "tweak" it for drag and drop between VM and physical and shared folders, and it really is seamless. Put sophos on both the VM and physical, and you've got both covered. Office 03 with the 07 compatibility pack too, you're laughing. Then to back up the data, they can either drag it to the VM and back up to network, or drag off to local and burn to DVD. Seems happy in both XP and Vista too. We use a similar idea for our VPN..give staff the client and remote administrator, configured to connect to a VM that we host "in building", so they're able to get in and use "a workstation" from home, but are merrily isolated from the hardware in the process. Even my VPN access is to my own Admin VM. I can access any other VM as well, or the hardware in any suites, but leaving one machine up to host 8/10 VMs for it makes more sense to me.

Just curious really..we've got lots of teachers with laptops - how do you give yours access to your network and retain useability "off net" at home? We used to do ours the Authority recommended way, using Windows file sync. Nightmare. Once they're off net, they baulk and lag as they're looking for the network links etc..pretty damn unuseable, yet many many schools on this grid use the system still. We ended up reformatting the laptops to just plain standalone XP, to allow use at home. Which made them useless "inter building", as they weren't allowed on. Now with the coming of age of VMWare etc, we're reinstalling them all as standalones with Office/Sophos etc, and giving them all a VM on the laptop in Player 2.0 that's running a network build, with drag/drop and shared folders enabled. People love this solution..they use the physical at full speed at home, and the VM at work, and swap data between them merrily. So..how do you all do it?

Deliveries here come to either the site manager or reception. They get sorted, we get informed of them, and then if he's passing, he'll drop them off. If we're passing his office first, we grab it.

Ah! You have a lemon! (Oh yes you do.)

Yep. Mine does that too. I have one for each artist. Sumvision M18 1GB MP3 Player BLACK - Buy discount Sumvision M18 1GB MP3 Player BLACK - Save on cheap Sumvision M18 1GB MP3 Player BLACK I do believe mine is one of those...heh.

I have a 1gb generic USB MP3 player stick I use in the Astra..Think it's FAT32. Might be FAT. I'm a cheapass though - standard boggo Vx radio unit, tape adapter with 3.5mm jack plugged into USB MP3 player, hidden in the centre console, powered from a 12v->USB adapter that I've hard wired in under the console and run out to a 4 port USB hub. Has the nice benefit that I can use it to power my satnav, charge the phones etc as well.

Surely not...wasn't 12345-6789 one as well? I haven't got my "legacy software" CD pack on me today for a test. I can STILL recall Win95a/b/Win98/XP product keys. Shame I can never remember my damn card PIN.. I'd say you've been in the game too long when you can walk into a suite, and pick up the discord of one fan in 60 that's just starting to go unbalanced or dry. Or when you go out to a teachers car that won't start, see the text "Please press the "Start" button", and when that does nothing grab a spanner and do the "battery disconnect for 30 seconds, reconnect" routine and reboot the onboard systems. Funny thing is that's worked nicely the last 2 times..heh.

I have very limited lower body strength..17" monitors I can do. Ish. Not up/down stairs or long periods mind. Had to move a 22" and 25" CRT the other day. Sod that. What I do is nab a wheelie chair and dump it on that, then push that across the building. I would say pregnancy moves the goalposts though, and you should refuse to do it on a safety viewpoint. No reasonable person should refuse that!

Nation? I always have difficulty in getting into "non Discworld" books (or the "science of Discworld series), but...I started reading at 6ish, by 7.30 I was up to page 251 and had to force myself to stop, or I'd have nothing to wind down with tonight. Not bad at all.. A departure from the Discworld, and easy to read. I just wish I could forget what I read so I can read it again. Never happens, sadly.

I did say to the kids - "If we're going to die, then since I've just renewed my car insurance, I'll be quite upset. And I'm only on page 251 of Pratchett's "Nation". " They've all been convinced we're going to die..it's all we're hearing. One girl who was in the office gave us both a hug when we said "...but...it's been run already..and we're still here..". Kids...heh. I said to my line manager - "look on the upside. If you die tomorrow, at least you kept your hair. If you don't, you have to face going bald even further. Oh, sorry, was that not tactful? Damn."

Had a few of these, damn staff. Download "IttyBitty Process Manager" to a pen, boot laptop in safe mode, run that and nuke any suss processes. I've seen things merrily hide from taskman. Use MSCONFIG to stop any startup nonsense. Bog off the resident AV - if it was any use it wouldn't get into that mess. I always install Avast! AV, and set for boot time scan. Boot it, let it run through and raise eyebrows as you nuke the nasties. If all else fails, build and boot off a PEBuilder CD, ghost the laptop HDD off to an image on the network, nuke the heap and start again, then get the AV installed and tested OK, and THEN copy the files out of the ghost image using Ghostwalker. Any nasties get nuked by the (now functional) AV. I've lost count of the amount of machines that cross my path in a hideous /unuseable state with AV that's merrily reporting all systems go. IMO, if you can't backup your data you deserve to lose it. Not that I ever do.

Sounds like what we got. "PSU issue? Never heard of it mate". The only one I got any sense out of was a departing tech who'd had enough.."We've got an internal memo here...bad caps in PSUs beginning TH-0N2286 are to be replaced FOC, no questions asked. Affects GX260s and GX60's amongst others.". Every one I tore down - leaking caps in the top left corner of the PSU..photos and letters to Dell along with "We have 70, the new building will be Dell throughout UNLESS you continue to bugger about.." Needless to say, 70 new CN series PSUs arrived in short order.

good call - check the USB is intact. All of our 70 GX60s have expired with similar...it was a dodgy PSU batch. Dell don't like admitting it.. If I see any PSUs with the part number TH-0N2286, I flag them as lemons.

Ah, PICAXE. Yes, we use it in DT now. I was pre that..heh. Quite a bit pre that, too.

excellent! I've been waiting for this. I do like his books..

I remember that..heh. I did a battery powered proximity alarm with an IR diode..fairly sure it ran as well! My all time fave lessons..the smell of burning silicon never gets dull.

Don't go there. I've got to mugshot all staff for a photo ID board...This has now been going on for over a month. They all run away or get really naggy about it. Tough titty for them, I have CCTV in these suites. If they won't stand still, I'll get them another way.

My 3000+ is only a 1.6..heh. not on the domain but mapped to the relevant drives, flat XP build (SP3), and will merrily leave virtually any "domain" attached system for dead. Currently got 9 windows open, 2 of which are Office 07. I've run photoshop on it happily, and it'll VM using Virtualbox. I decided to grab it after enduring 2 years of a Dell Celeron 2.4. Even at 1.6, the Sempron64 kicks it's bum.

I'm running a Sempron64 3000+ with 512mb and 80gb disk, with a geforce 5200 in it. Nothing remotely fancy, but it does well. If I upgrade, it'll be a self build AMD X2, same as home. Yet to find something my X2 3800/2gb rig can't do. 19" Widescreen TFT monitor - again, same as home. No laptop as yet - pointless. Might get an ultraportable for the new building transition. Got a KVM for builds (mine), walkie talkie (all IT have one) and Cisco 7912 IP phone on my desk. Also use my Ipaq 514 voice messenger for mail etc on the go.

I've seen the wine/car battery trick done..heh. I've also split a 9v for the AAAAs, and an A23 for the buttons before. I really love things like that, heh. :rofl::rofl:

I've got my trusty Garmin Streetpilot i2 here..not let me down yet. The mother in law used hers in Belgium fine as well. Not made anymore, but tiny, basic and solid.. Loaded with the speed camera database and custom POIs as well. Good fun. I got shot of "recalculating" though. "Arse!" expresses it much better..heh..

we also use MRBS for this.

Another vote for VMware Server here..we use it on an XP base to run all of our netsupport room terminals and VPN access stations, as well as our personell and accounts packages, and a print server. In theory our new servers in the new building will be ESX3i, so we're virtualising all we can now so that it'll just be a case of copy the whole VM over, and off we go again. Great fun..

When I started we had BBCs, 486s galore, dot matrix printers and s on. All long gone now. The oldest running kit are P2/350 DAN workstations that were bought for us in 2000. Running XPSP2, were workstations up until we retired them a few months back..I daresay there is still a couple somewhere. Dell Optiplex GX110s (P3/700ish) that just won't die and rarely give trouble..We're looking to retire all sub 1.4Ghz kit this summer. Our kit only has to last another 12 months anyway, then it's off to the new site with new kit throughout. We've just retooled CADCAM and the LRC with some "end of life" kit from our parent academy...it's a whole new world! Their "end of life" kit is as follows.. Dell Precision 340 Workstations 512mb RDRAM Nvidia Quadro cards 3.06Ghz CPUs (not HT by the looks) 60gb disks 17" TFTs. I tell you, if ANYONE dares to say "it's slow"...I'll beat them with the most nail-bound stick I can lay my hands on.. All the "old" kit from the room (P4 1.4-3.0ghz, 256-512mb) will filter into classrooms as and when. I personally was to keep one of the DAN machines, fill it with disks and use something like FreeNAS on it.

Telford and Wrekin do. Corporate IT helpdesk and an education one. None too shabby either, especially if you know the right people.