Sirbendy

We monitor our printers with..erm..one sec..oh yes, Print Manager Plus. We don't set credits, but we do monthly billing direct to departments, for staff printing. Basically, every month we pull a report out of Access, print a slip, they sign, we hand to accounts for a funds transfer. We also do "focussed" billing for individual lessons if they're taking the mickey..Leisure and Tourism for instance. Same as if depts want toners..we buy in bulk, they want one, they sign the handover cost and we take the money. Paper too..by the ream, or by the box. It's amazing how fast they adapt and how much more careful they are...we've even had English staff using the LRC after hours and hammering the printer in there..boy, are they in for a shock if they think they're under our radar. As far as kids are concerned, "Coursework" printing is free, within reason. Wasted paper is charged for, as are stupidity misprints or outright abuse. Out of hours printing to take home for non-curricular stuff is..5p a page or thereabouts. They're happy with that, and pay without being asked! If they want something from the waxjet phaser, it's a bit more, but again they're happy to pay it. Legality I'm not sure on, but nobody complains, so..

or Virtualbox..also free. I'm redoing our Workstation image in that now.

In the new building, we'll be going down the path of our parent academies...PCs in cages, only access to a USB extender except for servicing.. Can't wait.

Could be worse..could be Beyondexec. I tend to use that to great effect.

Ahhh...Cyrix. Heh. I still have a 5x86 and 6x86 in the shed. Got a Nexgen too..hateful, hateful things.

I (and the missus) are AMD fans...I've had one Intel (Celeron FCPGA), and that was enough. Until recently I ran a Duron 1.8 OC'd to 2Ghz (don't laugh), and that was excellent (had a K6 333 before that), then I upgraded to my current AM2 X2 3800 EE chip (Turion in a desktop, basically), that's been just as painless, and just takes whatever I throw at it. Jem went from a K6-2/350 to an Athlon 1500+ in her VAIO, and from there she's gone for a Vostro laptop with an X2 4000+, and an Optiplex with the same at work. At work I run an AMD Sempron64 currently..want to go dual though. We also prefer HP's Turion AMD X2 laptops for sheer go..although we do have some Intel C2Ds etc. Can't say much about the new Intel kit really, but the old Single core generation P4/P3s get their arse handed to them on a plate by the Semprons at work..even the 3Ghz HT chips seem unable to match.

I self-taught Qbasic in Secondary on 8086/286's..then got a dodgy copy of QuickBasic on floppy to make the .exe's. That was fun..we did menu screens, and a rudimentary login system using that that compared passwords and usernames to a CSV text file. Then when I went to college, we had a "programming" choice between C++ or Turbo Pascal 7. Again, we used to write "pacman" style games, and some of my classmates coded up innocent looking imitation DOS commands with hidden switches to do things like format the C drive, hide files (techs had removed any "advanced" utilities), and so on... It was great fun...they made the techs life hell, I do admit..but he was easy going, and we did always reinstall for him after..he decided me on this career to be honest. Altering command.com was always good..changing the inbuilt DOS commands to abusive ones, altering messages etc. Using debug to kill machines was fun too..CLI, and HLT..my 2 favourite instructions.. We had to code applications of our own devising to pass the course - no spoon feeding, no idiot guide..just a copy of the software and "the library is over there". I still dabble every so often, although VB and the likes never really appealed. Don't know why. We use scratch here - the kids love it. As to DW and Frontpage..gah..so many of them have no idea..they call the teacher to help with something, teacher can't figure out what they've done..teacher calls me, I go in.."code view", and there's the problem..I can't work with either visual editor..plain code and notepad++ is what I do all of mine in. The trouble with giving kids a GUI based "self building" idiot app like that is if they come across code without it, they're utterly lost. Same with most things that aren't point and click. The Missus is a professional webdev, and her predecessor did all the corporate sites she handles in DW, and they were riddled with issues and innefficiency. First thing she did was a ground-up rewrite by hand. She's an ex-student..never got taught HTML or anything even remotely useful with regard to IT...she's taught herself X/S/HTML, PHP, SQL, CSS and so on, and so on totally unaided..and she's scarily good at it.. Anyone remember "PEEK" ing and "POKE"ing? Heh..direct memory manipulation..those were the days..

I'm holding on for Windows 7, personally. Vista is OK for light stuff, but I still don't trust it, at all. XP is still my choice.

http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/phpbb/images/smiles/rotfl.gif I reckon Vista will be a "sweep under the carpet" job, like ME ended up.

I got 3 BSODs in quick succession, then it settled down..been using it fine since.. That was..ooh, a month back.

Brave, brave man... Run away..I would..

indeed...my Ipaq514 WM6 phone worked brilliantly first try, then I did the firmware update or 2 that came out..then I couldn't get it to work with wifi net/exchange at all. So me and the NM set about it along with a test IPaq 11x that was also playing up, and by sheer fiddling we've got them both running. I now have exchange work mails, home Site5 mails and in building net working fine. Next thing I want to try is the VoIP features of it..and before I do, I shall back up the settings in case I end up needing to reflash..again..

M Grandmother, at the age of 80something is slowly but surely going doolally, as they do. It seems her latest thing is not remembering the day/date/month (pick any) So, I've been trying to locate something like..do you remember a few years back..well, 80's..there were "flip" clocks around, loads of them..that did day/date/month as well as time? Can I find anything that does just that and nothing else, that's simple and basic and cheap? Can I flip. Everything either has 20,00000 functions, 20,000000 buttons, or 20,000000 displayed statistics that are just too much when the target audience for the device is in her 80's and is quite easily confused. Has anyone got any pointers on where to look/what to look for? I've tried "date clocks", "calendar clocks", "simple clocks", and I can't find anything that really suits..well, I have, but it's a US unit for 120V..

we've got a few PDAs for E-Portal on test, and I have my Ipaq phone on wifi as well.. Security is just WPA, nothing on the machines..AV is no as well. They're only going to be used for mobile exchange/registers though.

We tend to do ours with a batchfile that runs at user login using con2prt to map..

We're getting the same..."machines are slow". "E-Portal is down", "I forgot my password" etc etc.. Bless 'em. 1. Autoupdates, 2. We know, ta. , 3. Tough..

We had some funky issues with Ghostcast 11 and Ghost 8.x about 12 months ago...same sort of thing. IIRC, it was switch config. As a bypass while waiting for LEA to get round to a solution I set up a linux SME server on a spare box hosting the image, and used the "Universal MS Network boot disk" to boot and map the machines to that..that worked fine over mapped drives. It's all been resolved now though..

Mint Jelly is the glue that keeps the duct-tape of the world attached..

:eek:Ewww.... but yes, random...

Always wanted to do a display of exploded PC parts, all labelled up and on view on a board or similar...but running, connected together, using an old CRT or similar in a display cupboard running a "Welcome to the IT Suites" info board type thing. I have an old IDE drive somewhere with a perspex top cover that I was playing with..never quite found the time though.

We only have a few laptops..but it's VERY unusual to have issues with them. One Ergo Ensis had a bad display, that's it...We've issued VAIOs, HPs, The Ensis and there are even a couple of Samsung A10's still in circulation. We call it all in every 12 months or so for a checkover and reimage, but that's it.

Yep..more big thanks from me..heh. It caught our userspace server going down earlier, before anyone had a chance to complain we were legging it up to reseat the RAID card and drives.. I think poor old EDIT901 needs retiring really..it does lose it at random sometimes.

Aww, bless them. What do you call a pair of teachers? Almost a normal working year. Why do technicians never need calendars? Because the teachers count down the days for them. I upset several people at a friends informal "get together"/house warming..she told me they were all trainee teachers. So, we got into the swing of it, then I smiled and looked across, and asked "SO..tell me guys..why do you all want to work for only half the year then? A real job too much for you?" Bearing in mind my missus is an ex-education tech as well, we were rather enjoying it..

I was just swearing at the service status playing up for our Bloxx filters... then I realised, they're Linux boxes. Duhhh...

Yep..I'm now waiting on the call from the SSCO Office to say "My machine won't log in", as I can see the AP is unplugged..heh.