Sirbendy

We use Netsupport School..does a good job. 2 of our "Technician/IT staff designed" IT suites have the dual ring main for PCs and TFTs..now THAT works brilliantly. Hit the big red "doomsday" button, and off go the TFTFs. This is why we're trying to get in on the design of the new academy IT suites...IT always design their own sites best, as they know what they need..heh..

I had a USB KB at home until last week...it would lock up totally until you hit ctrl-alt-del, at which point it would come back. Only ever locked up when my cat ran across it.. Put it down to a USB-ism, and changed it for my "natural" PS2 KB..no probs since.

Does anyone have any pointers to a source of cheap lightscribe media? CD-Rs are probably more needed than DVD-Rs.. I got a nice DVD-RAM lightscribe drive for christmas, and some of my old "resource pack" CD library has suffered badly over the years, and a significant portion of it needs rationalising, updating and reburning! Cheers guys and gals!

Ooh. What a question. Um, lets see. Studio MX2004 (got the latest master suite now, CBA to deploy it in this build) Office 2003 with 2007 converters Vista fonts, to appease staff CutePDF Foxit PDF reader (so much faster than adobe) Flash Activex Latest flash, shockwave, java ICONTool Radmin Server Techsoft 2D Design/PCB Design and Make ARTCAM Croc Clips Flowol Mind Manager Smart Frontpage (yuck) PaintShop Pro 6 (Might go Paint.NET) PCB Wizard PIC Logicator Realplayer MS Logo Sophos Virtual Garden Prodesktop 2000i2 NSS 8.51 PolicyCentral Enterprise VLC Media Player DivX Codec um..yes, I think that's it...for the current build, anyway. Oh, a CMiS link if applicable to the user.

I tend to hoard "dead" keyboards, mice etc..heh. As for base units - Strip em, flog the metal to the scrapyard up the road, give the electronics to DT for desoldering and reuse in kids projects, save the CPUs, RAM, soundcards and NICs. Anything else gets stored and disposed of through the LEA. Dell PSUs are my fave at the sec..dead caps in those, but good fans, heatsinks, transistors and many good caps etc still left. Saves me a bomb for home electronics hobbies..heh.

does it have to be a P2? I take it the system is slot 1, yes? Probably a 440bx/ex/lx? I've chucked P3s in those before from 500 to 800, and they work. In fact my mums rig is an ex-school DAN Slot1/p2 450, with a slotket adapter and S370 1.3 Celeron Tualitin. Just widens your criteria a bit.

We use MRBS as well for ICT suite bookings and resource booking. Standalone though. Rock solid to date..minor bug in the last version, but the programmer is very helpful.

Win98 USB drive support is a doddle...I'm sure if you google "Windows 98 USB" it throws up a link to some workable USB mass storage system for it.

Ours should..but they either lose them or are just too lazy and let the kids do it! But then, despite REPEATED warnings and threats, a lot of our staff CBA to power them down at end of day/in idle time either...the ones in IT are the only ones I can guarantee are looked after..

I hear that one. We compromised on using walkie talkies that SMT had classed as "broken". (It's called "set them to the same channel", you bunch of wallies) One mine, one for NM, one in the office for the head of IT, and one in reception.

heh..not as such. CCTV runs 24/7, so I use a shutdown app and script to shut them back down, scheduled to run at 9.30am to give them time to update etc.

Damn Small Linux, or puppy Linux? They would just about take XP..I had one doing duty as a home file server for 2 years. Not too bad, TBH..nuke the theming service etc.

Heh...not until I don't need the car, methinks.. It all interfaces with the autobox ecu.

Psh...we work in IT...what's so complex? I've got the exploded PDF, operations guide and logical process flowchart showing all the data inputs for my little CFi engine's management. Tis a doddle.. Nothing more than circuit boards, switches and sensors, and a base map of parameters for operating them in sequence. Now, SU carburettors...heh..well...

Bootable 4gb disk with Portableapps menu, containing: WS_FTP preset to home server, Academy Web server and intranet server Unlocker, because XP is tedious. Silentnight Microburner Radmin Viewer 3.0 with our site in the phonebook NRG2ISO converter Notepad++ portable Magical Jellybean Keyfinder Ghost v8.0 corp Foxit PDF reader Portable Firefox Portable Thunderbird Eraser portable File rescue Plus Abiword portable Portable 7Zip Uniform web/sql/php server Other: Machine drivers My docs Assemblies MS KB888254 (argh) School maps Office 2003 installer with 2007 comp pack Mozbackup PDF Ebooks for server03 etc Damn, I love my cruzer..heh..

I'd say Virtualbox on XP, with a linux VM if you're not sure of yourself, to be honest..not the other way about. I dualboot my home rig between XPSP2 and Ubuntu Gutsy. Still got a bug with Nvidia though on Linux..gah.

You mean an initial poweron in the morning? I just go into the BIOS and set "wake on alarm" for 7.30am. All the suites power up at 7.30, gives them enough time to get themselves settled before the kids get in at 8.20 and thrash 'em.

We get it...it's usually bouncing projectors due to the kids charging about the rooms, boards being nudged out of position, idiot staff who really PUSH the projector buttons and move the unit, or bad classroom management where kids are allowed to touch the projectors and move them due to loosening mounts. Never had one go down to the board itself or the software...500 and 600 series.

We have what we term a "locallinks" bar...takes the username as a parameter and brings up a box like that at logon with the user name in it, and shortcuts to all the programs that have their shortcuts in the directory. All are 1 click execute, and the bar isn't closeable. Just minimiseable to the taskbar. God knows where that came from..we've had it since NT4. It's called "icontool.exe" Lifesaver though, and also good for USB drive use.

but that's part of the fun...the adrenaline rush, the damp palms, the palpitations..heh..

IT staff get a payrise? That happens? Here's to a strike - we've had 2 now, every time the management changes. Creases me up..do I care who management is? Not really, no. We had one staff member disciplined for inciting the kids to abandon school as well.

Wordpress vote here too. We use it for the "Student Support and News" intranet section that the kids maintain. All runs quite happily on our CCTV box under Uniform Server on XP. Uniform is a self contained portable Apache/PHP/SQL server with a small footprint..I keep a copy on my USB stick for testing as well.

We find our Clevos do this (S3 chipsets). Video drivers - make sure you have the latest one. It's a swine when that happens.

Not quite. Go to MS, and search for Office 2007 compatibility pack.. I've chucked it on all our 2003 rigs as more staff and kids are using 2007 now. They can open/save back and forth quite well..

TAW used bullet point for some installs...awful company. Reports of installers fighting in classrooms etc! Here, we've had no issues apart from one TAW recommended contractor who saw a nice network extension we'd commissioned by another company (non recommended), proper quality jobbie, brandrex cabling, decent patch panels etc..just not "theirs". Next day I go up to see why the sockets are not working..the patch panel is on the floor, wiring chopped off, replaced by their (identical) kit. Needless to say we kicked off big style. We've both (me and NM) had the "official" TAW "How to wire a cable, a patch panel and a socket" 45 minute course with practical exam, and now for alterations and things like that we're "authorised" and "qualified" to work on the structured cabling without endangering the warranty. Talk about a pointless course..