_Rob_

It's amazin the nobody appears to use Nortel kit - It represents excellent quality and is a fraction of the price of Cisco. Rob.

lol... I use that one on some of the technical documents at our place

Have a look at Password Control Some of my schools use it, and it appears to work for them. Rob.

Samsung can do the same thing with the Logo on the laptops through Stone. The problem with Dell is they send the HDD out in the post, this was unacceptable for me, as the high schools can have one of their lads there to sort that out but the primary schools don't have full time technicians so they need it to be replaced, and that's where we see the real benefit of Stone. Rob.

I have some strong feelings on this subject, we use Ergo corporately and I wouldn't touch them, I have found the quality and support shocking, and we have hundreds! We use Stone for LfT scheme etc and have done for 3 years now, and whilst the Samsung laptops may not be the prettiest they are certainly robust, when we do the helpdesk stats for the last 3 years LfT Laptops make up a tiny percentage, and on the occasion when one does go down Stone offer us on-site repair and even bring a loan laptop out with them, they simply swap the hard disk which allows the teacher to keep working etc. I looked into Dell last year and ran a pilot scheme to see if we should switch and I must admit I loved the laptops, however, an alarming amount failed and the support was without a doubt the worst I have ever come across! It has sickened me from Dell, and the regional account manager is still trying to make up for the terrible service. These are of course my personal opinions, but for me it's Stone (Samsung) every time - Robust and excellent support, which is what counts in education IMHO. Rob.

CLASSIC! It has my vote

Why not just disconnect all printers and then reconnect the relevant ones depending on the computer and its location? Might make things easier in the long run. Rob.

I'm about to roll out an LEA wide solution for remote backups, all schools will be backed up to a central location in the data centre then mirrored to a second location. The data is sent/store in an encrypted state and schools are the only ones with the encryption key. Cost to schools, about £300 per annum. Rob.

Dell - Found the machines to be excellent but the support was shocking! Viglen - Used before and both equipment and support were fine, nothing outstanding, but then that was a few years ago now. Stone - We use them currently and they get two thumbs up. RM - erm, well, if you've got nothing nice to say, don't say anything so... Rob.

We tend to use Con2prt as part of the logon script i.e. REM Delete All Printers \\SERVER\NETLOGON\Cont2prt.exe /F REM Connect Printers (/C = Connect /D = Default Printer) IF %Location% == "ITSuite" \\SERVER\NETLOGON\Cont2prt.exe /CD \\SERVER\Share IF %Location% == "ITSuite" \\SERVER\NETLOGON\Cont2prt.exe /C \\SERVER\Share IF %Location% == "Room1" \\SERVER\NETLOGON\Cont2prt.exe /CD \\SERVER\Share IF %Location% == "Room1" \\SERVER\NETLOGON\Cont2prt.exe /C \\SERVER\Share

Yeah, we had an issue with the IP settings, it didn't like our subnet mask of 255.255.252.0!

AMBCS has been dispanded now IIRC, anyone that was AMBCS was moved up to MBCS.

They prefer it to be an existing member but it's not mandatory... When you submit your application you just have to get someone to support it. Rob.

It's interesting to see the issues that others have with their connection. We have all primary schools on 10MB and all high schools on 100MB and there are no complaints that I'm aware of. I have heard other LEAs talking about 'issues' but wasn't sure what kind of connectivity they offered. Rob.

This is an excellent development... I would relish the opportunity to see Microsoft's LNM Good on you DB!