Jamman960

I'm having a couple of problems with IE8, first of all Slashdot causes IE8 to crash whenever I try to load the front page and I've had a couple of other sites that cause the "taskbar" to dissapear/re-appear when hyperlinks are hovered over. The IE and windows logo(start button) stays though. This has happened since install with no additional changes etc - I can't reproduce the 2nd problem, it just happens occasionally on various sites. Windows 7 RC(build 7100) x64 Anyone else having the same issues?

For the registering side of things it'll all need to be done via companies house - Incorporating a company I'm not entirely sure on the rest but theres a fairly high threshold before you need to worry about being VAT registered - I think its towards 60k again HMRC is the department for VAT stuff - HM Revenue & Customs Both hmrc.gov.uk and companieshouse.gov.uk should cover most of the things you need to know.

I think it mainly comes down to the writer, I've had nothing but trouble with the writer on my laptop(Dell XPS M1330) but my desktop can burn perfectly on the same discs and software. with the drives being so cheap to buy these days theres bound to be a few substandard ones mixed in with the good.

Dell XPS M1330 with Win7 RC1(x64): Processor Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU T5450 @ 1.66GHz 4.7 3.5 Memory (RAM) 2.00 GB 4.7 Graphics Mobile Intel® 965 Express Chipset Family (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM 1.1) 3.5 Gaming graphics 358 MB Total available graphics memory 4.9 Primary hard disk 15GB Free (70GB Total) 5.1 Overall 3.5 The build number should be 7100

Hopefully the salary is more in line with what businesses would pay rather than schools. BSF may actually work out well for those employed by the the support providers As for the job description being for more than a technician I think its more in line with what businesses would expect from IT staff - in my previous job as an onsite engineer I'd be expected to fix pretty much whatever I encountered whether its a screwed up RAID array or a whiteboard that isn't calibrated properly, I'd be expected to fix it while I was onsite. If I had to call in someone else I really needed a good reason, they'd often be 150+ miles away. With the SLA's imposed on BSF sites I doubt they could afford to employ anyone who couldn't function fully on their own, an engineer from Ramesys told me that the SLA for a desktop hardware fault was around 30 minutes, once the SLA is exceeded the company would be fined.

Our secretary printed off a copy of our updated staff handbook, everything printed ok except for 1 page which had nearly all of the text missing - the only thing that prints is 5 out of 8 bullet points. I've copied some of the text into another document and still have the same issue however any text added seperatly is visible, changing the font preferences also makes no difference. In print preview everything appears as normal however once sent to a printer the affected text no longer appears, its not printer specific and even happens with a PDF printer. I've attached a sample document with a few lines of text from the affected page and some sample text, I've checked the document for macros, there are none. I've only spent 20 or so mins on this so far and may just need coffee but so far I can't see what the difference is between the text. Cheers, James InvisibleText.doc InvisibleText.pdf

Its gone fairly well here although the network installer option didn't produce an msi for the device driver. One annoying thing I've found so far is that it picks up the previous shared resources location for Active Studio if you go via the network installer route but if you install manually it picks up the Active Pimary folder instead. Other than the above its deployed well here after using the network installer option to produce the msi's(vanilla network) One thing thats bugging me is the creation of activote flips rather than activExpression ones, even if I create a basic page with a multiple choice(not using any functionality that'd require activExpression) it still complains that the question isnt compatible with Activote. Other than that it seems to work very well. James

If its cheaper to build yourself I'd go for it, just make sure you choose a good sturdy case. Some of the cheap ones are awful to build and fall apart too quickly. Enlight do some very good cases. We haven't built our own PC's as yet but we're doing an after school club this term with the pupils to build 3 new ones... should be fun

One of the schools at a recent Sims user group(independent) I went to has setup a biometric system for door entry, registration and cashless catering. I'll try and dig out the schools name when I get back to my office pc. James

Cerberus Networks and a few other ISP's use the same network as BE, I called BE to enquire about their packages and got straight through to an indian call centre and an operator who didn't think they offered any business packages - their tech support is also in india. If I need tech support because my broadband is down I really don't want to hit a language barrier.

I looked at going for cable but the upload speeds are usually much poorer than what you can get on ADSL(depending on distance from the exchange...) I've just moved away from our BT ADSL MAX connections to ADSL2+ provided by Cerberus networks. They seem to be very good so far. They use the same network as BE/02 but provide their own tech support and offer managed support if you can justfy the extra expense. They also do web hosting etc. The price is very good compared to some of the other business providers.

I would have a word with your account manager, I've found them to be pretty good at chasing problems for me when the need arrises.

The DrayTek 2820N would meet all of your requirements but costs around £185 -only one of the ports is gigabit though

If they are both using the same switches and the only seperation is via IP addressing then it sounds as though their devices are simply picking up IP's from DHCP. Initially I'd secure the wireless to stop the kids getting in that way. To be honest it sounds as though you've done it the wrong way round, if your going to rely on IP addressing to seperate the two networks you really need to have the curriculum network setup to use DHCP and the admin to use static otherwise anyone bringing a laptop in and plugging it into one of your ports is going to be put on the admin network by default until you set them up with a static ip for the curric network.

Hmm, I know they've filtered adult sites on orange via the phone for a while unless you call up and request unfiltered access. I would hope this is the same thing although it sounds a bit more sinister

If its the same course I went on they'll pretty much go through the technical workings of sims including backup/recovery and full installation. Then they'll also go through the System manager interface showing you how to assign users to groups and create custom groups. If its the actual workings of sims rather than the technical side your after they usually offer courses for most modules and a few on reporting etc, I would probably go for Assessment manager training and advanced reporting along with Nova T6(4 days!) if you have to deal with those modules. Most of the other modules are easier to pick up as you go.

Is it individual rows that trip? and is it the same rows that trip each time? It may be worth ensuring the monitors aren't on standby overnight, I've known monitors to cause trips every now and then.

I know the NHS has a lot of discounts arranged - see NHSdiscounts.com and also frequently email their staff with very low price office 2k7 bundles etc, I'd guess the police probably do the same sort of thing but I don't think many other public sector workers are looked after in the same way. Councils etc just aren't as united as the NHS/Police force appear to be so won't have the clout behind them to arrange such discounts with large retailers. Many small places like costa coffee will do 50% discounts for the police but I doubt they'd even consider extending this to other public sector employees.

While most SQL functions use the same syntax in both MSSQL and MySQL some are different which would cause major problems. They'd have to alter the software to make it work with a different back end.

You'll basically need to get the LA to open up ports 80 & 443 on your external IP(usually a slow process from what I've heard) and sort out any nessesary port forwarding on your end then arrange for for a subdomain to be setup pointing towards your web server. Ideally you'll also get an SSL cert for the domain.

Directly with capita I'm pretty sure its around £250 per day per person if you go to a course at one of their venues or around £1k per day for up to 6 people if they send a trainer out to you.

I find that BT are too big for their own good, almost every call I've made to them has gone through at least 2-3 departments before getting to someone that can actually help, I often end up going back to the original department and get an entirely different response from another call handler. When I called to request a MAC code for one of our sites I was passed around form pillar to post and was finally told that the line was tagged as "local government" and to get it sorted out I'd have to call an account manager directly. We're an independent school so have nothing what so ever to do with local government. When I finally got through to the account manager he didn't have a clue why I'd been told to call him and told me that he'd arrange for someone to call me and sort out the MAC.. typically when they did call they spent 10 mins trying to get me to upgrade and enter a 24month contract - I finally managed to get the MAC and now only have 1 more line to move over

I find its pretty hard to get anyone in to do a small number of points, I was quoted just over £1k for 8 points(in the same room with dado trunking all round) plus an uplink for our DT lab(in the basement of one of our buildings), the lowest quote I had was around £600 so me and the site manager did it ourselves... think it came to around £250 including a few extra tools, a patch panel and some external cat5(I already had a few boxes of cable left over by some previous contractors).

I've gone for Brothers in the past, mainly because the same models were availible year in year out although they've just started phasing them out for more expensive models or ones with lower yeild toners

this should be fairly easy to accomplish via scheduled reports in either xml or csv format along with an asp/php page to display the data.