Garacesh

Low effort, but I'm throwing these out when I think of them

Slow days have their perks.. Anyone going to Timbledon this year..?

He's Arnold! Arnold! Arnold Timmer! Better value than an RGB Dimmer! And he water-cools his dinner!

There are some who call him... Tim.

I was gonna say if it's a network attached machine you could just copy the file, but pre-creating the config and passing it to the msi with a switch is probably a far better idea.

Aye, can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either it's portable and has no file association until it's run, or it's installed and gets it. Unless you start faffing about with file association xml's Overall it's not really too big of an issue. I guess it's just a matter of 'it depends what part is more important to you'

Having it be portable is pretty useful, but a proper installer that sorts out file associations and stuff before first launch could be useful.

The e-bike I picked up recently has.. I have no idea what kind of gears. It has has the chunky tube in the middle of the rear wheel indicative of a gear hub. ... but then it also has the bit that hangs down, and multiple different sized cogs, so it's clearly a dérailleur. So I ain't got a clue what the hub-looking-thing is for.

Yeah, thanks to digital distribution and the love of 'licensing' games, not buying/owning them, I'm not surprised to be seeing video game retailers fail. I still buy physical switch carts where applicable, but for everything else that's not really an option. Even half the 'game cd's you can buy just have a product key and a Steam/Battle.net/uPlay/etcetera installer on them.

So it's more about monitoring your compliance with some emergency OSHI- moment help thrown in, than it is, say, a monitoring tool?

I don't mean to threadjack but how do these things.. well.. work? I'd love to know about anything that makes GDPR an easier beast to tame.

I dunno, I mean I'm all for utilising open standards where possible, but I do understand why some companies say that stifles innovation.. If you're tied to an open standard, you have to release the improvements you spent money researching to everyone and gain nothing from it. Conversely, you benefit from everyone else's research, too, so it's supposed to be quid-pro-quo for the benefit of the consumer. But what actually happens is companies just stop innovating. That being said I'm not entirely sure Lightning has any benefits over USB type C. I'm not saying it doesn't, 'cause I tend not to pay attention to Apple gear, but Apple's history of brand-tax and making proprietary kit for no good reason makes me suspect it might not. I guess it would be up to Apple to make their case to the EU that there's a good reason they're not using USB-C other than "'s'more dosh, innit?"

Kinda have to agree. We hang a couple of decent-sized digital clocks on the walls, which everyone can read (some of our SEN kids never got the hang of analogue clocks, plus kids are more used to digital now 'cause of technology) Then whoever is running the show writes START: ##:## and END: ##:## on a board, which they also announce as they start the exam "The time is now X, the finishing time will be Y, extra time have until Z. You may begin." Done.

You can buy generic MicroUSB, USB-C and Lightning ones from various companies (though it's a pot-luck as to the strength of the magnets.. I use braided cables that always end up being too heavy so they never work too well for me) but it doesn't seem that they've taken off for 'bigger' stuff like laptops.

Mostly. But not always. It takes a little while to get used to a keyboard, and I do usually have to look at my keyboard to find my starting letter(s), but from there I can usually type without looking down. I'm getting that way with my phone too, but not quite there yet.. Like the others, no formal training, just over a decade of computer experience.

I feel like USB C is an awful connector for charging. I get that it's more than capable technologically, and it's nice to have dual-use of the port to be able to plug other things into, but I just feel like USB-C is too feeble a connector for a power supply. I want something meaty.. A connector that lets me use the laptop whilst it's on charge and the connector isn't going to wiggle itself loose over time. USB-C has great side-to-side resilience but it seems real easy to snap them with up-and-down movement (such as if you move your laptop a bit too far and the power cable pulls taut) . Magnetic connectors should absolutely be standard though. Edit: We got a batch of Lenovo refurbs in a few months ago and they're using this as a connector and that feels incredibly sturdy.

I try and avoid anything with a 'standard' DC pin-style connector because you always end up with this issue. It happens with other flavours too but it's pretty much guaranteed with those unless they're made ridiculously robust. Unfortunately more and more manufacturers seem to be using them because they're slimmer and everyone wants to be the thinnest and lightest.. Which again I'd want to actively avoid. I'm not saying let's lump them with something the size of an Amiga, but you want something that's going to survive a good bit of rough-and-tumble if you're expecting to operate a 1:1-style scheme. DELL's seem to be a happy medium.

What, you've never worked with Group Policy? Where you enable the disable?

IT's job, half the time, is to save users from themselves. I don't want to sound like a derogatory BOFH but in my experience users often create problems for themselves by trying to be flash or inventive and not really thinking it through. As you say, we should fix the problems users don't know they have.. Alternatively, we should strive to avoid the problems they don't know they'll have if X.. But we know IT's job is to also weigh up cost vs benefit where technology equipment is used, and to do appropriate risk assessments for kit that we do buy. You're right when you say buying kit at 1.5x the cost but getting 2x the use out of it is a good deal, I wholeheartedly agree, but that's really not going to be the case with laptops. Also, logging on once a month? Please, lord, no! We want users to be shutting down their machines at least once a week if we get our way. Updates are a thing, you know? Especially when you consider, for example, software installed via .msi only updates on boot. Also just because we can claim on insurance doesn't mean we want to. That's going to cost money, and it's going to increase the price of the insurance. I'd rather just buy kit that has less chance of going walkabouts, personally..

I mean, that's why we have staff rooms..? But to be fair we're quite lucky that we have 7 staff rooms around the building, each with 3-5 computers each. I appreciate not every school has the capacity for that.

I couldn't imagine swapping desktops for laptops here. Intrinsically with laptops you're going to run into a few issues: Connector degradation, they'll be getting significantly more wear as users dock/undock their laptops. Fewer upgrade and replacement possibilities. Can't just quickly swap out a dead monitor on a laptop, or add a GPU if it needs a bit more oomph. An increased risk of accidental damage or theft (though this risk also exists with tablets, so YMMV) WiFi being slower than LAN Edit: Batteries I appreciate the appeal of 'close the lid, move to a new room, put your password back in and pick up where you were', but we have file shares, homedrives and GPO's to create a unified user experience for that. And then you've got the Layer 8 issues to consider.. Forgetting the charger or laptop itself Leaving it on the roof of your car/resting it behind your car wheel as you put stuff in the back and running it over (yes, we genuinely had that happen...) Sense of entitled ownership ('No, this is my laptop, you can't use it!) whereas desktops are much more obviously school/shared equipment Non-work use, letting their sprogs play games and fill the keyboard up with gunk, etc. It's a no from me.

FTFY

Derp. I meant would've been better as a book. Too late for me to edit the post now though.

Guilty! But you're not wrong. Not all of my time on EduGeek is entirely professional, but a good chunk of it is, and it's definitely made my job easier a good few times. I'd certainly advocate for it to be unblocked for any IT staff in schools if management were seeing their hump about it. Edit: I used to think that 'networking' (as in the social form, not the linking-computers-together form) was just buzzword BS for jobsworths to add an extra thing on their CV, but after EduGeek it's shown me how important it actually is when done properly.

I got home yesterday at about 5pm.. Can't have been more than 3 minutes later, ice balls and winds so strong they were setting off people's car alarms! I feel sorry for anyone caught out in it. They'll be sporting a few sore spots today.