hallb15

Bear in mind that these switches don't meet all of the standards in this document: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/switch-standards-for-schools-and-colleges Whether you agree with the standards is a separate discussion, but this is the direction the Government are going. Also, don't forget to factor in the required annual subscription to Sophos Switch Support and Services.

I can confirm, it is very easy to switch back to the free version via the online Support Assistant. Took about 5 clicks.

Not good news for me as I've already signed up to business starter - I wonder if I can cancel that...?

Definitely. I'm cancelling my Netflix subscription this month. The price rise, coupled with the fact I just don't have time to watch everything means we're not getting good value anymore.

I signed up to Business Starter. It is currently free until Sept 2022, then £2.30 (50% off) per user per month for a year. Then in Sept 2023 it goes up to full price, £4.60 per user per month. Includes 30GB of storage per user. The T's and C's state there is no minimum contract length so can leave at any point. That gives me plenty of time to work out what I'm going to do, and see what other email hosts are offering by then. Note that this offer is only available if you choose to upgrade yourself through the admin pages online. If you ring (why would you?) or if you wait until you are automatically upgraded on the 1st July, you will pay full price from 1st July.

+1 for codeclub A lot of their content is based on Scratch Online. We don't use it anymore as we have PurpleMash and their 2Code module is excellent - you could get a 14 day trial so you would have something to do with the club tonight whilst you research alternatives.

It's the lack of ownership and therefore lack of responsibility with shared trolleys that causes issues - if a laptop doesn't work, it just gets put back in the trolley and no-one reports it. In our second building, we've moved away from shared trolleys to putting 10 laptops in a charging cabinet in each classroom. This gives the teacher ownership so any faults are reported quickly and therefore resolved more efficiently. We're a three form primary school so each year group can pool their laptops if a class needs 1:1 devices for a lesson. So far it is going well. Educating staff and pupils on how to wait for the laptop to shutdown completely BEFORE shutting the lid has really helped here as a lot of issues seemed to stem from this. We've even gone as far as having laptop 'rules' printed on the laptop lids to remind people how to shutdown properly. (Thanks @VeryPC) Buying laptops with larger SSDs will ease the running out of space due to old profiles issues, however you're only delaying the inevitable and it can bump the price up quite considerably.

As it's out of warranty and already smashed, I'd have a go at replacing the screen yourself. Should be some reasonably cheap on ebay - depending on which model chromebook it is.

A few more to keep you busy... https://globle-game.com/ https://www.moviedle.app/ https://www.heardle.app/

All valid points. I wasn't keen on it either. It is to allow access to SIMS and FMS for our Finance team. There's only two users and I've restricted them to one VLAN. Their laptops have Sophos intercept X installed and I've enabled logging on the VPN so I can keep an eye on how they are being used. I will be monitoring the situation regularly...

We currently have a 300Mb connection via CityFibre which will do 1Gb if we paid more per quarter, but to get another service, e.g. via Openreach or VM, would double the amount we have to pay a month, plus there would be additional hardware required to do the load balancing and failover. All that to cover the >1% downtime of our current connection. It isn't the best use of any school's limited budget.

No I hadn't. I was so focussed on following the guides I didn't even stop to think about about firewall rules. I have it working now - thank you @MatthewL and @Davit2005 I've created a group called 'VPN Users' and given it the Public IPv4 addr I want to use. Then created a LAN OUT rule with the Source address group set to 'VPN Users' and the Destination set to Any. This feels a bit too open to me - is there a more secure way to do this or is this acceptable?

We have darkfibre from Exa Networks, but use our own Unifi USG Pro v4 as the gateway - not an Exa supplied router. All has been fine for many months. I now need to setup a VPN for two of our admin staff to allow them to work from home. I've followed several online guides, from the unifi forum to Willie Howe but I'm getting nowhere fast. I've tried Win 10 laptops, and iPhone and iPad but none of them are able to connect with the typical error "The L2TP-VPN server did not respond. Try reconnecting..." Exa aren't able to help as they only know how to setup VPN on their own hardware although they have confirmed our usable IP addr info is correct. Does anyone have any experience setting up a VPN on Unifi hardware, ideally with Exa networks? Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

I was thinking of a 4G/5G backup option but that would obviously not handle a huge amount of data and would only be for core systems that were deemed 100% necessary. Something like this https://weconnect.one/4g-back-up/ But at €65 a month that soon adds up to a sizeable amount, especially for a Primary School.

What about the section that says "Schools and colleges should have a backup broadband connection to ensure resilience and maintain continuity of service" I don't know of any primary schools that have a backup connection as the cost outweighs the risk, especially with the SLA with the ISP. Is this the Yorkshireman in me not wanting to pay for something that won't be needed 99.9% of the time? What do other schools do?

I can't see anything in the service manual that looks like the issue you are having. http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06481641.pdf Normally I would say take the battery out and do an ATX reset, but this model doesn't have a removable battery. Sometimes there is a small hole somewhere on the laptop that you can poke an unbent paperclip into to disconnect the battery, but I can't see that on this model either. If you feel up to it, I would suggest taking it apart and removing the battery and CMOS battery so you can do an ATX reset.

I've had good advice from https://www.astounded.com/ We've bought most of our Hall AV stuff from them. Powered PA speakers, cables, mics, stands, stage lighting, pretty much everything apart from the projector. Ross @VeryPC also knows his AV stuff.

Glad it's not just me that thought that. I can't work out who it is aimed at - it's certainly not me!

Konica consumables are fine, but we've been waiting since July 2021 for new photocopiers with no ETA.

https://status.office365.com/ confirms there is an issue. The link to check your Microsoft 365 Service Health unfortunately is also down.

That post was not displayed when I looked before posting!

Status from https://status.office365.com/ Title: Users may be unable to access the admin portal User Impact: Some users may be unable to access the admin portal. Current status: We're investigating reports of an issue where users may be unable to access the Microsoft 365 admin portal. Posted on Thu, 03 Feb 2022 09:31:09 GMT

User pages appear to be fine, but I can't get on any M365 admin pages. Downdetector shows a large spike just before 9:30am https://downdetector.co.uk/status/office-365/ This has also been reported on the ANME forum.

+1 for Spiceworks if you want something free.

Don't worry, it does get better!