AngryITGuy

Is anyone using this particular piece of software at their school. We are looking at using it as an alternative to Flash, I have used it in the past myself and have had no issues with the software itself. Only issue is I can't find a reseller for the software in the UK, we would like a site license for the software I have email the SWISH purchasing department at the start of the week and haven't hear anything yet. Is there anyone out there that can recommend a supplier please. Many thanks.

From what I have been told and I could be wrong so if I am don't hold it against me. When DurhamNet came along schools had no choice but to go with them due to their very competative pricing financially it was a no brainer for schools as costs were heavily discounted. Now the discounts have all gone, pricing has rocketed whilst quality of service and connectivity speeds have dropped schools are understandably upset and want to look else where for connectivity. With regards to their filtering I spoke to someone last night who is testing out DurhamNet's new filtering software which apparantley SHOCK HORROR is really good. Its based on a per school policy giving schools more flexibility when it comes to unblocking and blocking sites. Its still in testing stages yet and that dreaded red screen has been replaced too, the new screen looks a lot better and dare I say more professional as I have seen it myself.

If this is the case then why bother removing the 'Magic Box'? I can just see it now when you have problems with the internet the first this DurhaNet will say is the problem has nothing to do with them and that its down to that box the school has used to replaced the MagicBox! Thanks for the info, looks like I was given some dud info, was told that the red page was initiated by the squid on the MagicBox. But reading through your post it would make more sense to have it on the cache servers too.

Thats a secret I'm afraid @girlygeek am surprised you managed to get them to remove the 'Magic Box' although I am even more surprised at the fact that you still get the stupid red screen. Thought that was all done by the version of squid installed on the 'Magic Box', if you don't have it installed on site you shouldn't technically get the red screen. How long has it been removed from your school? I think the two levels of protection is utter rubbish. Before we had out web filter installed staff used the 'Magic Box' as the proxy which meant we only had one layer of protection!

Don't feel sorry for them, all these schools have managed to prove is that they have more money than the rest of us. I have never seen or laid eyes on this so called SLA so am not sure if its just an Urban Legend!

@Hightower & @Trust-No-One filtering is joke to be honest especially when like already mentioned sites the school wishes to use are blocked. Apparently its a single county wide poilcy that is being implemented which then means that individual schools cannot request changes as it would affect everyone. I too was shocked at the fact that we are charged for filtering especially when its a service the school cannot opt out of. I have tried on numerous occasions to get the filtering removed and have been told that as its part of the SLA and something the LEA enforces schools cannot have it removed! And yes the bill is for 08-09 which means schools have until April to pay, I have heard rumours of some schools actually paying the bill already. The other thing regarding the letter sent to the schools was that also attached was an entire breakdown of the funds allocated to the school, for 08-09 how did they manage get access to such sensitive information?

@girlygeek we are also in the same situation and we may also be looking at an alternative solution to DurhamNet. Will keep you and everyone else interested posted with any findings. @Trust-No-One the letter sent to schools regarding the increase in cost also suggested that the school use the Harnessing Technology allocation to pay for the increase in broadband costs even though this money is ring-fenced for the purchase of class room technologies!

HP dc7800 - Core2Quad @ 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, 320GB HD, GeForce 8600GT running on dual 22" Samsung Monitors.

Pretty sure this is a no no. We use Backup Exec 11d here and I am certain that it can only be installed on one server. Apart from a licensing issue it makes it easier to manage and monitor your jobs as only one server is in chanrge of this role. All subsequent servers must have an appropriate agent installed to back them up. We have the SQL Agent installed here was installed before my time though. I imagine although I could be worng you could get away with the standard agent but you will need a scheduled task to stop the SIMS database before the backup and another to restart it once the backup completes. Am sure that if I am wrong on any of the points someone on here will correct me:D

We have a couple of virtual servers here too. I suppose virtualisation would also count towards this grant as your running mulitple servers on one host. I suppose it all depends on how good you or the staff at your school who go through the application process are at putting a positive spin on things. We plan on supporting out application with hard facts (you can't argue with them) just something highlighting the difference in power consumption between a 5 year old CRT and a modern TFT.

Just had this pointed out to me by one of the teachers here. Seems there is upto £20k available to help support community energy projects which schools can apply for. We are hoping to apply for an energy efficiency makeover by attempting to relpace all our CRT monitors with TFTs instead. Have looked through the criteria and we seem to tick most if not all the boxes so this maybe of use to others on here too.

For advice on using software restriction policies, there is an excellent post here that you can follow. It will block all sub folders within the drive not just the root directory. Used it msyelf to apply software restriction to both student home directories and usb drives too. If you want to restrict access from usb devices I recommend using USBDLM alongside your software policies.

Hotmail is proably blocked as its just a breeding ground for spyware, viruses and spam. We block is here to as well as all other webmail. The only email available here is the school exchange and the LEA provided email. We also block for obvious reasons sites with adult content, violent content, tastless content, peer2peer sites and proxies. Other sites blocked here are auction sites, software and music download sites, gaming sites (although these are available before, after school and during break and lunch), webchat sites, streaming media and forums to name a few. For a list of sites to block you might want to try URLBlackList.com you can download a blacklist of sites which should be a good starting pointfor you.

And here.

Think most schools & network managers in the County know of the proposed infrastructure under BSF, not sure how many if any know of the proposed software\connectivity solution that will be offered alongside the proposed infrastructure. I don't think schools had much influence over the decisions as there is a dedicated department (I think) for this. As far as I am aware the school will test the proposed solution to see how well it will work during the Proof of Concept. If it works it will get the thumbs up and the go ahead and if not I think it will be back to the drawing board. Needless to say I obviously know what the proposed software\connectivity solution is but until I get the go ahead to disclose such information my lips are sealed But as soon as I am given the go ahead I will as professionally as possible spill the beans so to speak!

@cjwhite I am also in a similar situation here to. Have attended some BSF Meetings for similar reasons however I have managed to possibly go one step further where I have managed to get the school to be part of the BSF testing process. We have been asked to take part in the Proof of Concept for the BSF ICT Infrastruce for the County. Which involves the school testing the proposed infrastructure under BSF I am expecting things to start moving with the testing process towards the end of the month. From the responses you have had to your poll a Blog would be a good idea and I may also consider doing one as there seems to be plenty of people interested on here. However before I commit to anything I will need to speak to the BSF Team to see if this would be ok, so I shall keep those of you interested posted with their reply and with any luck the blog will start sometime next month.

Hmmm have just seen that too will call them up and see whats what. With regards to toner brands I have never had a complaint from them although I do remember something about Epson cartridegs not being accepted. Other than they they have been sent toner from HP, Canon, Samsung and OKI and have never had a complaint from them.

We use these guys here for our toner recycling. All packaging is sent and collected from the school for free. We don't get any money for the recycling but we are part of the NSPCC Programme which means the charity gets a small donation think its about £1.50 on average for each toner we send back. Have been doing it for over a year now and have even managed to get staff and students to bring in their old toner and cartridges to send back too.

It was 13 (unlucky for some) months old when it all started to go wrong. Gets very little use, in fact my 4 year old son spends more time on it than me.

Following on from a post here regarding moving away from MS Office we have decided to give Open Office a go for the curriculum workstations. I have downloaded the latest version installed it on a workstation shown it to a couple of teachers who are happy enough for the move to take place but i can't get the bloody software to behave. Have managed to disable the first time user registration but I can't setup the package so that Open Office is forced to save using MS files types for all users. We use Ranger here and I thought I could create a Ranger Package to force the settings but that hasn't worked. Has anybody else overcome this issue, are there ADM files available for Open Office 3.0. Have looked on the web for possible ADM files but can't find any for the latest version. Any help would be much appreciated.

I would also second this solution as its the method we used here to stop the Registration Wizard from starting. The file in question resides in %userprofile%\Application Data\OpenOffice.org\3\user\registry\data\org\openoffice and is called setup.xcu

Had a similar issue to this last week teachers laptop would not connect to the internet at all. Didn't check to see if it was able to browse via ip addresses but it could ping domain names. Colleague here resolved the issue by replacing the tcpip file in system32\drivers to resolve the issue. He isn't around today so I can't ask him how he managed to find out that resolution or what else he tried but it may be of some use to you.

For your USB problem, see the following thread for more information, found it useful when I was in the same boat as you. We use USBDLM on all workstations here which forces all USB devices to use either drives X, Y or Z. We then have path rules assigned to each of these drives locking down access to innapropriate file types.

Would disagree with you regarding the larger heatsink on newer consoles as my Elite just got the dreaded RROD over the weekend, so I am not pleased With regards to RROD fix I have a friend who fixed his before trading it in for an Elite. It involved him wrapping his 360 up in a towel and switching it till it overheated and switched itself off. He then let it cool down before switching it back on and amazingly enough it worked. Not sure how long for though because he traded it in the same day!

We were just discussing this as an option this morning, but it would only be for the students here as I was under the impression that SIMS Reporting and other features required MS Office to function.