RichCowell

Hi All, Just wanted clarify that the ANME isn't just for people who have the official title/role of Network Manager (or equivalent)... Anyone who is responsible for the IT on that level in their schools is welcome to join... we have quite a lot of techies as well as NM's as members... of the 200+ members, there are 61 different job titles ranging from Directors of IT / Strategic IT etc. through to IT Technicians... Also, the next North West meeting is on the 19th March - invitations went out to members yesterday, but we'll send invitations to new members as you join, and we've announced the date of Meeting 04 too - Thursday 25 June... Association of Network Managers in Education ANME Thanks, Rick

Invitations are going out to all members for meeting 03 as I type... They're via EventBrite again, please register through there if you can attend! If you've joined but you don't receive the email, please PM/email me... Thanks

I've heard from others that have used them without the same issues, I was only speaking from personal experience... I use @Millgate an increasing amount and Virtue Technologies a lot for various things, and just putting a small order together for @ICTDirect_Dave - used to use Insight a lot, but not had a decent account manager there for years so I tend not to bother with them as much nowadays...

I wasn't going to reply until I saw a reply mentioning IDNS... I've just tweeted about them from my personal account this morning... We used them a few times years ago, but I've lost track of the number of times I've asked them to stop calling and to remove my school from their calling lists... Softcat have been the same but I think have actually removed me... I'd never use IDNS just because of that, and the similar comments I've heard from others over the years...

Thanks @Dos_Box for being there! Good to catch up, and put faces to names, and names to usernames! (though I'm sorry I didn't get chance to meet @witch after emailing for a while... Even better to be able to take a load off and sit down for a while without risking anyone coming over to try to sell me something lol... Probably been asked and answered already, but has the raffle been drawn for the prizes?

Blatant bump... considering offers...

I've never known support as good or fast as Impero's... we've been using it for several years now, and I certainly wouldn't consider changing... The reliability of the software is fantastic... If you compare the price of Impero to the cost of all the individual solutions it covers (especially e-safety) I think it still works out cheaper... I do agree the price of their annual support is unreasonably high, and difficult for the bill-payers to understand, but their support is awesome, and they do release regular updates etc. We had an issue with Patch Management for a while, and they were working remotely on the server for several days to try to diagnose and resolve the issue... I really can't fault them, or praise them highly enough...

Got my hopes up slightly then... I'm looking for something similar to this that I can put in the window in my door to let people know to come in, as they don't always hear when I bellow lol...

One Plus One phone, 3 months old, excellent condition, boxed, as good as new. Original charger. Only selling as my Nexus 6 arrived over Christmas... Still costs £270 new - https://oneplus.net/uk/one Looking for a quick sale, may accept sensible offers. (Selling here as I'm fed up with eBay's extortionate fees!) Location: Chorley/Preston/Southport, can deliver locally, or take to BETT on the Friday/Saturday. Shipping: £9

I can't when I last heard from them, but will look... Definitely possibility... I'll get onto it over the weekend, been hampered by man flu this week

+1 for School Asset Manager - found their service and support to be fantastic, I'd happily recommend them to anyone. There are free options out there, and we'd looked at some, but this is web-based, so no need to worry about backing anything up or accessing it in the event of a fire etc. You can have as many users as you want, accessing it via the app on as many devices as you want... it even includes a basic helpdesk... To have the stickers with the service makes it far easier to manage... We'd tried them with stickers we were printing ourselves in the past, but they fade and came off easily... The ones from SAM have been great.

@ticker and I will be there Friday and Saturday - both branded up with ANME stuff...

I've not looked into addons for Chrome (don't have the GPO ADM installed or anything), but is there a setting that could be changed to force users to prompt to save with the usual save as / file browser window rather than downloading automatically? That may help them remember to put things they actually need to keep in alternate folders...

We've been running Chrome as an additional browser network wide for a couple of years now and I've not noticed any problems, the students all prefer it, as do most of the staff... I wasn't aware of an issue with the downloads folder, but I'll look into it now... If you're considering scripts to delete the contents, would deleting files older than XX days or last accessed XX days ago be safer?

I think they should all offer the same content, then it's down to their quality of service / customer service / usability & availability of apps etc. I think it should be the same with mobile networks too - they should all use all the same towers etc. then it's just the service/prices etc. that people will decide on... but I won't go on about that!

I've had it for about 9 months now, the TV service is much the same as the others, with the advantage of being able to buy what you can't watch for free in the same service... I've got Netflix too, but pretty bored with that so won't be carrying on with it for too much longer... I've added a couple of family members (well, one family member and one other) to the discount for the next day deliveries, and they're enjoying that too... The only downside is the up-front payment, it's a bit steep... they do an offer for UK College & Uni Students to get it half price, which is nice, for them lol... I'll be renewing mine in March as I've been pretty happy with everything overall...

The ANME shares stats of our members environment with our members, some of which are line graphs showing ratios of users : IT Support Staff and devices : IT support staff, so you can see where your school is on that graph and how it compares with others... Free to join if you're interested - http://www.anme.co.uk

Just blocked the whole domain... Can't imagine anything legit being on there, and don't really want to try to find out lol...

Impero (whilst great) wouldn't monitor for general changes like that, it detects keywords typed in... it sounds like @jamwatn's looking for something to monitor changes made in other ways to documents etc. If you're just looking at Server / Printer status then something like Spiceworks or The Dude may do...

Hi All, Some genius decided to get 20 Kobo e-readers and has asked me to install the various software on the library computers - not a problem in itself... they're linking with the Lancashire Library, so all books need to be downloaded on a PC and transferred via USB - what a complete faff! I've been unable to get them to connect without just allowing the PC out unfiltered... but nothing appears to be being blocked in anyway monitoring the firewall etc. while trying to do it... It seems to be the Adobe Digital Editions that can't connect... Has anyone got Kobo's and/or had this same issue?

It was too long ago to remember even a ballpark figure, far cheaper than other places we looked at though...

We got Virtue to do ours, we've had it hosted locally for about 16 months now and it's working well... it was a nightmare to undo all CLEO's adaptations...

Try disabling the proxy once you're logged into the App Inventor site and see if it works?

I had the second issue, turned out to be proxy/firewall related... We had an old pac file and PCs were set to automatically detect proxy settings, so I disabled that and it worked... I doubt that'd be the solution for others with the same issue, but I heard someone else say it was proxy related when they had the same...

I've been speaking to them this week about this exact issue as it's a pain the backside, especially as Chrome's a far superior browser than IE (not wanting to start any debates!)... it is due to be released with an update in January, I hope they don't wait until BETT though, as it's too big an issue to hold off for a fancy announcement - it needs to be introduced as soon as it's available... it's not available in their BETA programme yet either...