CamelMan

Looked like Emma - ready to lay the smack down incase anyone fluffed their lines

Umm dino's in hats? hmm ok think I need more coffee..... How did you find that??

As everyone says its more of a staffing / crowd control issue than a IT one. However we are the ones picking up the pieces afterwards. Most damage for us occurs when students get into rooms unsupervised which is currently what I am working on stopping. We cable tie all the cables at the back together to prevent the unplugging issue - doesn't stop them but it does reduce the amount. I am also looking at replacing the machines with space saving ones with cable guards, everything above the table in plain sight and all the cables are behind a panel. Costs about £400 a unit tho Could run some figures of fixing and maintenance vs initial spend if you needed to justify to SMT.

SIMS have quick reference sheets in the help documentation that goes through most day to day stuff, with screen shots etc. Videos a good idea - however be aware that you might spend alot of time making them with few staff using them!

Thats probably why we're getting conflicting information - however with the mess we were in license wise when I started I might still use the old "and any windows lic that we can upgrade to Win 7 under EES" in my emails to suppliers! For the OP - There is a "get legal" scheme that you can do where you do a bulk buy of licenses if you are a little short......

You need some sort of Windows Lic on the machine itself - the EES allows you to upgrade to the latest version and covers you for CALS and Office etc (assuming that is the option you picked). Some suppliers have told me you just need any windows lic - others that you must have a lic with an upgrade path to the version you want. I tend to play it safe and get an upgradable one to Win 7 just in case!

We have 1200 students with 1 Head of IT, 1 IT Coordinator and 1 split with another subject (so non specialist). I dont know how the lessons break down, but we are a high school with 6th form if that is of any help! They are only concerned with teaching IT as a subject- all other IT matters are handled by me (NM) and my techician.

There was a girl called Reality in a school I did some work for a few years back. Does Social Services not have a chat with the parents when they come up with novel names??

Don't know of a standard but we try to stick to: Red - POE carrying cables Yellow - data for phones / cameras purple / grey - normal data. But that's based on what we had available!

They came out to see us about a year ago - OK system but seemed very expensive, however it might have changed in the last year! Once you look past the novelty / fad (cant think of the correct word!!) of using an Itouch to scan QR Codes it is actually just a basic database back end. The QR codes dont hold any information about the device - it is effectively just a barcode. Trialed it for a month and just knocked up an Access DB to do it instead - I found the QR scanning slower than just typing in a asset code. Plus adding information to an Itouch was annoying - the only effective way was to use an Ipad (additional costs). Hope your demo goes well and the have tweaked it a bit - but for us it was a flashy sales pitch, used buzz technology and seemed over expensive for what it really was. I'd rather use the money to pay someone to come in and do an asset management sweep and enter it into a database!!

I had a quote of around £8K for an IBM Storwize 3700 with Dual Controller 5x 600Gb SAS,5 x 1Tb SATA. If you add support and warranties then you are looking closer to the £10K For budgeting you could stick £15k to cover new Xen physical servers etc and give yourself some "wiggle" room.

I used to cover a load of primary schools in previous life and we used colours for each class account - they then keep this colour through their school life and the leaving one becomes the new intake. Simple and gets them used to spelling and which colours were which. I think we even set the wallpaper to match help them. Also cuts down on the admin for the IT staff

Out of interest what are you using? Been looking for a small portable air compressor to clean dust etc out of machines but only come up with the Hurricaine (£100 ish and iffy reviews) and the Datavac Electric Duster (which Im not sure has the grunt).

We have SIMS running on our virtual server setup - Local LEA was against it (performance, might not work etc), Capita didnt see a problem. Capita won out.

"Masters of Doom" about the two Johns who founded ID games was a decent read.

We're on CC4 and there have been quite a few updates about printer mapping released (check out the knowledge base for the latest ones). Same thing happens with us - no rhyme or reason just sometimes people log on and there is no printer. We have setup a shortcut for staff on the start menu to run in manually as a work around. Students have to log off and on again.

As a blue Im with you but I just have that horrible feeling - Jose said he fancied the Utd job at some point in his career

Be interesting to see what happens to the club now - might go through a few managers before settling on a long term. Moyes is the early fav - wouldnt rule out The Special One yet!

Is it wrong that some of these rules are still being used by us now - and Im 30!!

Thats exactly what I was after ! Working like a charm You were all right about the RDP vs VNC - RDP was causing the problem. Thanks all

Does anyone know of any software to remote a PC from an Android tablet - I have downloaded a few but they take control of the workstation. The idea behind this is to have a wired machine in the hall to run the projector and sound - but have a tablet to control it. My efforts so far allow me to have the desktop on the tablet screen, however the PC screen changes to a login screen. I need it on both to display to the projector. Has anyone managed to get this sort of thing working? (The tablet is running 4.1 jelly bean).

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Was in a similar position - found that when I took over MS licensing was 'patchy' i contacted various companies and spent about 2 months trying to find out what we had and what i could do about it. In the end found that using the Microsoft "get legal" scheme (I think thats what they called it) meant that we paid a cost per machine for a license and opted into EES to sort out Cals and office. We used Novatech for it - however Im sure that other companies could do similar. However if you can log in and still see code and download products it would look like you have some sort of licensing agreement still in place. As for Windows licensing - do all your machines have the licensing sticker on them?

For basic IT pay (which I would class to be around 15k as above above) I would class as a technician role. I would only expect hardware maintaince, desktop support and basic server task skillsets. For the skills required above I would see as a Senior Tech / Leading Tech / NM type role and then looking at somewhere between 20k and 30K depending on the size of the school, budget responsibilities etc. However there is a recession and there are alot of good people out of work. Also if this is a small primary school then the jobs might sound big (like web developer) but are actually lower level (such as updating the news section) and therefore are reflected in the pay. I think in general IT support is underpaid - but then its seen as a kind of "anyone can do it" type job, with high turn over of personal. Sadly many management level people dont see or understand what you actually do all day - simply because generally if you do an IT support job well, no one see's you!!

That come back left me feeling deflated....... Im going home