PotNoodleTech

There's no convincing me - I'll be teacher pc hard wired till the end of my days. We give teachers chromebooks too so they can work from wherever they want but when they come to a classroom its 20 seconds for boot and 20 seconds for logon and they're teaching and learning in under a minute, no plugs, no charging, no need to call IT support. Saying they need to use their laptop as they need their stuff doesnt make any sense in 2025 where literally everything is accessible from every device whether it be on shared areas home drives or google or 365. Most people who come here from other schools are amazed by the reliability of everything - there is a reason for that as much stuff as possible is hard wired and we don't use windows laptops as they're inherantly unreliable. IMHO again

It's a really bad idea. having a permanent hardwired PC in each class linked to a whiteboard and dual TFTs is about the most reliabile way you can do it. Having a laptop that the teacher forgot to charge or forgot to bring in and trying to get it linked to a variety of hardware via a variety of converter dongles that have been damaged by people banging them or plugging them in and out a hundreed times, is about the worst way to do it. IMHO

We use Extension Read&Write from Texthelp for a handful of pupils - lets you do a lot of that kind of stuff some pupils just use it to change background colour, some use it for screen reading or highlighting etc. It's not free but it's not that expensive per licence.

I would strongly reccomend providing them with a work laptop rather than allowing them to use their personal device unrestricted?

That's a really good question and I am looking forward to seeing some more answers!

It's their choice not to use their personal phone for work use. I respect that. Instead of being annoyed, you should cater for that by either providing a cheap android device (non sim) for multifactor use of even better/cheaper - we use thestis fido USB hardware keys - they work great and are only 30 bucks off amazon. We've done both - the android devices or ipads come in double handy for them to use for teaching/learning or to do things like take photos to post on twitter etc. The USB keys actually function as an awesome backup 2fa method incase phone dies/lost/forgot etc. It's a win win.

Ok just making sure we don't get sued at some point in the future for discussing your intelectual property a'la most MIS providers

When I ran unifi i literally hardly ever went on the unifi forums for anything let alone actually contact a person. I had 5 spare switches on hand. I think the "requirement" and gargantuan amount it costs for typical manufacturer 24/7/365 gold level support is overrated in most use cases.

Sadly having only been allowed to buy Lenovos on our Gov framework over the last 3 years I am severely Missing my Dell Optiplex's. Dell are probably the best overall over the last decade. I wouldnt mind giving HP a go En mass but i've never been impressed with their enterprise driver support.

Might not be such a good idea, thinking about it, to divulge the inner workings of the MIS in a public forum.

Juniper should be ashamed.

Yeh - same panic after seeing that email but the email was purposefully written in a way to incite panic from schools. Pretty dedpicible behaviour if you ask me.

Yes true they're not aruba really as they existed years before Aruba existed. 2930 were solid for me too with a 5412zl as core. Those were the days.

6300m's here - run by the LA though so I don't have full (any) control over them. I'd happily chuck them all 40 in the bin and go back to Cisco/Old Proper Procurve/Unifi tomorrow :/

What make are the new PCs? I have been having intermittant issues with Lenovo PCs powering three displays (2 x displayport 1 x HDMI) which I have not got to the bottom of yet. Your always better off using a native cable (rather than converters) so can't you use a HDMI > HDMI cable to power those screens, the PCs are bound to have 1 x HDMI out on them?

I can't tell from your post - is it the old PCs that were bought before you started that you are having trouble with - or have you yourself bought 70 new PCs that that you are having trouble with?

Don't try the same with Aruba or your proud 100% uptime just won't be quite the same any more. *misses cisco and procurve kit*

IMHO they won't exist in 5 years to launch anything.

I'd wager 50p that the contractors account(s) were not disabled on his last day at 5pm on friday.

Back in the old days when stacking didn't exist just trunk ports with all the vlans on either 2 to 4 x 1GB ports in th really old days or 2 to 4 x 10GB ports on newer kit. Should be fine. I never had an issue with trunked "uplink" ports as I called them. Stacking seems to be something that was created just to sell £150 cables.

Same website provider then OK cheers both I will pass haton to my powers that be.

Anyone had anything to do with this? Apparently goverment websites have to comply with these standards and can be fined if not - I can not find anything that this applies to schools though? From what I have read I can only see that it applies to .gov domain websites? Had some scarmongering emails from website providers "pay for our WCAG upgrade or risk being fined" type ones.

Fair enough - I was talking about generalist bluetooth technology that everyone currently has on their phones and speakers, tha still is one to one. This auroracast is quite a specialist version. Looks quite cool the way it splits a bluetooth input into kind of like a wifi network to broadcast out to multiple devices. Lets hope it becomes less specialist as in no longer costing £thousands and more mainstream as in built into many devices particularly built into speakers or headphones? imagine if it was integrated into the bluetooth standard so all bluetooth devices inherited the multicast side of it - that would be cool.

Dont worry about it, you've won the Nigerian national lottery too - so you can buy a brand new state of the art PC with windows 12 on it as long as you send them your bank details.

The 5090 reviews have been really worrying nearly doube the power consumption for somthing disapointing like 20% more speed. That is not what I was after and they've raised the price by a large chunk too! I hope the 5070 is more frugal and better priced but if not then screw it I'll stay with my 30xx cards for another year (got a rig with a 3090 founders and a rig with a 3070 founders, I love me founders's)