PotNoodleTech

Really it depends if there are staff members expected to be in that room permanently as in that is their office. If so then those noise and air quality come right into play. If on the other hand like my repro room - reprographics staff only go in there for an hour here or there just to do copying, then the room is fine with some air ventilation and likely no ear defenders needed. I think each room with each batch of equipment and each staff arrangements will be different

I'll be careful here as I don't want to offend anyone but generally if a school is on it's knees financially it may be because budget has not been managed carefully in the past. For example my school is doing fine financially. 1:1 chromebooks new this new that we only spend about 50k a year on IT kit out of the 3 million we have avaialble. Another school 10 miles up the road is doing terrible financially cant afford chromeboks or anything is in big debt. Now both schools have almost the same funding per pupil and almost the same roughly 3 million turnover and roughly the same number of FSM roughly the same staff count etc. So why are both schools so different?

Good work both. Frankly it looks like many schools on here are happy to try and charge parents through the nose for equipment in order to save the school budget (so it can be wasted on other stuff probably) I for one think it's pretty disgusting.

Yeh the staff cost of the virtual desktop. Cheers. I guess having a billion pound turnover helps the IT coffers somewhat Cost seems high but as it's concurrent users not total users that's not too bad actually!

Never run into that and been doing it since 2014

It's not, it's tied to the make and model of device so you an re-use the license. Either way, parents shouldnt be paying school licensing costs - full stop.

The school should be paying the device licence fee if they are the ones insisting it needs to be enrolled in the school google tennancy. I'd be telling them where to naughty word off. The child can use their school logon and password on a non enrolled chromebook and just carry on as normal.

It's an interesting one and having used thin clients across the school a long long time ago I can see benefits but I can not imagine any cloud offering would be very good value for money as cloud prices seem pretty bonkers at the moment. What are you guys and gals paying per member of staff roughly?

Probably better off just going for a 2 channel chip amp and a pair of passive speakers bolted to the wall - should be more reliable less confusion about inputs etc and no bluetooth for sure!

So you want a highly experienced person (with 20 essential criteria that need to be meet) and to pay them £12k a year for 37 hours a week? Ouch.

I think Millgate dealt with this well - they found out about it, told their customers about it and fixed it. And were happy to talk/discuss in public about it. Most companies could learn a thing or two from this best practice.

Hi why change your amp is your amp in the rack mount working ok? if so leave it and just run the new mixer back into the rack mount amp.

To be honest I would go with an outboard small mixer like an 8 channel on a desk area where a PC/laptop could be placed. This is teacher facing so they are more likely to use it (compared to one rack mounted hidden in a cupboard). It will drive the amp directly via XLR out. You'll get an easy to use up down slider main volume control and with 6 to 8 inputs, the flexibility to be able to plug in a couple of microphones a guitar and a PC if you ever need to? I recommend Allen and Heath if you want something with high quality sound to last 10 years - but Behringer is cheaper for sure.

is that your product then my Dook friend? If so I've got plenty of feedback lol. Main things we needed were. Ability to fully control the lockdown from my admin console particularly whether the lockdown is still active and when the lockdown ends - send the lockdown out - full screen etc - then keep it full screen for as long as necessary. When the lockdown is over, click the "end lockdown" button which will then cancel the message on all the PCs. Ability to create an easy to access bank of "messages" of all types for later use and make it like a 1 or 2 click so that you can just select the lockdown message for knife attack - click send. right now it takes ages of piddling around navigating the interface. it could easily be made much slicker. Ability to commuinicate with Gate systems e.g. Paxton Ne2 - we have actual big red lockdown buttons on that that lock the doors and gates and secure the school - when they big red button is presses I want netsupoort to send a lockdown message out. Sadly I have suggested these to netsupport over the last 2 years and no action has ben taken other than "we will pass it on as a feature request". Your missing a trick here - you really could completely corner the school lockdown market with a simple easy to use product based on an upgraded notify program.

Ok I see. The thing I hate about Notify is you cant manually "stop" the message when the lockdown is over. We've had the message disappear when it's reached the end of the available timer window, and people thought the lockdown was over as the message disappeared. Simple little things that I am sure they could change easily don't seem to be being improved.

I guess my question is if TeamSOS can send messages etc out why do we still need notify given it's a a bit of a clunky hard to use not 100% reliable that's seen no real development in the last 2 years - I want to dump it for something better.

Inter building links should really use fibre (especially as you've said it's an electrically heavy duty area) but looks like your on a budget. If you are just having 2 cat6 shielded runs in there (one for phone, one for AP?) I wouldnt expect it to be more than £500 ish. If your having a network cabinet in there etc too then probably nearer £1000. It's no more than a days work probably half a day max for a decent contractor.

Sounds like I need to look into Team SOS as I already have notify (ideally I was looking to replace notify tbh)

You probably should be getting 3 quotes anyway for a project of that size? When the LA mandated an upgrade they used a third party consultancy for the installs and I could have done a better job myself so that was a total waste of £1000 a day in every school in the LA. *sigh* (and then they say they got no money to buy a pack of peanuts)

Not sure mate we use Classcharts for lesson attendance just wanted it for the guest/contractor etc signing in and out.

Glad I went with Entrysign now - their techs are really good anything we've needed they remote in and sort it there and then no nonsense.

newbie!!!!

Love it was at Swansea airshow to see the last flight of the Vulcan with the Red Arrows. Truly amazing.

That's not best practice for keeping fibre lines in good condition the bend radius looks too tight and there should be no tension or stress on the cable. I would have it repaired properly with new metal support line (or the old one reinstated if that's possible). If they won't pay for it to be fixed then wait till it fails and say I told you so.

Sounds good. Was using PRM Green but they are charging for certain things like activboards and TVs now so time I emailed envirowhatyamacallitonics