PotNoodleTech

Running CC on 12th gen i3 16GB RAM 512GB SSD here. These are brand new machines. Your old machines that you are getting rid of are barely any worse!

Come on mun - put your hands in your pockets!!! I'd rather spend 10 units of energy heating the whole house and getting dry clothes for free, than 10 units on powering a tumble drier three times a week and shivering the rest of the time!

I never had a tumble drier so I just put mine on the clothes horse. If your house is approx 20 degrees c then they should be dry in 48 hours assuming you've spun them at 1200.

Anyone running old boards on new PCs? Since upgrading teacher PCs we're having lots of blue screens of death followed by reboot - initial investigations appear to link this to the activdriver software (i.e if we uninstall it the PC is reliable again). I've tried a few different versions from older to newer and all seem to be having issues. Help would be appreciated if you've seen this in your school!

Having done the maths, IT only accounts for under 5% of our electric spend. I've done everything I can to reduce power usage but whenever anyone comes to me to say can we shut the switches/air con down over night in order to save 0.1% off our bill I remind them that they need to address the other 95% out of control usage such as electric heaters in portacabins, kettles and microwaves everywhere, 50 watt non LED tubes x 25 in each classroom, the canteen who use a bazillion watts when they're ovening everything, etc, etc. Basically, IT can't make any meaningful savings anymore - it's up to everyone else in the school.

Running the main hall projector over HDMI > CAT6 about a 30 metre run - been working perfectly for years now. I am a little bit worried about the small power bricks that power the converters either end as they tend to be a cheap weak point nowadays but so far so good! (don't run sound over it we convert the sound to XLR and pipe it up to the mixing desk)

I use 2 x UPS's powered by two different electrical phases. Each UPS powers one of the PSU's on each server. The second UPS powers the second PSU on each server. That way: If one phase goes down in the school, the system stays powered. If one UPS goes down, the system stays powered If the whole school power goes, both UPS share the load, doubling my on battery time (1 hour 10 mins currently). I can categorically state that no matter what you read about dual server power supplies, they always balance the exact load of the server 50/50 with both PSU's being active at all times. If the server is using 200w total then each PSU draws 100w from the UPS. If your UPS is already failing and the battery already done - just buy a new UPS don't try and reuse it. A failing UPS can cause catastrophic damage to the server and also cause a fire. Not worth the risk of burning down your school to save a few hundred bucks.

30ma is not much leakage total if the whole IT suite is on it (0.5ma of earth leak per device). Really the only way to fix this is to have an electrician split the circuit into two so you'll have the original RCBO32 powering one half and a second RCBO32 powering the other half of the room.

You need to make sure management are aware mike that manufacturers are treating chromebooks as consumable items and that is not your fault. They expect you to either tie yourself into absurdly priced warranty or just buy new ones. They are not designed to be repaired really - parts availability is very poor (compared to mainstream Tier1 business desktops that we've all been used to). Your doing the best you can (and over and above the call of duty) by amalgamating bits of broken ones into hopefully working ones!

CPD? What's that! CBT nuggets looks intersting.

Lol whoever wrote the SIMS one has clearly never used SIMS.

Oh dear. I made something special for you to cheer you up.

9 years ago, it was still 10 year old software lol.

I would avoid wireles on something as important as a door lock anyway. The single cat 6 to a "sub controller" and then run several doors off that controller seems like a reasonable way to do it. Hopefully gettting paxton here later in the year too.

Fair play those neverready execs must have made an absolute killing. Just goes to show, if you make something truly useful and innovative you shall be rewarded!

I guess selling a pair of ipads and an ipod for £8k wasn't cutting the mustard any more so they had to move on to something even more cash cow-y, yes the fabled MIS.

If your servers go down due to not wanting to spend £2000 on a proper air con unit then your school needs to take a really good long hard look at itself. This is the 21st century not the 19th! :/

Nice! This is why I re-image every device from scratch anyway. We install what we want, not want #manufacturer thinks we want!

I've recently moved down to 1 server too - having not ever had a server faliure in the last 20 years I'm going to lean on the reliability of the refurbished Dell R740XD plus my Veeam backup solution. I have kept an older R730 server on standby just in case - a full recovery should be doable in a matter of hours. (though now I've put this in text, I am probably screwed...) Spending 60k every three years like some schools do on SANS and all sorts of gubbins to try and cater for all the possible what if's and buts that never actually happen in real life doesn't make sense. I'd rather buy new chromebooks for my pupils instead.

Yes we repair them in house using a mixture of any new parts we can get online plus combining various different broken Chromebooks back into working ones. The out of warranty repairs costs are totally insane - I've been quoted prices of 100% to 150% of the new price of the chromebook for repairs that can be done with a scredriver and a bit of patience!

No easy answer to this. Most cable management rubber etc things I have seen are more of a trip hazard than the darn cables. If it's a short-ish run and temporary I usually just use decent duck tape - if your pulling it up same day it comes up fine (don't leave it for 6 months tho.... or your floor will come up with it) Have you seen an actual gig or live tv production? Spaghetti junction on the floor.

Have you removed all the absolute garbage that manufacturers pre install dell this dell that support this support that sound this sound that. Get rid of it all.

Is it actually BT? I would wager it's a normal company pretending to be BT (a bit like the ones we get purporting to be microsoft but then when you grill them a bit you find out theire actually from NS Optimum.....)

Techbuyer Europe have given me a reasonable quote for my equipment so shall be using them! Thanks @Oaktech

Yes they have manufacturer warranty return to depot so contact lenovo or acer.