PotNoodleTech

Yes I had that when we started here too - a 100ft long 3.5mm cable routed along side the power and lighting cables. One easy and relatively cheap way of doing it, which i did, was to buy a small 4 channel mixer to sit by the PC - 3.5mm jack on a 2metre cable from PC into the small mixing desk, then you can use balanced XLR cables to do the long 100ft run-up to the main pa/speaker system. Balanced XLR rejects noise and our system has sounded great ever since, no buzzing. An added bonus of that is I have the small mixing desk right next to the PC and that gives a master volume control slider to the people using the PC - 2 birds with 2 stone!!

How is the sound outputted, via the HDMI lead or via a green 3.5mm audio jack? You can get physical volume controls which you plug in to on the way out to the speakers: https://www.amazon.co.uk/CHELINK-Universal-Amplifier-Motorcycle-Speakers/dp/B076DBCGB5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=34TDVE239LEVL&keywords=B076DBCGB5&qid=1657027884&sprefix=b076dbcgb5%2Caps%2C214&sr=8-1 You can get virtual volume controls which adjust the windows volume with no extra wiring. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Control-COOIDEA-Function-Computer-Adjuster/dp/B07Z3DH5PV/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28RNA2GTD411Q&keywords=B07Z3DH5PV&qid=1657027575&sprefix=b07z3dh5pv%2Caps%2C455&sr=8-1 Have never tried the virtual ones to be honest but may give it a go in our hall.

What can ya do!!! He/she's already logged into the Cisco kit and Aruba and xx and xx and etc. If you ban Chinese technology you're basically banning the whole of IT.

*looks at hikvision cameras and NVR* ..... *looks at the floor and whistles*

I guess there's no such thing as unlimited storage after all!

No actually!

I'm old enough to remember when the 2 x old RM servers were under the classroom desks so the students could kick them every lesson. (servers still lasted 10 years)

Then leave it to die. If you cobble something together with weeks of your time and ingenuity and a pinch of good luck - they'll literally never ever see the need to spend any money on servers. Sad as it is, schools like this living 20 years in the past when IT systems didn't matter are only gonna learn their lesson by downtime. Sounds harsh but I've seen it happen - (some don't even learn after a week or two's worth of nothingness)!

Tried all the usual suspects, including them, it in stock, server source, etc. None interested.

Ricoh here - purchased on gov framework. Great copiers, great integration with papercut, great tech service/engineers too. Can't recommend enough. I'v heared so many horror stories about other companies - and horror stories from schools that have moved from ricoh to someone else as they were slightly cheaper and are now struggling.

Got the same problem here, school/council rules and regs forbid ebay paypal etc. Got probably thousands of quids worth of stuff we can't easily sell. Recycling companies offer peanuts for them.

Very interesting!! Will look at that!

Hmm so basically if you don't buy devices on the day of launch you're going to get screwed over? Such a stupid way of doing it Thanks

large osters and whole wall displays is a good way of making things look a bit more like a modern establishment especially if combined with a repaint. We've done quite a lot of that in house.

I aint no builder but to me that looks like the whole centre of your roof is being held up by about 5mm thick wood. It's a NOPE from me!!!

Blimey! Just noticed our Dell 3180 chromebooks we ordered back in 2019 are out of support entitlement this month. What the heck? They're only just over 3 years old!!! I thought google allowed 5 years? Tried contacting google but for some reason I don't have permission to create a case. Anyone got any of these chromebooks with longer support dates on them? Thanks

Thanks all keep it coming!!! Have been bitten hard by prowise before with chromebooks that barely lasted 3 years, and then had zero spares availability so probably won't be entertaining their screens. :-/

Hey guys and gals. Picture this, in a school full of 10 year old Promethean activboard 78's and casio projectors - I've just been told to start fitting new interactive TVs and given a chunk of cash. Great - however we've done some experiments with TVs and come to the conclusion that for our size classrooms, a 65 is way to small, and a 75 still looks too small, so would have to be an 85. We need 50 of them. These appear to be pretty darn expensive at that size. What's your best make and why? The software is problematic as we have many gigabytes of old as heck style activinspire flipcharts around the school and as far as I can work out they aint gonna work on any new style TV, even the Promethean ones as the software is just too old! In an ideal world I would prefer to use device-agnostic software so it will work on any interactive TV no matter what make, how small or big. Is that possible? Cheers!

Yes could get it done for approx 20 per splice too but I'd still have to factor in the cost for me to do the whole job including running the cable in the first place which makes the contractor option a bit of a no brainer with not having to buy the splicer and other associated bits including fluke certification. Sadly if I'm spending hours/days splicing cables then I am not doing the rest of my job. I went to a school 20 miles away that had its own cabler employed - all ethernet and fibre all done in house. Very impressive.

We use Acrobat here for Sars etc it's brilliant the DPO is so happy. We get it via Welsh Government Licencing so no idea what you would have to do to license it - it's part of the creative cloud suite but not sure if you can buy individual programs or not?

Yes best practice is for each cab's fiber to run back to the core. I am quite surprised (impressed) to hear schools buying fusion slicers - I would have thought you'd have to do a lot of runs to actually pay that back compared to having a contractor come in and splice which is what I do here. Would be happy to learn more of the maths behind that decision!

Congratulations Dave and family!!

Veeam It's blummin brilliant. I wouldnt skimp on backup personally. It's one of the most important things we do even though it's so hidden hardly anyone notices it!!

If you change the IP on the VM, then in the backup job when you edit it and go to the VM part - that VM will slow as blank / size 0GB but if you then re-add the server by it's name you should be able to remove the old server and it will show the the new server with it's correct file size instead automatically (As they have the same name). Now this works with domain-joined VMs as I've done it but not sure about non domain joined VMS which may possibly be referencing the IP address directly rather than the DNS name? Can't guarantee it will work for you.

How big are these indesign files each roughly, and are there multiple users accessing InDesign files at the same time? It it's 8tb hdd in a raid array then the performance is not going to be spectacular as these HDDs are significantly slower and less responsive than the modern SSD drives that would usually be used as local storage on these types of PCs. You may find that the NAS "feels slow" just because is not SSD storage and everyone is so used to SSDs being instant nowadays.