dgsmith

Is it naïve to think it is the same as doing any other version migration? I upgraded our web server a few days ago from PHP 5.4 to PHP 5.5 (need to work through replacing depreciated code slowly) and as previously, it's generally a case of extracting the file contents into the PHP directory and making the necessary amendments to PHP.ini? PHP have install instructions for Windows Systems which don't seem to have changed or been superseded since PHP 7 has been released: PHP: Manual Installation Steps - Manual In saying that, I am not planning to upgrade our server to PHP 7 soon, both because of the above depreciations, but also because there are no new features we need.

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/133011-looking-go-virtual-been-suggested-dell-vrtx-everything.html I started the above thread nearly 2 years ago. We did end up going for the VRTX and are very happy with it. Small footprint, expandable and was notably more cost-effective than the traditional approach. We did have a bit of a mare trying to work out the virtual switch for our VLANs but some things take a bit of time getting your head around when it's something entirely new.

Support cost with a partner reseller is around £360 a year or £180 if direct with 3CX. Phones bills have from £200-£250 a month to £90-£120 a month (that is big for us and represents an average 50% saving alone). The phone bill savings are of course due to our change of phone line provider, or rather specifically move to an alternate SIP provider which 3cx facilitates. We scrapped all analogue lines for the main voice communication, but do have an analogue backup line for our leased broadband line (for receiving calls if desperately urgently) and retained the analogue line for the alarm line (which can double up as a two-way voice line too). We never had ADSL, only PSTN so the savings have been even more significant. Having a non-proprietry system works very well for us and personally speaking I don't always favour the "vendor lock-in" approach you have to sign up to on many systems, where the choice of handset is limited and most have some kind of annual/ongoing cost depending on number of extentions. Don't be put off by scary anti-sales talk about how 3cx isn't a "real" system or it isn't reliable, solid, well supported etc.. it's nonsense and I spent a fair bit of time doing research and getting feedback on 3cx before making the suggestion as the favoured solution.

Not sure what you refer to, but our 3CX project fitted around a £3.5k budget with a bit left over; this included the one-off 3cx license fee, first year annual support + maintenance, HP managed gigabit POE switch (albeit refurbished) and 50 yealink handsets (12 with gigabit) - the bulk of the cost were the handsets. We further saved moving the phone lines to SIP which helped get the funds for the project overall, as it would pay for itself in time. The "PBX" is virtual and on its own vlan - after the initial vlan config issues were overcome (which had nothing to do with the phone system), I must say we have been extremely happy.

As above. When I was researching this last year, I called and emailed quite a lot of schools (including bclarke and a few others on edugeek!) and didn't have a single bit of bad or concerning feedback. The only negatives where from companies trying to sell competing systems.. not suspicious at all(!) Suffice to say we have not looked back either. Fantastic system, wide range of SIP phones to choose from, fantastic price, loads of features often only available on premium systems and no annual licence/ongoing fee.. just pay for max concurrent calls (which is a good way of doing it).

I got absolutely nowhere in the end with whatever route I tried and ended up needing to totally figure it out myself. Interestingly, I found that if the product was pushed out via an install package created with their deployment toolkit, including photoshop x64 and our license, that it installs the software and auto activates, as is the case with our other CS4 products. I only figured this out when I went back to basics and tried to make a new installable package from scratch, as I did when we first got CS4, and bizarrely this was effective. Just have to remember that we can't install/activate photoshop x64 manually!

Presently our "system" for logging e-safety incidents isn't particularly efficient or even advisory - incidents are written down on a report sheet then scanned in to the system, with a reference made on a "master" word document. I am just wondering how others manage their e-safety incidents and how/where these are ultimately logged? We will generally always try and get any database-type info on SIMS, though not sure where specifically this type of info could be stored? The info generally is date, student involved, details, staff involved and resolution. The closest I have found is behaviour management and trying some way, if possible, to create another area in here similar to achievements, behaviour, detention etc but again not sure if this is the best way or even possible. I could make an excel file for this or even, at a push, an access database but both seem a bit cumbersome and perhaps dated in comparison to generally more preferred approaches. Any suggestions?

Fair enough, although your initial post and the part that I highlighted could understandably be perceived as a lack of interest from your part personally when specifically asking that same community to post opinions and views, some of whom will no doubt feel frustrated that there is no clear opportunity for them to make an expression. I am aware that there are a fair few cashless catering providers that read these forums; no doubt this topic, as well as many similar ones previously, will be an interesting read for some providers, particularly the ones you have limited the discussion to though I hope professional etiquette will be upheld and they refrain from making comment. I still need to counter your point though about it being outside of your control and there being a disinterest in considering any other system. The way you have set this up and the polling process will only give you a very specific, and perhaps somewhat bias feedback. I still suggest an "other" option should have been provided, if only so you could feed back to the decision maker that whilst the feedback on the systems you have looked at is x,y and z, there is infact a particular percentage that for whatever reason opted for something different. NRS seems to be a good system with a large customer base and you certainly pay the price for it, though a different approach could be taken by them in relation to aftersales.. and that is when they don't win the bid. If you have the funds and go with NRS it wouldn't be a bad decision by any stretch.

Wrong attitude in my opinion. We looked at 5 systems in total and one we progressed with wasn't one of the first 3 systems we had a demo of. Even though our original intention was only to have a demo of 3, we found it a lot more productive and insightful to see 5 although the decision was harder because of that! Even if you don't want to list other systems, at least offer an "other" option, if anything just to give yourself an idea of how many don't use one of the specified systems. You might even find you will get more constructive views and opinions if you don't appear to alienate those who use alternate systems.

I redid our map during the summer - having looked at what software would be available, I eventually settled on... paint.net(!) Yup, it was all carefully and manually drawn up using the old map as reference. The old map had been modified over the years, also in paint.net, but over time had become somewhat bland. I am sure there are far better ways of creating maps, however with it just being painted lines then once it's complete, it's so much easier to modify etc and still looks good!

The 3030 uses the Intel DQ35JO motherboard and we still have plenty of these in use. You will already know you have to use a USB keyboard, or a keyboard that communicates via the USB interface/jumper seeing as the board doesn't include any form of PS/2 port. I can't say we have encounted this issue that many times before, but I tend to find the much more basic/cheaper USB keyboards to be more likely to work at the POST stage than our more fancy ones with all the bells and whistles. Have you any USB keyboards that are very, very basic, perhaps even the generic/simple RM branded ones?

We acquired Design Premium CS4 7 years ago and in all that time have only used the 32bit titles from the software (which comprises nearly all of them). However, as some of our machines now run 64bit OS, we figured we would try and get Photoshop 64bit installed instead of the 32bit one (the 64bit package is available from the same media set as the rest). Unfortunately, we find our serial number is not accepted when trying to activate the 64bit version of Photoshop; it remains fine when activating any of the other 32bit software titles though (i.e. dreamweaver, illustrator etc). It simply displays the red cross and says it is "invalid" when trying to progress to the next screen. Online chat support is not particularly helpful given the product is old and "no longer supported", despite the query being related to license activation as opposed to actual support; they did not flag up or alert me to any issues with the serial we were originally issued and have used. I am not sure whether the same serial should work for 64bit as well as all the others, or if we should have had a different serial for this all those years back? Is there a really obvious reason why there is an issue getting this activated or should the same license key work for any software title in this range, whether it be 32bit or 64bit? We're somewhat frustrated we didn't try and install a 64bit title many years ago when support would have likely been a little more willing to assist.. Adobe have just totally washed their hands of it which I find incredibly disappointing considering the money we spent!

Our IT dept want to start using the newly acquired android tabs next week for computer science, initially just using MIT App Inventor app. We are keen to ensure that the settings on the tabs can't be played with or that other apps can't be used/downloaded etc. Is there a decent recommended app for locking android down in the strictest sense to just approved apps? The app store has quite a myriad of apps available to do this, however rather than trying many of these and working out which one is best, I am wondering if anyone else has already gone through this and settled on one they're happy with?

Anyone that has a VRTX.. did you spec 10GbE when new, or perhaps had it added in via an add-in card? We are contemplating whether it's worth doing however are unsure whether we could use a generic 10GbE expansion card or if the hardware might be "picky" as to what is used! Currently we have 2 1gig links from the VRTX to the core.. we thought these should have been trunked but it appears not to be the case.. at least not at the core switch end.

Reseller.. we seldom deal direct with manufacturers for anything unless it's the only or advised option for the query/issue being handled. One thing we didn't do was look at getting a 10GbE card for the rear which was a bit of an oversight. Wondering if anyone else has done this successfully and which card they use? There is still a lot about the VRTX we haven't touched though and wouldn't know how to deal with.. something we need to look at more closely at some point. The ability to manage and monitor the chassis independently of the VRTX contents is a bonus though.

Yes, like Linfit we did this over summer. Network config on the VRTX has been a bit faffy (getting the vlans done etc) but the kit itself and the savings in cost, space, power, noise and cooling has certainly made it worthwhile. Pretty much everything is in a box smaller than one of our old servers alone! We are only using 2 blades and half the overall capacity in 2.5" HDDs too so we can in theory expand double what we have now within the same footprint as we currently have.

If you know the IP address, would you not be better using any networked machine and connecting to them via putty? I find it such a faff using the console cable directly and only do so if locked out of the switch for some reason, as a last resort!

We are looking into whether to open up our wireless network to allow students to connect with their own devices via their standard AD credentials; this would be on an isolated wlan, on a separate vlan via our ruckus managed system. We already do this for staff though we haven't really needed to concern ourselves with the filtering on that as they get the same level of internet access as they do on a standard networked computer/laptop which isn't a problem. In terms of the student devices, we're discussing how we would be filtering the internet and whether it should be an identical level of filtering they get on networked machines or a much stricter policy, perhaps even a whitelist only. The idea, if it works out, would be to use a smoothwall box just for the student wifi wlan only which we can then have a greater degree of control over (and they would authenticate to each internet session), but it's a question of whether to retain the current network setup of having a blacklist of denied sites or saying the internet is blocked except for a list of approved sites. We are wondering how other schools have done this given you lose that level of checking what is being browsed in real-time (as we can on networked machines via netsupport/rm tutor etc).

We have recently taken up a managed print contract and thus have a small quantity of printers that are now surplus to our requirements. The printers have various levels of toner remaining/present and specifics can be provided on request. All have been using compatible toner though this only seems to have had an impact with the Konicas (as noted below). Limited to public sector institutions (in the first instance anyway). Collection is strongly preferred due to lack of packaging, although delivery options could be discussed. Printers • 3x HP 2025n Colour Laserjet printers – all working, good condition - £45 each • 1x HP Laserjet 3015dn – functional but something seem to be catching/clicking when printing, may be an easy fix but still works - £40 • 2x HP Colour Laser 1515n – both functional - £35 each • 1x HP Laserjet P2015n – working fine but needs toner - £17.50 • 6x Konica Minolta Magicolor 5650/5670EN – bit of a mixed bag.. 4 have come out of regular use, 2 have been stored for some time (spares/repairs?) – some issues on print quality but likely due to compat consumables being used. I suspect (but can't guarantee) they would work fine with genuine consumables (and maybe an internal cleanup) but printers generally are in good nick. Looking for £65 each on the working ones and £20 each on the 2 for spare/repair. Phones Mixture of Panasonic digital hybrid phones, mostly T7420 but also a few with screens and more keys (T7425 and T7431). Mixture of black and white but mostly white. 7420 £5 each, 7425 £7.50 each, 7431 £17.50 each. Prices are not set in stone and can be negotiated, particularly if a job-lot is taken. Phones can be delivered for cost of carriage and packaging or collected.

Bought one from them before without issue, but they currently have no stock We would generally pay sub £100 if not getting new; we have had some used ones before and generally had no issues and still going well now. We tend to stick with Epson for brand and part consistency.

Anyone know of reputable suppliers who may stock fairly modern model refurb Epson projectors (talking in the X9/X11/X12/X14 era)? Seem to be struggling to find stock at the moment from those we'd normally look to!

The HP one is about £130 and the rfideas one is about £100, but prohibitive in terms of what money we have left over and into 4 figures to fit to all the new printers. I was keen to know if anyone has used, or has knowledge on the cheap few quid ones which apparently run on the same frequency and how the general setup on the printers is. They are in effect just like generic keyboards I guess, just with a different way of processing the data, but it'd be encouraging to know of anyone who has used, with success, an array of budget end readers within their printers.

We've recently acquired a quantity of new printers that have the capability for HP Access Control proximity readers to be installed. Whilst this sounds useful, the cost of the readers from HP is somewhat prohibitive. Just wondering if anyone else has gone down the route of card touching/swiping for printer authentication, how this works in general and whether there is any knowledge for alternative (cheaper) readers that may work for HP printers? The cost for the HP units are over £100 per reader but there are extremely cheap £2 ones ebay, though one would wonder if the HP machines would even be compatible with them!

It looked very likely, but changing the setting within Windows doesn't appear to change or add any entry in or around that area, even in the sub-keys.

I wasn't aware you could config the sleep button in BIOS? The power button (on the chassis) you generally can, but not the sleep button on keyboard? This is an OS setting?