dgsmith

After a month later, I assume you would have had a response? Still keen to see what the current response from is regarding this!

As we're looking to go virtual, it would seem viable for us to go to a D2D2T solution (or perhaps D2D2D if we try and utilise our RDX drive/cartridges). We have been quoted on a new diskbox BUT we think we could perhaps utilise one of our current servers (which is less than 3yrs old) and just fill it with hard drives. Is there anything we need to be aware of or consider if we wanted to do this? Could we just use a the current windows license or would we need to look at windows storage server and specialist backup software? Is there any specific way a backup diskbox would need to be setup (if we use veeam for backups for the virtual servers) or is it simply a case (in a nutshell) of filling it with HDDs and sticking on a windows server install? Has anyone configured their own backup diskbox in a similar environment who could offer some advice? With regards to the 2T/2D part, we are looking at an LTO6 storage library however our current network in total comes to around 900GB in used space. Now obviously we'd expect this to increase but what I want to know is, whilst we could still currently fit the network on a single LTO6 tape (which is 2.5TB native) or a single decent sized RDX cartridge (and then with compression), should we still be considering an LTO storage library or should we wait a year or 2 until costs come down, or perhaps not consider it at all right now)? We need to consider how much space we're likely to be using 3 and 5 years from now and whether we should wait until LTO6 comes down in price and reconsider, but if so we'd have to feel like we could make do without one in that time.

Came in an 18 month old HP workstation I recently bought. As I already have a reasonable graphics card, I am using my own instead and thus this one is not required. I used this one for the first few days whilst I transferred data across and had no problems with it at all. It's 1 slot in height and has 1x DVI and 2x DisplayPort connections to the rear. Looking for around £225 and would prefer someone local around Sefton, Merseyside (as I don't like posting high value items), but will post with a signed delivery service on an appropriate level of cover. If no interest in 7-10 days will put on ebay

So I got a 5m cable and in one room *just* about reaches (and functions), however some rooms will require closer to 7m. When looking at USB cable length limitations, it does seem to be that unusual behaviour only really affects USB devices that require constant connectivity (such as mice, printers and external storage). In the instance of what I am trying to do, it is simply when the teacher presses a button on a remote.. without wanting to spend and buy if it's going to be an issue, i'd have thought the USB length limitations in what I am trying to achieve wouldn't really become apparent with just a metre or two over?

When staff have asked about controlling their presentations, we typically suggest they find themselves a wireless presenter remote, however a few picked up on the fact that the Epson remotes have the same page up/down buttons amongst a few others so naturally queried why they couldn't use their projector remotes to achieve this. I guess this would involve hooking up a suitable sized USB cable from the projector in to the computer. Has anyone tried doing this, or indeed actually have this type of arrangement in place? I am thinking if we can get hold of some cheap longish (7-10m) USB cables, then we could in theory provide each room with the ability for wireless presentation (for those that look after their remotes!) We just need to find somewhere to buy these length USB cables too at a reasonable price if that's the case.. not silly money like £15+!

^ This. It has made me terrified to even poke it nevermind upgrade it! I'd imagine any further upgrades now wouldn't be anywhere near as bad, but still it leaves a scar from mental breakdown..

As I say, I am still very suspicious about the claims being made however in an email they attached the letter at the end of this message so make of that as you will. Like I said in a previous post, it seems to be one person who wrote the aforementioned letter who is championing them rather than LCC as a whole. LCC's comment about refurb equipment though I take with a pinch of salt.. how many of us here have bought from the likes of ICT_Direct etc (ourselves included) when budgets have been tight, or just in general? Our first concern should be getting best value for money for where we work and we'll all use common sense when doing that. LCC LETTER.pdf

Honestly? I have no idea, but frankly I could care even less. I took the call out of curiosity although found they could perhaps supply us on our level (refurb) but on a minimal basis. Guy I spoke to (and if he somehow happens to come across this thread he'll know who I am), gave me prices for a number of things.. for instance an Epson X11 projector (few 100 hours bulb usage, 12 month warranty) for about the £100 mark, though I won't start advertising the prices or items discussed as that could really constitute promotion and there are decent suppliers who do actually support this forum who could do with a bit of that I don't buy in to the new "preferred supplier" thing though.. just seems like 1 person in the local council has got involved with them in some capacity and is trying to champion them a bit.. but I may be wrong. If they can provide us with decent quality refurb stuff through our preferred method of purchase order/payment terms (not ebay) and at decent prices, then frankly that's all that matters if we're getting good value for money.. the rest is academic. There aren't many suppliers out there who sell decent refurb stuff, especially at very reasonable prices, and even less that are prepared to allow you to pay on 30 day terms, so from our point of view it's just another option.

Having seen this thread and deciding to take the call none the less, then I have to say to be fair that their refurb stuff seems reasonably priced (cheaper than ebay with a 1 year warranty), though for new I would still stick by our long trusted usual suppliers, however as we typically buy a fair bit of refurb/used stuff too, it could be quite handy for us. Having been advised of a few refurb prices, then ICT-Direct may want to review their own

We just use the standard filtering that needs to have a printer selected before any show, but then that setting remembers the next time the teacher logs in (often elsewhere) and the inevitable "no jobs are listed!" is replied with a reminder that they still have the previous room they where in selected, or worse that the teacher in the previous room is frustrated that the kid's work is printing (being authed by someone else accidentally). In my view, this is something very easy for papercut to properly implement, but the impression I got was that it isn't something many people are bothered about or see as an issue, so wasn't deemed particularly high priority (and I don't want to continue pestering them as they have spent some time previously on the function we now use). I do know though that papercut read the forums so perhaps they'll respond themselves in due course!

This is EXACTLY what I pestered papercut about for years.. a quick way for teachers to just get the print queue for the room they are in for releasing jobs. The best they were able to do was make it an option to have to select a printer from the filter before any show, but even this means the setting is remembered next time (if they are in a different room) and was only a slight improvement over ultimately what we wanted (which is to either specify the printer ID in the url or have a page in the release area where you can just 1-click select the printer from perhaps a few tiles and for this to NOT remember the selection upon next login. Suffice to say, we still wait for a better arrangement

Think i'd rather individually count a million grains of sand than search through that archive I admit to finding the location where the current latest universal drivers are here, alas it gives absolutely no help as to where older versions are, though it seems evident how HP have set up their folder structures.. complete nonsense it would seem! Wondering if it's possible to do a search on an FTP location such as this one?

Didn't have much luck there unfortunately! Even if I could find where the standard model-specific drivers are I may be able to work with that but again hitting a blank there. Just seems HP only offer you the latest universal driver for all printers with absolutely no alternative drivers at all (no archive anywhere that I can see)!

HP p3015.. we use the hold job functionality in the driver so staff need to confirm jobs on the printer before printing. For some reason on later universal drivers, this doesn't work properly (or at all), or just spits out rubbish.. or doesn't log username (basically any number of issues). The driver in use currently is from about 18 months ago so I imagine a universal driver from around that time is fine.. but it's finding an archive of them which I really want. Googling printer drivers, surprisingly, isn't as fruitful as one may think.

Haven't really had much luck with HP's universal print drivers of late and our best bet is using the older versions. However, we need to 64bit support and thus the 64bit driver needs to be the same as the 32bit one installed (and taking the latest drivers always seems to break stuff.. even the universal ones from 2yrs aren't this bad). Do HP keep a large archive of their printer drivers somewhere, as the website only ever gives the latest "universal" one?

The standard sell price of the ones we bought is about £6.50 for the pair. I tend to lookout when for when Misco do their 2-for-1 offers, but then recently I have noticed when they have done them, they have almost doubled the price before saying they are "giving you one free", which is a bit sneaky and so we haven't got any of those from Misco for a while

We have bought V7 stuff too (keyboards and mice) previously which has been fine, hence why I opted for them this time round. This is why I am so surprised as they don't at all look like or meet the standards i'd expect of V7 kit!

@AButters: I mentioned nothing about the price.. certainly if they were just £1.50 a pair then i'd be embarrassed about querying poor quality We have bought cheaper combos than the one in question that have been stronger and better built. Yes, the price wasn't a heck of a lot but from previous experience and the fact that V7 is reasonably well known, as a consumer you'd expect better really. @ICTDirect_Dave: We bought some used Logitech keyboards from you about a year back.. besides a few duffs they have been very good indeed (and the same good quality ones we already used), however it seemed you didn't have any left. Could you drop me a message about reasonably priced ones you have available atm (prob used as price matters)? Not blaming the supplier as it's not their responsibility but then as noted above it's when you have issues that you realise how good and willing to help suppliers are

The cost of the goods we wish to have instead are about 80-odd pence each *cheaper*, yet the fee we're being charged is about 80-odd pence per unit each (I'd have expected a courier fee perhaps of a few quid). However as this is a new scenario to us I have no idea whether we actually should be expected to pay any restocking fee or not. The item lot is a fairly standard one by a known brand.. V7, however I just needed to know what the standard procedure for this would normally be. I wouldn't say the items are defective as such, but just shoddy-built and QC obviously didn't occur!

Have a few days ago bought some keyboard/mice combos however the build quality of these is very poor indeed, so much so that the buttons on the mice can just be snapped with very little force (wouldn't last a day in any classroom). Our request to swap them for another brand is accepted however at quite a high price premium; given our reason for return is that the products fall below what we deem to be a reasonable level of quality, rather than simply a change of mind, is it reasonable for a supplier to treat (and cost it) as a standard "customer changed mind" return? The fee seems to be associated with restocking however I am sure if an item is bought in a shop and it falls below what is reasonably deemed to be sufficient quality then the customer wouldn't be expected to pay a "fee" to the shop to restock. The items to be returned are as-shipped and unopened. Never had this situation before so just need some advice, as I am sure our bursar will query why we are having to pay a premium to swap items which are falling somewhat below quality control.

It's something that on the face of it seems like the perfect solution to us, as we were only looking at having 2 physical servers to virtualise on anyway and this provides provision for 4, plus the higher transfer rates to storage that would otherwise be on an external SAN. I am just finding it hard to get my head around having the entire network.. literally everything.. on a box which doesn't seem much larger than my desktop tower (depth aside). Seems that the max CPU Dell will do is from the Ivy Bridge family, and whether or not the chassis will allow for newer blades to be inserted I am not sure, but everything points to a solution that is just ideal and I am trying to find what is normally the inevitable "but"s yet can't find anything particularly deal-destroying. Could it really be as it seems??

We are trying to move away from our one-physical-server-per-role approach to a virtualised setup, where 2 physical servers running vmware would be sufficient and initially have been looking at a dual HP-Proliant-380 setup with a SAN connected via switches to achieve this which I believe has been a typically standard approach. However, we were made aware of the Dell VRTX server (never really considered dell previously) but this does actually sound too good to be true.. "everything" in a single box including the ability to expand physical servers and have the equivalent to our SAN on it too without compromising on anything? What we don't want to do is seriously consider it if it's got flaws (lesser powered, limited expandability, minimal upgrade potential etc) in comparison to having actual full height, dedicated physical servers. Is there any reason why we wouldn't want to consider the VRTX? Besides the fact that when I look on the spec they still have Sandy Bridge processors only available, is there any "gotchas" we need to be aware of? I was always of the thought "if it sounds too good to be true.." so need to ensure we are aware of any pitfalls if they exist.

In the tags, I have a line that says: Guess it's the same for all versions (was also there when we ran 8.x).

FRDC: AIT Tape DC: RDX EXH: AIT TAPE OTH: LTO TAPE OTH: RDX 5 main servers, of which 3 still use tape and 2 RDX; each server has an independant backup though we are looking at going virtual which would likely be D2D2T using an autoloader to backup the SAN (would be a massive change for us).

I could have sworn i'd updated all the files! I hadn't updated the strings.xml file, so doing this resolves the issue with this error page though retains the popup of "Internal Server Error" and thus the MyFiles area is still inaccessible. Have checked the other files again and it was just this one that had been overlooked. Unfortunately with the popup, it doesn't give any clarity what the error is or where it's coming from. Is there a HAP-specific error log anywhere?