dgsmith

Recently we upgraded some desktop units from ancient Pentium 4 (skt478) to Core2 E6750 2.66Ghz but opted to reuse the original hard drives to save money (which were 80GB IDE, from 2004). Despite the fact these machines are fairly decent core2 spec with 2GB RAM, we often get complaints that they're pretty darn slow and on occasion "no better than they were previously", although we upped the OS to Win7. In contrast, we have the same spec in an IT room, also with Win7, except we have 160GB SATA drives in these and whilst they don't "fly", they certainly logon/logoff quick enough and seem to get the job done without the wait - a noticeable difference. Could it be quite true that the whole machine is being severely, negatively impacted by the HDDs? There are 4 identical ones with these reused HDDs in and they all seem to be suffering the same way. The size is sufficient so it's not a disk space issue and I didn't think IDE could have such an impact (although I obviously know it is slower, but not significantly surely)? Before we consider purchasing new HDDs (with the current prices and our non-existant budget), would it be worth it? Would appreciate responses based on fact and not "probably" or "try it" which isn't much help!

Well I am one of the most thrifty people around I personally would opt for a setup based around the trolley option. I agree with localzuk above that £300 seems reasonable for a trolley, and that is speaking from a school myself that hasn't bought much new stuff recently and that struggles to provide us with any realistic budget. Sticking them in a plastic box that looks better suited to freshly washed clothes doesn't appeal to me as a suitable approach in a youthful educational environment, particularly for rather pricey units!

Yes, we ended up sending it back to HP and they fixed it under the warranty, seeing as we didn't have a clue how to fix it! It turned out to be a part that had snapped, I assume from a student being a bit too heavy-handed!

I must say.. I am not at all anticipating Windows 8 in the slightest.. just seems they have completely gone off track entirely imo..

That explains why some of their open-box stuff is sometimes mega cheap.. great for those like me who seek out the B grade stuff, but I agree 50% is ridiculous! What kind of figure are you looking at? Is it postable or collection only?

We have the same machine, but just need to install it as a printer and it works fine.. What part of your setup is a headache?

@plexer: You may disagree and maybe you're right in your own way, but I can only speak from (positive) experience at my current and previous workplace (where I was also given full access). The "havoc" statement was meant tongue in cheek, but mainly to reinterate that as professionals we always ensure everything is backed up and thus most undesirable actions can never usually be indefinately destructive. Note though I only noted "basic admin access" and didn't suggest everyone, under every circumstance, should be given rights to the whole lot. My circumstances where different (as I briefly explained) and thus would have been very difficult to have anything other than full, but I guess it depends on the circumstances and how you perceive an individual on the initial impressions or indeed your own preferences. To answer burgemaster directly though: "I do not want our computer/user accounts deleted whilst he is learning!" - either action is a concious action and equally can be mistakenly done whether you're learning or working from years of experience.

I think it's rather demeaning to give any less than a basic administrative access level. When I first started, I had little experience in this field (a few months from previous place) but was given full admin access (or maybe it's because I was on my own half the week for the first year so had no choice but to need it and to pick things up very quickly!) I'd have felt a little miffed to say the least if i'd come into a job enthusiastic and to learn but was held back and limited to, as I quote above, "toner/paper stuffing, maybe building/repairing some hardware faults on machines". The irony is that after all these years, most of my time is now spent faffing with pc components and fiddling/sorting out printers!! Sure, work experience students (under 17) or someone who is only going to be there for a very short time should be given the bare minimum (if they're there just to test the water in terms of is that what they want to do), but someone who is starting as a full-time job and intends on their duration being long term I think should have some form of administrative access. You'll find you'll learn alot more about them quicker depending on how they treat such access and respect trust from yourself/other techies; indeed, offer the suggestion that you're willing to trust them as an adult who won't take it as an opportunity to cause havoc and accept alot of things they'll need to be patient with regards to the learning curve. Should a disaster caused by lack of maturity or worrying impatience happen, of course, you should have a decent enough backup system in place and pending how bad such "havoc" was caused, be able to ensure they find all the correct "one-way" doors On a more serious note, unless they're a kid or has zero experience and/or shown zero enthusiasm, any less than a basic admin account is an insult.

Looks exactly like the type you can render in paint.net (with the custom maze plugin)!

Secondary school with ~720. - 3k/year for printer consumables (+ termly additions from dept usage, adding about £250 each term) - hugely inadaquate, hence some purchasing from ebay and a 98% compatible toner setup is in use - licencing/RM support/broadband paid for separately and we do not need to budget for this as it's in the overall school costs 3k/year for everything else Suffice to say, we haven't upgraded a suite of computers for 3 years now (last new batch was Jan 09). Had a "handful" (literally) of new ones and about ~20 refurbs and everything else has been as-and-when (couple of switches, components etc from the 3k budget). Oldest computers are from Summer 05 of which there are over 50 and 32 from Spring 06. These account for 25% of overall amount. Can't seem to get the money to do anything about them..

Can you check if you have the below in your config.inc.php? // If you want only administrators to be able to make repeat bookings, // set this variable to TRUE $auth['only_admin_can_book_repeat'] = TRUE; In edit_entry.php (line 735 in an unchanged file), change.. echo "\n"; $label_text = get_vocab("namebooker") . ":"; if (count($select_options['entry.name']) > 0) { generate_select($label_text, 'name', $name, $select_options['entry.name']); } else { generate_input($label_text, 'name', $name, FALSE, $maxlength['entry.name']); } echo "\n"; to.. echo "\n"; $label_text = "Name: "; echo "$label_text"; echo "$create_by"; echo ""; echo "\n";

I've customised our MRBS beyond belief - I posted some screenshots in this thread in relation to a problem that I never did resolve! Is that funky enough for you? To your questions - off the top of my head I think there is a systemdefaults config file (there is one which acts as the actual config which only has the settings you want to change from default, and another with all the custom parameters in that you can copy to the main config file). You can add custom booking types in here (I think it's near the bottom) and obviously choose the colour. There is also an option in the config to disable repeat for non-admin (I have this enabled also) but I can't remember what setting it is at the moment. Not sure about enforcing a period duration - not something I have looked into! May require custom code, but then as you can see from my efforts on our install, MRBS is highly customisable. If noone has responded by tomorrow, i'll take a look in our config and advise the settings for booking types and non-admin repeat disabling.

Well, when we untick read only, apply to sub folders and ok that, we notice it still has the read-only tick in the box (greyed, but untickable) each time we check it, so not sure about that. Is that what would cause our problem or could there be something else? [update] Giving modify access to all users in the appdata security group passes the check.. still no workies though(!) [update2] Well now it seems to work? Bizzare! Thanks Nick =)

For what it's worth, the chocolate pizza is ace (thanks again Luke for the very nice, unexpected surprise during our last days in December before the holidays)! @teejay: I think it's harsh if someone negged you for that - seemed to me you're just trying to highlight a potential legal problem which I am sure Luke appreciates you mentioning!

Ah, didn't notice the worded documentation. Well I get to the login and splash screen (after login) but when browsing school documents (the My Computer page) it's just blank (for any user, any computer) - blank as in we get the box outline, HAP home link and login info/button, but inside the box where the fiels interface should be is blank. Don't know if it's related or a different problem, but the AppData write access check is constantly returning an error (cross), even though we have enabled write access for the 2 user accounts created and for the everyone group as a test (none makes any difference).

I've just downloaded and loading the video, but it's in Server 2008? Alot of RM networks still use 2003 and the IIS references are different - what are the v7 install instructioms for Server 2003?

Unfortunately not.. I still didn't manage to get the upstream proxy working! The box still on allows sites internal to lancs even when using dazt's config =\

As not everyone upgrades every time there is a release, there will be times when the upgrade to the latest will be many versions ahead of that being run. We're using 6.5.0.0 and I figured it was a good time to take on the latest version. Unlike from an existing 7.x install where I guess it's an overwrite procedure, what is necessary to install from 6.5? Would we need to upgrade to a newer, but still older than current version beforehand? I can't see any documentation for upgrading from a prior 7 release.

This was asked about a year ago in this thread. I posted our intranet in there and it hasn't changed since then so I won't bother reposting it, though you should get some inspiration from that. I opted for a very simple, but visually appealing approach (I wanted a "links wheel" but didn't know how to make a round thing, so just put the link boxes around the edge of a central search box)!

No idea what lancs proxy is - not managed by us. As noted further down by dazt in lancs, seems it can work! I guess I should try and get, or create, an uncommented file maybe, as navigating the default one is a nightmare, so hard to see how mine compares in areas you have posted. Sent you a PM - you being in lancs too may be useful! At least you can confirm it does work and definately something on our end. I think I have the cache_peer line correct and in the right place, though as I posted I have also set the same end parameters!

Well I don't need to test proxy.lancsngfl.ac.uk, because it's the main proxy we use for internet access. I have enabled logging and do indeed see alot more logs in the file now, but it doesn't make any sense to me and I can't really identify something that says "error" or where I can pinpoint a problem. I have read every manual I can find about squid upstream/external proxies etc configured as noted in my opening post. It surely must be something easy that I am forgetting, or maybe one other thing that needs doing, possibly something out of the ordinary not usually noted in standard manuals? How can I even check that squid is connecting to the parent proxy and not just trying to go direct regardless to what I have put? This seems possible given lancs-only sites can be retrieved directly anyway without using the proxy and these are the only ones I can access..

Having some trouble configuring squid on ubuntu. We go via lancashire proxy thus I have read I need to configure this in squid.conf under cache_peer. Whilst internal lancashire sites are accessible fine (which can be accessed when no using a proxy anyway), any other site, or "outside lancashire" times out. What I have is this in squid.conf: cache_peer proxy.lancsngfl.ac.uk parent 8080 0 default no-query no-digest never_direct allow all Do I need to change something somewhere else? Can't understand it at all!

Should have been clear - the pallet price is the supplier's arranged carriage (as it's 30kg+). They're in Burnley, 90% motorway between us which is why it's frustrating.

Looking at buying a printer and the supplier is only 35miles away (45mins); we can't collect ourself as we haven't got "business insurance" and we're looking at paying £35 on a pallet just for that short distance. Anyone from Lancs area know of a local courier who could do this same day at a good rate?

Received a nice looking Casio scientific calculator. Considering I was expecting a pen or another pen drive it was quite refreshing. Not bad for free - thanks CP!