dgsmith

Thanks for clarifying. To be honest this actually seems like it could turn out to be pretty good for schools! Would points be decided on value of order (the invoice value) or the amount of profit you're making on the order? Hopefully not the latter as we'd never get any points then with my tendancy to get as close to cost-price as possible (sometimes even less than that) To an extent, I agree about elsiegee40's comment about the schools needing to benefit although realistically you could never know for sure if a techie buys a printer cartridge from points for the school or for home use... I don't think (m)any schools would take a dim view on this though, especially if they weren't losing out on anything at all, although if this was an issue you could maybe counteract that by sending a statement/zero-value invoice to the school for any goods acquired via the points program (addressed to the bursar/HD so it's all above board).

I still don't get what the points would be worth in real-time purchases... Would 20 points buy a hard drive? Memory? A network cable? A printer?? Maybe I have got the concept wrong? I suppose the way I see it, I have now become a bit more aware of you through this thread so will at least approach you on the next few quotes we get. I guess, if you come in with the best price or pretty well there (bar a few pence), then it's a no-brainer right? But, if it'd take like 20 average-value orders to acrew enough points for a single audio cable for instance then it's hardly worth it, hence why I ask what the points are worth in real-terms.

If you're saying you can beat Insight, who besides the IT Index are normally really cheap for us, I may put that to the test for you next time I am looking for some bits Seems like an interesting idea. You note it's £1 worth in goods available for every point? How much does each point translate to in real-terms? For instance with Tesco clubcard you get 1 point for every £1 spent (except when they do double points!), but need 100 points for it to be worth £1

Just installed it and tried it - works great! Definately will recommend - thanks for the heads up timbo!

Good stuff - looks exactly like the functionality which should have been present and means, as you say, we don't need to enable FUS! I'll definately be trying this out as we get countless requests every week to unlock Win7!

As Chris said, it's fairly painless unless you have custom code. I have completely redesigned our MRBS to the extent it is unrecognisable (see here), though if it's just using a vanilla setup, it's normally just a case of overwriting the MRBS files (afaik, there is no upgrade routine via GUI or cmd). Just make sure you don't overwrite your current config.inc.php as you'll need that for reference when reconfiguring the settings (but rename the old one). You could, if you're feeling nervous, is copy the files for the new version to a different folder/location but still reference the same database and have 2 versions of MRBS working with the same database. That is what I did whilst I developed the newer version to suit our needs, and staff continued to use the old version, then I simply renamed the folder where the new version was and it was fine! Not sure about LDAP, as I use an independant database for MRBS (for 2 reasons - had issues with LDAP and cba looking into it)!

Bradley has done that a few times (the sausage question?)! To be honest, it was Bradley's reaction that got everyone going - I may have had a brief chuckle at the name like others, but if Bradley had have gone about it like a normal question I don't think we'd even be talking about it! Bradley made me laugh as opposed to what he was laughing about in the first place. My fav gameshow on tv by far now!

Seriously.. we get 3k/year to run all printers and 3k for everything else (not including internet, rm support though - separate budget). We haven't had new computers since January 2009 (latest PCs we bought where 6 in Summer 2010, core 2 refurbs from ict-direct). Our oldest are from Summer 2005. We have just managed to get a new server pushed through after fighting since March, which is 7.5yrs old and regularly crashing. 10k a year for new equipment? YES PLEASE! Some of you don't realise how fortunate you are to have an SMT who sees ICT as an intergral part of the school or at least recognises that it needs ongoing investment; even just a token budget gesture for new hardware would be appreciated here. I'm guessing there will be some worse off than us too (god help them), as it's already a massive struggle for us as things stand..

Got to be one of the best, cheapest and professional jobs we have had done in the school! Had Phil from EduCare Av Services come out to us recently to install a projector/smartboard at a great price and did a fantastic job. Definately be using again! Great after sales support too =)

Aye we have used John for quite a number of things, mainly fully-blown hardware though (printers, monitors, desktops). I note their site no longer seems to have an area showing 2nd-user components now though so wasn't sure if they still held stock! @nephilim; Yup I meant rather 2nd user and know the likes of BT Business and Misco do these, which I check often, but finding hard drives in particular is hard!

Besides eBay(!), are there any companies/suppliers that either specialise in, or hold decent stock of individual refurbished/open-box components (HDDs, RAM, PSUs etc)? Whilst I know of several "refurbishers" (in the sense of refurbished whole hardware), I don't know of many (any) who offer a component service (specifically with warranty and the ability for invoice payment).

Also sounds interesting - did this tie in directly with the DG filter list files? I must admit I haven't looked into how complex (or otherwise) it'd be to write script to provide a GUI to tie in with these files. I did it for the SWE3 DGAV mod after some hairpulling but not to the extent of replicating the CRE mod.

@Gatt, i'd also be plugging my own P45 @MDUK: Sounds pretty much what I'd be aiming for - a straightforward web front-end based around squid that does control for that. I know of Ian from his booking forms so I'd have thought he'd develop something pretty good for this!

Well, I say issues with SWE3 as a general term but as we only used it solely for the DGAV/CRE functionality, I wouldn't suggest it was as direct result of SWE3. DG on SWE was hampered by ongoing performance issues which didn't improve when changing servers, and as the DGAV mod is well outdated now it didn't help matters. I'm looking down the road of ubuntu/webmin with squid/dg though have no idea if I can make maybe say a php or asp page which can link in to the dg list of banned mac addresses (or even better, someone who knows how CRE works)!

For quite a while, I ran a smoothwall express box with dansguardian and advproxy. The classroom control in advproxy was particularly useful, allowing teachers to logon and control internet access in their room without having to pester us. We have some issues with SWE and decided to take it down over the summer until further notice although this meant losing the ability of classroom control. I am wondering if anyone has created their own solution to this, maybe web-based that can somehow tie-in to AD or via their proxy server to control internet access per room/computer? If not, what suggestions are there which could achieve this? I have purposely not mentioned commercial products as it certainly isn't something we'd be looking to pay for!

Funny I should see this thread being updated - I also happen to be trialling backup assist on onr of our servers! Looks reasonably promising as plan to move a server over to Svr08R2 later this month. Prices seem fairly reasonable too.

I always press for free delivery. Used to use BT Business until a massive cockup and poor customer service - may only use them for open-box stuff now. Misco have got back in our good books, due to getting a new account manager who offers free delivery and competes well on prices! With Insight we have free delivery as standard built in to the account and prices are good too. IT Index have the best prices on everything usually but only good if getting a few things (as their £5 is never usually negotiable). CCS Media have a free delivery on most items ordered and also often good on price.

The ongoing issue isn't related to the button, no (it's more serious than that), but in saying that we have had issues with the button falling off and had some replacements of these over the years.

We have an ongoing issue with a batch of SCL machines. I have recently had email support and I get the impression they'll honour the warranty if it came to that (separately, they sent out a replacement front fascia about a year ago under warranty).

I'm curious what the lowest spec of machine is you're running on your network (ideally school network, RM CC4 for comparative purposes, but don't not post if you have vanilla)! I recall one of our Governors not long ago, when noted that some machines are over 6yrs old, that the concept of "wear and tear, contemporary software demands and compatability" didn't seem to register, thus we're no closer to upgrading a fair chunk of these oldies. The oldest (and indeed, least powerful) we have in use are P4 3Ghz, 512MB ram. No computer has SSD and practically all are 1GB-2GB ram. Maybe seeing what others are using now will either give us the courage to man up and really push for new gear or think whether what we have may in fact not be much worse than most others. The hope, of course, is that the former is very much the case!

Aha! Yes that worked. Now, why is this and how can we make it just work without that??

Running it on server 2003 (RM...) so I think that's v6? Can use FF with IE tab but not FF alone - just doesn't work for anyone, home or in school. Also as some staff have Macs they can't use it with the default browser they use.

Nice work Nick - will see about upgrading tomorrow. Will this release work with FF, as noone in our school seems to be able to get on it using FF at home (inc me)!

I've finally decided to make the jump from my 4+ yr old K800i to a HTC smartphone on contract. The Sony was on Orange PAYG and has over £10+ credit left whereas the new phone will be an O2 contract. Whilst I intend on getting a PAC code to change my number, what can I do about the credit on the PAYG phone? When the number changes I read the SIM is disabled. Can I get orange to refund me the credit? If it where a few quid I may have let it go but I don't really want to lose a tenner if I can help it!

I don't think it'd be fair to list alternatives to a company I have used myself and have no problems with, but also in a thread that is about praising ICT-Direct All I can say is, if you're willing to compromise on the warranty (or rather accept the HP remainder), there are a fair number of competitors out there offering the DC7800/DC7900/elite 8000 series. There are some threads here as well listing some. For instance, I bought a HP Elite 8000 SFF unit for £110 over the summer that was 1yr old, still has 2yrs to run on HP warranty with decent spec. John, whilst I absolutely do not want to give your exceptional additional warranty service an injustice, this is at additional (even if negligable) cost whereby the raw base unit cost does seem to be struggling against prices I am seeing now. You know I have never had any major problems with anything you've supplied to us and the DC7900s from last year are still the best in the school! I just think you need to be looking at the competition a bit more =)