dgsmith

Yes, but we're not looking to disable the firewall for the reasons noted above...

Popular question and alot of past discussion; you may find doing some searches on this useful and an interesting read. Briefly though, we only use compats/remans now. We have had a 75% budget cut to the consumable budget in the past 2-3 years which has meant having to continually find cheaper products and suppliers. This has regrettably meant having to stop using some suppliers I had good relations with simply because we didn't have the budget. I personally have spent considerable time with a number of suppliers, evaluating products, building relations and negotiating pricing over the past year. Thing with compatibles is that there is no set standard or consistancy like there are with OEM cartridges (such as are they fully remanufactured down to individual components, or just refilled/drill&filled etc). Don't let some people with bad experiences put you off. Likewise, don't let any previous bad experiences put you off either. I've spent considerable time to achieve what I thought was impossible but am very happy with the quality of the cartridges we use now and the service we receive. I was also happy with the service provided by previous suppliers but unfortunaly because of lack of budget had no choice but to change. As a sidenote, I tend to only deal with companies that remanufacture their own cartridges as opposed to buying in from distribution centres. This does mean problems can be addressed very quickly (and even then problems are rare).

Starting to get our quotes through now. For us just having the standard desktop pack (OS, Office, CALs), it seems a price range of £32-£35 is realistic and that is based on our FTE count of ~75. I'm guessing where the FTE count is bigger then the lower end of that scale is achieveable. We're looking to slice £6k off our agreement which equates to a 70% reduction - incredible! Our agreement is due for renewal in April which seems like the perfect time really.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem that straightforward. When the firewall is off, the computer can't be contacted (ping, netsupport tutor etc) though the workstations can connect users to shared drives and printers. Also, as we're an RM CC4 network (cue awkward faces), it seems it's desirable, if not necessary, to run the windows firewall.

Wow! I wish I hadn't said anything now - got the call, OfSTED coming this week and lots and lots of staff have asked for replacement ID cards!

We do because the head here introduced it! I can't say we'd be too upset though if we found we didn't have to anymore, but apparantly it's something to do with safeguarding. Does seem a bit OTT as the staff know who the staff are, the kids know who the staff are and visitors are given a visitor badge to wear prior to entering anyway. I just know come the next OfSTED inspection that'll we'll have to be creating replacement cards for 75% of the staff who "forgot" or "mislaid" their ID card..

I guess noone has any idea about Win7 firewall either then!

We're quite generous in that we don't charge stupid amounts for colour. I work on a system of price paid for cartridge / stated toner yield + 1p (mono) or +3p (colour). For instance, on our HP 2600n cartridges I get compatible cartridges for £21 each and the yield is 2000 pages. This works out at 1p + 3p = 4p. As you can't tell how much colour coverage there is you have to go somewhere in the middle. Papercut can recognise between mono/colour pages with PCL drivers and we use a greyscale discount so that black-only printing is charged at mono values on colour printers. It's quite hard to get it exactly right though. Some printers will still use colour to print mono, though as the print allowance we give students is 30p per week (£5 initially in Sept), and our print credit system is more of a deterrent against waste than to actually charge (which we will still do), it seems to work for us by not charging the earth. Abusers of the system can be identified usually quite easily and this is dealt with separately. We don't make a point of showing environmental impact, as we know noone will be interested. We check weekly reports and keep an eye on who is printing the most but again we don't make a point of emailing usage reports. We do, however, print a report every half-term showing departmental usage and costs, which is deducted from department parts. This is much more effective than anything else as it hurts them financially.

At the moment we pay around 8.5k annually on SA. Am I to assume that, as a ballpark figure, we'd be looking at 100x39 as noted above by Edu-IT (even though our FTE is only double figures), to equal around 4k annually? If so, and if this means we are effectively more than halving our subscription licence, it looks very promising!

Got a problem with a bit of software (dansguardian ident exe) where Windows 7 is automatically configuring the rule for the software to be "blocked" as opposed to on allow. I am guessing because the installation doesn't specify what it should be, Windows 7 is choosing to block by default unless otherwise stated. Is there a way to configure this remotely or override it? Unfortunately, setting the same rule via group policy to allow just adds this rule alongside the blocked one and doesn't take priority.

Yes, it appears they offer older versions of their software for free which usually work fine. We also have used Ashampoo for a number of years now since hearing about their free burning studio 6, however I only just noticed this promo for multiple "paid" software for free, which they don't necessarily make it easy to find! The spam is annoying but I wouldn't say it's that often. Worth it for the freebies!

Just noticed this link which seems to offer a promo code to get free licence keys for some Ashampoo software. When you register an account (online, for free) you can then activate your free licence keys for the software in the link above (direct link to Ashampoo promo page on that link). In our account we now have several valid licence keys for software that has a price attached to it (such as Burning Studio 10)! All legit and done through the Ashampoo website as it even mentions they are free on their promotional page. Also, if you have an account and you're logged in you can click on this link (again official Ashampoo website) and immediately get a free fully valid licence key for HDD Control software. For the skeptics among you, it definitely works and everything is done via the official Ashampoo site and the licence keys appear under you Ashampoo account via the website. I haven't checked whether you're allowed to run them in a network/domain environment on multiple PCs though. Even if this isn't the case, it's still free software for home/personal use!

I wouldn't get too upset over a difference of 35p Not like we pay over double for our petrol than Aus.. oh wait.. I just activated our agreement for this now too after reading this thread and genuinelly didn't realise how cheap it was!

The link to the HUP for UK is here. I think for £8.95 that's a steal!

Just noticed the enhanced version on our's is now not working or is very slow. You choose the enhanced option, it appears to load the folder structure, but then just the "My School Computer" link shows in the top left of the tree view. If you wait about 30 seconds the rest then may show or sometimes not. This is odd considering this part especially was lightning fast when I first installed it. Students are known to be impatient and assume it isn't working thus telling me as much! Also a mapped drive on a member server (non DC) has suddenly stopped working with access denied errors now - again this worked fine initially and nothing that could affect that has changed.. The network path was not found. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.IO.IOException: The network path was not found. The errors seems to suggest either it can't find the server or the name/link has changed? The server is our intranet server.

Started using computerink.co.uk for empties. Got £65 credit from around 30 empty toners, and they even take empty compatible Konica and Brother colour toners too (as well as pretty much any OEM toner). Prices offered very reasonable and has really helped us out with us having virtually no money left now - we're having to go to any length possible to try and find money!

Bought 2 from stuffusell on ebay recently, £50 and £60 respectively. Not core 2 nor are they compatible, though they're compatible with the next best thing (even if inferior), Pentium D CPUS. Then again, if you wanted core 2, you could just buy a cheap LGA775 mobo and Pentium DC processor and stick linux on to avoid OEM licencing issues. I'm waiting for the current ebay ones to end unsold so the offer price comes down a bit more - £50 I'd say is reasonable for the current ebay specced ones (Celeron D, 512MB, 40GB).

If we do not use the booking system/helpdesk, is there any reason at all why we should be (or is there any benefit in) using a/the domain admin account vs a standard user account?

Very well said. Totally agree here - it is a fantastic product! On a side note, thanks AT for publishing your testing with a standard user account. I too am very concerned about using the domain admin account (not least, as you say, about having the credentials in the web.config file too), so it is promising to see it may not cause problems to use an account with somewhat lesser priviledges, which i'd imagine would certainly be safer.

Sorry to bump the thread but I am also interested in knowing what RAM part number this was for the DDR2 sticks. Also, anyone know if these boards support core 2 CPUs (would be the first gen ones)? I know the Asus site (for the similiar P5VDC-MX) says it does for PCB rev2.0 or higher, though not sure which PCBs these boards are.

I understand, but it still logs activity and could HAP not extract certain bits of this (even if it is to say recent logon activity/who has used the system over the past 1hr etc)? The logon tracker now, I think, is limited to internal use and doesn't take in to account external access? Thanks for that - a big help. Will have to take a look over that and see if I can make some necessary amendments. Cheers Not to be on a downer though about your community contribution here - it truely is amazing work and the staff I have shown already are overjoyed at how much better it is than Easylink!

You'd have to explain that a bit further and where specifically to find that info and how to compile, as I have never really gone beyond VB! On the subject of adding stuff - why not utilise the logs on the log directory of Web Components (where the easylink and extranet folders are located on an RM network)? I.E: ..../Web Components/Logs/W3SVC2? It is logging perfectly fine the actions of users using HAP on our network (right now as I speak) so why can't this info be extracted and built in to the logging features of HAP? That really would be real-time action then without the user having to config/install anything else. Just a thought mind - seems s waste to not make use of those logs some way.

Well no, because display names are already setup properly, as are the first and last names, but the dept is blank (because we don't use that field). Some may choose to just add in their dept but not change their name, but then when they save it'll still overwrite display name. The other option is to disable the ability to edit details, but it seems a shame to disable that when it could be easily rectified!

I suppose, though would like a login box regardless of where they're logging on! Something else I noticed too - our staff have Mr/Mrs Bloggs at their display name (for obvious reasons not having first name), but when they change their department or just update their details, it changes the display name as well to what they put in the first name. This isn't good! Fine that it replaced the first and last name fields and even the surname in display name, but we don't want their full names showing up to everyone (including students) in outlook. Can this be fixed asap? Also, how can we pull down extra details in the home page from the AD (like we have name, form/dept and email now)? I take it this is hard coded in a dll somewhere?

Would Windows Authentication mean that we wouldn't be able to specify a user/pass when logging on within school? Is it much improved from a security angle than basic (talking about logging on externally/from home)?