dgsmith

We ended up going with Accupart as the had they best price (about £64 per screen inc delivery). Came today and they fit fine (after we managed to figure out what part the screen was)! They accept POs and work with invoices so that wasn't a problem. Thanks to everyone else who mentioned companies too - it's always useful to have a few and shop around! We have bought some other screens in the past off ebay (price) but I know the school is very much not in favour of that, so it's useful to have a few to compare!

For our intranet, I have a php settings file (which I have appropriately named config.inc.php) and values from here are passed to various areas of the site (such as internet status etc). When we want to change the status, we modify the text in this settings file and this works well. For instance: $status[0] = "Internet down"; $status[1] = "Email ok"; $status[2] = "Network ok"; ?> For the intranet index.php and other pages, I include this config file at the top then just have $status[x] echoed at the appropriate location. However, I was wondering if it is possible to be able to add an "edit" button next to the text (this would only be visible and editable by admins) and to be able to edit these values via the web interface? I have no problem doing the actual button and only allowing admin access to it, but what kind of php code is needed so that you can have a text box and submit button which will write back the values to the respective entries in the text file? Ideally, an edit button would be next to the status text on the intranet, clicking this turns it into a text box (or similar) where you can amend the text, then a save/submit button passes this back to the config.inc.php file and saves that. We're not fixing something that is broken, rather if possible making it easier to edit the text on the fly!

ah you forgot to add on the image file bit. How has it worked for you now then up until this point without that? Also, is this to be run when users log on or to computers?

I'll give it a try and see how we get on - thanks for taking the time to post that!

The zip detects 1 file in there but it may be corrupt (the contents seem to be all messed up). @LeightonJames: software speed is fine and doesn't seem to run slow when we have a full class running it over the network.

That's seems too cheap to be true - what's the catch? Is there anything missing from it that you would get with a screen elsewhere? Are they well built and look just the same and perform just the same as the ones that come with the laptops? As above, they accept POs and work with invoices? A different of £38 each is a fair bit! [Edit]Well our screen says L154WB04 which isn't specifically mentioned in that list! Does it have to be the exact model number or can it be one of the same family/similar name?[/edit]

Bit pricier than ebay but I think the school favours ordering from actual companies. Thanks for that LM! Do they accept POs and work with invoices?

Noone can get any prices to me for these, even if it's more than the ebay prices?

Any chance you can quote what the RRP (and thus the price that would be paid)? I take it the "RRP" would be considerably more than your standard selling price?

I'll try and find one and give it a try (I haven't any to hand at the moment, quite frustratingly). It says scanner disconnected when it isn't even trying to scan anything though (when you load the config, it checks for the presence of the scanner, which it then says it can't find it, even though it still happily shows in My Computer and device manager). How much of a voltage drop are we talking about over the distance? Would the same be true if I just tested over a length of a couple of metres too? Plugged in a USB pen drive where the scanner was plugged in, and this worked fine (could browse through files and open them up without issue). I guess this proves the extenders are working ok and the link hasn't got any breaks in it.

Right, 1 week later I have the extenders. I move the host computer into our room and plug the extenders in as necessary, so I have scanner>usb cable>usb extender>ethernet link to our room>usb extender (reciever)>host computer. All seems to look well - scanner picks up at host computer and asks to reinstall drivers. Scanner seems fine - is detected in device manager and a nice icon appears in "My Computer". If I unplug any cable this link, the scanner disappears (as expected) and reappears when I rejoin the link (again, as you would expect). Unfortunately, computer seems to think scanner isn't connected when I try to scan something (front buttons or windows interface). This is odd as it picks it up fine and I reinstalled it fine, and the tests I did above obviously prove the computer knows it is there. So, unless I can get this USB extender to work, it seems the computers will have to stay put! From scanner to PC, the entire length is about 15-20m (including USB and patch cables); much less than the quoted 50m for these devices. Any suggestions?

Yes I agree with your HP comment - they aren't being very competitive in what they're offering at the moment! Certainly going to drive us to look elsewhere.. I'm liking that economy though! That price seems like a steal! Near enough what we paid for the 2600n printers except the Brother one I imagine has to be better, right? I am liking how the high cap black does double the pages the HP Q6000A does and for the same price, and the high cap colours seems a bit cheaper too in comparison (obviously there is a separate drum too, but hopefully shouldn't affect economy too much). Would certainly be interested, although Vicki, Brother have picked a bad time of the year - as spending freezes very soon and not sure how much money we have/will have before then! Yes, we've recently acquired one of these from John (ICT-Direct), though mainly for the A3 than economy. I am more than happy that OEM prices for these cartridges cost the same per-page to the compats we buy for the HP2600n, so the compats for the HP 5550 offer great value (I have heard the horror stories on here though as well with these compats, fortunately we got the printer with full 100% toner levels so will be a while yet until we need more stock)!

The older models cost less than the CP4005n and where more economical too. It's a mix of principle and frustration that I don't want to propose to buy a printer for that much - we're very skint, and will be for some time! By all means Vicki, let me know what Brother have on offer, although we have never gone for Brother colours before so it would be a new experience. The economy can't be any worse than our current colour printers though (you should know what these are) else it wouldn't be of any benefit to us Mind me asking how recently, and where you managed to find them? I don't care if a model is old (note old model/technology, not used/2nd hand), as they are the ones that seem to now be giving the best value for money. We use compats for a few few of our printers now, so OEM prices don't affect us too much. I know the CP3505 with compat cartridges have a 6k yield for less than 2 compat cartridges for the 2600n which yield just 2k. Maybe it is purely on principle I don't want to propose new printers as it seems that we're being ripped off with the newer models..

We need 2 laptop screens for two of our RM laptops (model number of laptop is COMPAL EL81). I'm not sure of the screen model number but hopefully that should be enough info to know which one it is? The RM laptop and COMPAL EL81 are exactly the same so I can't see a problem getting a COMPAL EL81 screen. Can sponsors quote a price for 2 of these please? Seen a few new ones on ebay around the £70 mark so that is "around" the price we're looking for. Thanks!

Spot on! I had no idea until it was too late. Come on, could someone really be THAT stupid to put a hoover next to a spe.. ..hmm..

I'm looking to see what is on offer from HP at the moment in the form of colour laser printers. Is it just me, or are their latest offerings costing more money than the models they are replacing, whilst also having a higher cost per page (prices have gone up more higher than the yields have)? For instance, the older CP3505 is reasonably economical to run and has a fairly decent yield whilst not costing too much on cartridges. The newer models seem to cost more in both the actual printer and per-page? The CP2525n which is the closest in price compared to what the CP3505 was, has 2800 cartridge yields and costs around £75 per OEM cart. AFAIK, the CP3505 has 6k yield pages at around £120 each OEM? We have some 2600n printers, and whilst they aren't perfect (and I know its imperfections and why they were so cheap), they offered the same economy at near 3rd the price of the printer compared to the 2525n. All of our colour lasers are HP, except a few Konica Minoltas gained from the PfS scheme and we like to try and keep some consistancy, but I have to wonder whether HP is shooting itself in the foot here..

I'm sure now that it is being mentioned by RM in relation to SR2, they'll be releasing some official tec article soon enough detailing what's new etc.

Yes I think maybe the cone inside may have suffered a trauma. I wouldn't mind if I had put the end of the hoover right next to it, but I just brushed over it (granted though, it was playing something at the time). Hmm well, can't get a better excuse than this to get me some surround sound!

Speaker is big enough to not be sucked up It wasn't mega expensive (Logitech X 140 from PC World about 2 years ago for £25), but more so the principle, as they worked fine! The bright side is that everything else looks.. cleaner..

So I decided to do a bit of hoovering and get rid of all the dust. Saw a bit on front of the speaker and inn a momentary lapse of common sense, I hooved it up. The hoover noise was louder than the music so I didn't really hear any different although I thought a few moments after how silly that may have been.. (I did the same once to a PSU (unpowered) and that never came back to life). Seems now the speaker could be knackered! All cables are still in place and it still powers up, but nothing comes out of it. I feel rather foolish! Could it be the hoover has actually broken it?

We've been working with RM/Netsupport to help them address problems we have seen with the product from Tutor 3 onwards. It seems it'll be field trialed with other sites pretty soon as well with the release of SR2. Browse control/LL as far as I remember pretty much have the same purpose - pickup the machines in the location you're in. You don't need either on Tutor 5.

It's based on Netsupport school 10.5 which has the "browse control" functionality built in to the software rather than bolted on top which obviously is alot better. For us this has worked a dream and definately a feature I am sure most schools will be pleased about. You also get the tech console amongst other things, which means you can run that all day as a technician and see the whole school. On Tutor 3/4, I wouldn't recommend as a tech/NM running the tutor console in your office though. That is designed for teacher use only (and computers are designed to only be controlled/monitored by one tutor console on Tutor 3 & 4). The tech console removes that limitation. Other improvements too which overall make it a better product.

Do you mean the forum "thanks"? Just click it on the post? I edited slightly after posting which removes any thanks given (quite annoying)! If you're on CC4 you can get Tutor 4 and soon Tutor 5. We didn't have much luck with Tutor 3 but then we were very critical of small things too

RM Tutor 3 - Probably the main client. Will likely include student and tutor apps (so you could allocate this to every licenced machine) - the full package I am guessing. RM Tutor 3 Browse Control - Used to control the teacher console and what they are meant to see (so should only let them see the room/area that they're using). For us, it used to work about 70% of the time, but better having it on than not at all (only needed on machines with teacher console installed though) RM Tutor 3 Student Only - Student only package (doesn't include teacher console) RM Tutor 3 Teacher Only - Same as above, except vice-versa RM Tutor Enhancements - Some fixes and changes RM made (i'd recommend sticking this on every machine that has any variation of the above installed) RM Tutor Secure Client - If this is installed, then it'll pop up a box when you try and connect to a computer, asking the user logged if they want to let you connect to them (they can decline, and you won't be able to connect). Optional component, we never bothered with it tbh. You could either install the first one and enhancements, or install the student one and enhancements with the teacher one separately to computers where you only want the teacher console to be used. Been a while since we used Tutor 3 (we're testing Tutor 5 now!), but from memory that is the jist. The way wedid it (even now on Tutor 5) is the 2nd suggestion I made - install student everywhere, and teacher to only computers that need to use the teacher console.

We've had some issues with OB toners of late. Putting a fresh new set in has fixed our problems (for now), although it wasn't the same as the problem here. The printers we use are cheap enough that it isn't worth paying full price for OEM toners. I can't say we have seen any permanent damage on our HP colour lasers from using office basics (or any other reman brand in the past).