dgsmith

We have 1 or 2 fixed printers around here that use the spliters (or economisers), however we found that the interference with printers sometimes causes random junk to print off (until paper empty or powered down). We could use a standard 5 port switch, but many rooms have a computer in with a mass of cables, and we figured if staff felt they had to mess around, they would be reluctant to use the printers (we're kind like that.. making things easy!) This does seem very similar, if not exactly what we wish to do, especially when you say the print server could communicate with your wireless lan and pickup the print queue from elsewhere. Looking at images of it, I can't see any which have antennas coming from them, even though you mentioned that you use it for wireless purposes (unless I am overseeing something simple)! I've looked at that, although I am not sure if that only allows the computer to connect directly to that, as opposed to running through our central print server (the domain controller). We need a print server that can communicate with our domain controller to get the spooled print jobs that the clients have sent to it, and this product gives me the impression it's direct printing only (although i can't be sure of that).

Sorry, maybe I wasn't entirely clear, as some of you think we are struggling to actually configure the printers on the server.. plexer, the printers aren't wireless, they are just your average printer (HP 2600n to be precise.. oh yes.. the dreaded 2600n!) Literally, instead of plugging the printer in to the wall, we just want to replace that with a wireless connection (thus, bridge the connection wirelessly). The access points are just your average WAP (1 ethernet port for the network connection), and most of them are.. PLANET! (a few dlink 2100s kicking around too), so not a great combination. DOMAIN CONTROLLER (PRINT SERVER HOST) | NORMAL SWITCH | NORMAL WAP | |<-- (this connection) | SOME SPECIAL WIRELESS PRINTER SERVER | 2600n PRINTER Between NORMAL SWITCH and the PRINTER is usually where you would have your network cable from the printer to the wall socket, however due to our lack of these, we wish to literally just do this wirelessly! Sorry if I didn't explain clearly before. riedquat, I think you may have understood me more, but unfortunately I didn't fully understand what you were explaining, so I don't fully know if you did or not!

We have some really old classrooms with just 1 port in each room (most used for computers), although we have wireless coverage for this area, and routing new networks cables would be costly and indeed not very easy. We have 2 laptop trolleys each with a printer on, and wish for students to be able to print to these printers using their wireless laptops, but for the jobs to be spooled through the main server (ie: traffic sent through the wireless network to the servers). We have looked at print servers on the likes of dabs etc, but these only seem to allow sending print jobs directly to the wireless print server (with no other traffic being routed through the wireless network). We wish for a print server which will allow the printers to connect to it, but then for the print server itself to communicate with our waps (so effectively, act as a bridge where a network cable would normally be). We tried using a normal wap for this, however noticed we need 2 waps, each set to bridge mode, but then the 2nd would need plugging in to its own socket, which defeats the object of using wireless! Any advice from those who have expertise here or indeed been in a similar situation would be greatly appreciated!

Strange problem with Nova-T on one of our admin machines. The user logs in to SIMS as normal and clicks on Nova-T, which brings up the splash screen, but then it just "hangs", and requires a process terminiation to get rid of it. Then strangely, with SIMS still running, if Nova-T is then reclicked to load it back up, it'll run just fine (no errors or logs stating the previous freeze or close). It has happened 3 days on the run now, so a bit concerned as to why it is doing this - it works fine once loaded too! It seems to be specific to 1 machine.

Did you give them a competitive price to compare against? Normally, we will tell them what prices we have found/been offered elsewhere, which gives good grounding to base a price on.

I am currently getting some quotes for a few machines from RM. Looked at Dell prices, gave it to our internal sales manager, and he beat it by around £30 (it was around £160 off the config price). RM will go down if you push them, but to me to have to go down that route is rather daft, as it pushes their custom away, as proven many times (even in this thread).

What are all your thought so far then? I wonder if they will make a record..

For 1 day of work, for someone maybe who works part time elsewhere (and it seems quite simple), might be a nice little earner.

blue hammer here.. which seems the second most popular one..

Our school was among ~100 that received solar panels half funded by the co-op. We have a monitor in our front foyer that gives a reading as to how much has been generated since installation, how much is generating right now, and how much co2 we have "prevented" entering the atmosphere - quite impressive for when we have visitors! On a good day, we can get anywhere past 5000W generation real-time, although during winter that barely gets aboe 50-100W (30% of a workstation?). The saving in energy cost is probably negligable, as is the less gasses released, but still if every school had one (hypothetically), I suppose it would have an impact if looking at it in the bigger picture.

We have just replaced a Brother 5170 (not that old either) with a HP P3005n for SIMS/office use. Although we looked at the HP P2015, we figured it would be best spending the extra on the printer itself and getting far better cost-per-page economy, which we do on the toner with the p3005. Although we have never used Kyocera, I do believe in recent years they have improved dramatically, however we're a brother/hp school, particularly leaning more towards HP in recent years.

As strawberry mentioned, Lancs Computer Waste Services have recently collected alot of our old equipment at no charge, and they even give you a certificate which, depending upon how proud you are of recycling, you can frame! They didn't seem too picky as to what we had and were decent enough chaps!

We have 9 of the 2600N printers around the site, and we wont be buying any more. Although cheap to buy, the economy of the toners is ridiculous, and as mentioned in a previous post just eat the toner like it's a snack! Page count for 5% coverage is given at 2000-2500, whilst the toner costs aren't exactly cheap, though that is always the case with cheaper printers. I'd recommend, if going hp, a printer at least in the 3000 range if you want some acceptable toner economy, which you stated in your opening post. Obviously, the more expensive the printer, the more economical on toner it'll be, thus you'll save in the long run. We have some Konica Minolta printers on contract hire, and the latest ones from them have excellent economy (12000 pages for ~£145 per colour toner). When buying printers, always check toner costs and page counts - that is where you can fall foul.

I think if 5th gear is needed for 30 suggests then that a problem, but at the same time whenever I am at 30, still yet to change to 4th, I can hear the revs starting to cry out for mercy! I only change to 5th when going at 40 for over half a mile or for any speed over 40 (Corsa C, 1.2, so not a vast amount of power).

We're having some redevelopment work occuring during the summer (well.. building work is starting next week), and will be having an entire floor newly wired, so I have been pricing and speccing up what switches we'll want. I do tend to find recommendations for 24port switches only, which I guess for the reasons of noise and minimizing inconvenience if one breaks (you only lose 24 ports instead of 48), and of course to load balance the switches. We will just go for 48port switches all round as there is still inconvenience whether you lose 24ports or 48, and surely the more switches you have, the more heat it will generate (defeating the aim of noise reduction as you'll need more cooling)? Factor in the cost too, whereby a 48port switch is generally a tad more expensive than 2x 24port (although I noticed this being the other way around with HP switches), and given HP is whom we are going for, the cheaper cost of 1x48 also made the decision easier. Rack space wont be a problem for us as we'll be buying a new rack which will naturally provide ample capacity for current and distant future expansion. I'm not aware of any technical reasons why one should favour a 24port over a 48 (load balancing probably wont make any real noticeable difference here), but I guess you need to see what switches you will go for, and decide upon the price, space you have got and capacity required.

Mixed views here. We have asked for remote access twice, once for exchange (dec06) and again for RM easylink (few months ago). The exchange request was a little nightmare and really did hold up the installation of our exchange server until CLEO got their backside into gear and actually communicated with our RM engineer properly to deal with it. For the past month, our internet has been VERY UNSTABLE (up, down, slow, painfully slow, down, down... (few days downtime later..... back, but SLOW), up again... you get the idea). Apparently, the receiver on our school which receives the signal was faulty and needed replacing, so we were told it would take 3-5days for someone to come; meanwhile, they couldn't guarantee our access. The day they were due, we got a call from CLEO, saying they managed to fix it just by changing a few things remotely (it was an interference problem); one would have thought a simple fix could have been investigated weeks earlier. Maybe this isn't the best time to express my views, given the small nightmare recently, but there you go. On the up side, when there is a problem, they are reasonably fast to communicate, and usually endeavour to rectify whatever problem we have, whether that be fault of our own or CLEO. Before this episode and likely hereafter, we achieve reasonable stability and speed always seems to be reasonable as well. I've noticed there is some new filtering in place as of last Monday just gone, so we'll see how that works out

I couldn't recommend unmanaged anymore even if it meant not getting a switch at all (well, not that bad, but close)! At the very LEAST, smart switches should be what you should at least be going for, as chances are you may have that switch for years to come (you didn't mention temporary, so I assume it's long-term, or longish). I have never actually seen an unmanaged 48 port switch (even our really old 48 port Planet switches - yes, PLANET!, are smart managed, but not the 24 port variants). HP switches are great, but their line mainly consists of fully managed switches, and to recommend a HP would be an echo of dhicks suggestion, which was 2 of the 1800-24. Otherwise, the Netgear GS748T isn't a bad choice in the smart, budget market of switches (we recently purchased one of these before we decided to go all HP in future), and although very noisy, does what we expect of it very well. Generally speaking, a 48port switch is usually more expensive than 2x 24 port switches (though I have seen exceptions for this with HP), and factoring this in, plus the fact that you obviously will want the best quality first, I would have to suggest 2 of the HP 1800-24G as a first choice (which are actually £200 each exc VAT). The Netgear alternative is around £320 exc VAT, so cheaper than the 2 24 ports (but with HP you pay the bit extra). If budget really is tight, then certainly the netgear or the dlink mentioned above should be strongly considered.

Misco have them in stock right now, as do many others online retailers we use.

2626 is out of date now. We're going for the 2x10-XX group of switches, which is a better spec overall and roughly the same price! Alternatively, if you don't want a fully managed switch (but want management functionality), then maybe a Procurve 1800-24 would be better suited (price is alot cheaper), and all gig ports!

We're going for a 2610-48, simply because it's one up to the 2510 series, and the spec is better than the 2650, whilst still being good value for money in comparison. For where we want gig, we're getting the 2810 series, and hopefully they'll all stack! Fanless sounds good, but just make sure there is PLENTY of air space for the heat to escape into, else you may find you should have gone for fanned! Obvious differences I see.. - Better throughput - Better energy efficiency - Cooler operation - Better processor/more ram No brainer really... and the price difference is negligable

Of course, but even something that resembles the sound or look of "tech" would be more desirable

In defence, the description states the price also includes all content, hosting and a few weeks support, so you're not just getting the domain. In saying that, I do agree that the name itself isn't particularly desirable, and I for one wouldn't associate "tecie" with anything remotely technical (sounds more like "tessie").

darn autocorrect seems this person was logged on in 4 different places at the same time.. will remember this in future! Cheers!

We have a laptop that whenever someone types a particular word(s) (in this case "that"), it'll replace it with another word that is rather inappropriate. We had this problem long ago, although we forget how we managed to sort it. The students can't access macros which was our first thought, although there may be another way in. Anyone else had this and figured what was causing it and how to sort it? It seems to be specific to user accounts rather than to the computer.

Has to be vixy.net for me.