Face-Man

Hi, We are paying 14k for what is surpose to be a 100MB connection via the LGFL but their proxies only run at 15mb so thats 85% of the service I can use. Today they changed the Firewall settings so that the Video conference I had planedd and trialed on Friday didn't work. The soultion .... a further £600 expenditure for something that was working and the paper work is rediculus... Needless to say it not been a good day.. :x

We have had two seperate physical networks and then 2 Vlans and this summer we are moving to a forest arrangement with seperate Vlans and IP adresses so that we ge t the best of both worlds shared files and resources and limited computer access to data.

Hi, We are using 62.5/125 loose tube for Gigabit SX backbone. The only dificult we had was when the contractor terminated it with ST fitting when it is alot easier using SC (can't be pluged in the wrong way around). Appart from that the only thing I would recomend is making sure nobody else tryes to put things in your fibre trunking. We had an alarm company that nicked a fibre and brought half the school down. So think carefully about routes and built in resiliance if possible.

Hi, Ghost does not store permissions when it creates a snap shot and so can not deploy them with a package. I taked to a guy about this at bett and he just tryed to sell me a different product. In the end I got around it by adding a cacls command in a login script and login the machines on and off.

Mine still in it's Box ready to show the grandchildren.....

We have a couple sony projectors here with Cat 5 conectors that work ok They are about 3 years old so they have stopped making them now but the VGA to IP sounds like a good work around

wow I thought I had a complicated set of issues when I started here... I would be interested to see if the traffice goes through the second connection or the firewall. It maybe you predersesor was just setting up a honey bot for possible intrudors or more likely a way for them to access stuff from home without having to go through the firewall. Do the two ports have seperate IP adress for the router if so you could try and trace who can see it. It may also be that it is on a seperate VLAN. Remember to err is human to really foul things up you need a computer

Here is a new one... got an email from insight saying good ordered before half term have just been dispatched Arrrh !! :x Look at delivery note and seen an Item that was on the quote but not on my order has been sent (sly or what) . Sent an email to get it stoped but was told it was to late.. but a returns form would be generated.. wasting more of my time getting the item sent back... As you may guess this is the last time they get my business :twisted: and you can bet that invoice will go to the bottom of the pile (well certainly until thecredit note is generated).

I just got a Dell 1.5TB Iscsi SAN (based on EMC ax100) for about £6k (including 6xNic and GB switch) and makes our NAS 160gb box look like a dinasour with loads of room for expansion. It takes a little while and head scratching to setup but my servers have space once more.

HP Procurve every time becuase cisco are tooooooo expensive

Just had this link sent to me. http://www.becta.org.uk/corporate/extra_out.cfm?id=5015 It has all the becta documents from BETT the The development of a National Digital Infrastructure documents are useful for Heads to realise what cost are involved. I especally like the 1% spending on Training in secondary (if only it was true)

We have the pst file stored on staff H:.. worked fine until Head started to keep all the email since noah decided it was going to rain a little bit and had to reach a compromise with their 500mb+ pst file being held on the local C: and backup every night... on the bright side next Aprill we get a nice new exchange server.. :twisted:

Our LEA was completely RM until a new tech did a cost comparisson for the same set up for a few schools and pasted to their head teachers.. This lead to a re think and the establishment of a vanillia system to be slowly roled out to primary schools as part of an upgrade program... This bright young spark has just been poached by the local city academy.. leaving somebody to pick up his pieces.... The moral of the story "Offer Head teachers a way to save money and they will come".. Hence looking into the TCO keeping tech support high up the price list

Rm would be great if "did exactly what it said on the can" unfortuatly unless you commit to by everything from them you can not be sure it work.. Their hardware is over priced and basically they hold schools with no ICT expertise to ransom.. Having said that if your vanillia server setup network manager decides to move on and does not have records as to how it is all setup RM can look pritty attractive...

[ And you let Teachers in there !! :twisted:

Our LEA went out to tender and this company http://www.matrixdisplay.com came in with the most compeative cost and there instaltion work has been of a very high standard (we have had 44 boards fitted). However they have changed sales rep and the current one is not delivering quote etc on time I thing they have got slack thinking they won the tender. Any my manager has put a call into the MD so hopefully things will improve soon.

I would go for Dell as well. Though on the support front get them to throw in Gold support for free it mean you save 10 minutes per fault. I've even got them to replace mice on a regular basis. If you want to do a blind test post your exact spec I'll mail it to my rep and see what price she gives.. lets see if they are playing fair with you. Our LEA went to Dell and got the price for a standerd PC for all the primary schools kit for a year an boy it was low. If this group pulled together it would have hugh influence over the prices on offer.

We have been using biometric logon here for about 3 years with mixed success. The biggest problem is it is expensive very expensive... On the plus side it has elimenated students getting into staff areas, cut down inapropriate web browsing (you must have been there your finger was 2minutes before) and elimenated the login as a friend delete there work situation. enrolment is easy you just do it the first time they use a PC. But unless you have a very forward thinking SMT or pots of money don't go there for example each keyboard cost £100 they are made by cherry and the low tech keyboard bit goes wrong on a regular basis.. PS you can really scare some kids when you first anounce it. I had one 6th former who would not use it as he didn't believe it wasn't linked to the police..

Just had a demo of Fronter and looks impressive anybody out there using it ?

Thanks Steve.. That looks really useful.. There is a loop hole in WEEE in that suppliers can charge to collect old equipment and you can bet that will be expensive

We use them loads especally website and they are really good but are only getting 5% ... I feel a call to our rep coming on... :twisted: the delivery time is long as they seem just to ship stuff from other suppliers and not have any stock.

I will be obviously asking for what is required but based on the premise you only ever get 50% of what you ask for. But it is more fundamental than that they (SMT) really have no idea that when you buy a PC it is not just the £300-800 price that has to be considered. It's the cabling infrastructure, switch capacity, server capacity, maintenace cost, support time and finally disposal cost. so the budget needs to be maintaned high year on year to keep things running not 100k one year 20k next. After all we all know the member of staff that requires a full time technician all to themselves :x Just found the spreedsheet mentioned earlier (cheers russdev) http://www.lgfl.net/lgfl/accounts/conference/2005/pack/TCO%20lite%200705%20-%20final%20-%20revision%20oct%2005.xls let me know if you want it posted here

Have it working great here .. but made mistake of going to dot net 2.0 looks fine but no grids appear.. anyway works fine with 1.1

Dell Changed our rep 3 months ago but I soon got rid of him as he was crap (got specs so wrong and quoted the wrong prices etc..). I did this by calling customer services with the list of things I was unhappy with and requesting my old rep back. 1 hour later email reply with changed contact details.. maybe worth a try

Thanks for all this it is really useful. The whole issue came up when the cheapest I was quoted was £30 to get rid of our old GX110 systems. With the EU regulations about environmental disposal of electronic equipment throwing them away was not an option. I got around this by "giving" them to staff but SMT got concerned about the cost of my time to do that ! After pointing out that a computer is not just for christmas and that maintaining old kit cost money they have asked for a TOC in order to plan ICT spending more effectivly. I think the lights have finally come on re ICT spending so I want to do it right so that our current Technican ratio of 1 to 160 can be reduced and the world can be a better place.... To quote " I love it when a plan comes together". :twisted: