Pete10141748

You're in the same situation as I was a few weeks ago, our old ICT Suite PC's were P4's with 256Mb ram, which were pretty much useless to us now. I'd kept them around in some capacity for over 2 years, but there comes a time when you have to let outdated equipment go - it may not be 'broken' as such, but that doesn't mean it is still 'fit for purpose'. Besides, the longer you keep older equipment around, the less inclined your management will be to purchase new kit as making things last longer than they should will become the norm! "What? You need X new computers to replace those that are only 3 years old? The last lot lasted 5+ years, some are still going! Can't you fix them up? We didn't budget for IT this year, we need [insert random useless resources here]"

GAME has just filed for Administration.

Weve got Cisco here, it was installed last year by a company brought in & funded by the LEA to bring all schools in the area "up to business standard" networking. I had no choice in the equipment, only had input into the locations of stuff around the site. The setup was quite painless working in tandem with the installers, and it's run very smoothly since it was put in - nice and speedy wireless which supports 30+ devices per WAP with no quarrel, no signal loss when moving around the site, everything is PoE which made installing WAPs much easier.

I love how Windows 8 looks, with it's neat boxes and so forth. Guess I am used to it from the Xbox360 interface but it just kinda 'fits' with how my brain works I suppose

That's pretty cool! Personally, I've gone with the low-budget version of this; a laminated piece of card, one side says "Please knock and then enter" with a large smiley face, the other side with a stop sign that says I am not in. Just blue-tacked it to my office door and I flip it over when I am in/out respectively.

Ours here are generally left on all day, every day, which I'm happy with. The exception is if classes have something like PE straight after lunch, in which case that's anywhere up to 2.5 hours when it would be on pointlessly - I try and encourage them to turn their projectors off for things like that but even then, I'm not going to stress over if they don't. From a 'green' point of view they probably should only be turned on just before they want to use them and turned off as soon as they are done - but realistically that's never gonna happen in a school environment!

I use the bathroom/kitchen/glass wipes you can get from poundland, 60 sheets in a resealable packet for £1. I give them out when the iPads are borrowed and the teachers get the pupils to clean them when they are finished with them. Works well enough here, and keeps me from having to clean 30 screens scummed up with god-knows what from the kids.

What you have written above is actually how the system is designed to work, and without knowing it you've exploited a Server 2003 trick / bug which has added to the confusion! If you have a domain logon and a local logon that are the same username & password, you can still get to a DC server running Server 2003 from the local account on the laptop/PC because it has the same user credentials - this does not work in Server 2008 where it looks for either the [domainname] or the [computername] before your username In other words, Server 2003 only see's the bits in bold: mydomain\administrator and mylaptop\administrator so if the passwords are the same for both accounts it lets you have DC access as the DC will have a record for that username & password; however it will not let you access other servers in your domain because it will not authenticate beyond itself. Just to note, in Server 2008 the DC sees all of the it mydomain\administrator and mylaptop\administrator and so no local account can access the servers without entering the username & password for a domain account with access rights. What all that summises to is that you won't be able to get a standard user's local logon account to access the servers without inputting a domain username&password with access rights because the DC will not authenticate a local account to access a domain service. If you need a workaround, how about creating a domain account specifically for these local users which you can give them the username&password for so they can authenticate themselves when the dialogue box pops up asking them to? Get them to access a server share on the member server first, enter the username & password you have set up, and then for as long as they remain logged in they won't have to enter it again to print and use the servers as they need to.

On my fresh Windows 7 install, searching only in my "Windows" folder, I have; 125 .jpg's 95 .bmp's 81 .gif's 709 .png's Hope that helps

Have you tried changing the IP address of the server with the problem, in case there is a conflict somewhere causing the long access times / crashes?

Sometimes one of my server shares here will become slow like you described for some computers in our Admin team. I usually run the following on the server: [Open CMD] ipconfig /flushdns ipconfig /release ipconfig /renew then go to the machine/s that are experiencing the slow access time to the share and do the same. Once done it all runs fine again - though it could be a totally different problem of course!

I started out by having a "Software Amnesty Day" where everyone was asked to bring along any and all CD's and/or paperwork to do with ICT they had in their classrooms, cupboards, bags etc. It helped to have the Head's backing for this as she made sure everyone knew they had to have a good search through all their stuff! Once I started getting the CDs in I made a list of all of the software the school has, got my hands on all paper licences I could (which wasnt many) and for the rest I contacted the company the software was purchased from to get the licence details (this did involve asking the finance team for help too, backtracking to find out where software was bought from). I took scans of all the paper licences and kept them in a folder together with screenshots of all the emails I recieved back from companies with licence details. Later I created an individual word document for each piece of software that lists the software name, where it was purchased from, date of purchase, contact info for the company, the licence key, what type of licence it is (single, multi, site, etc) and a list of all the computers it is installed on. Obviously this folder & all the files are password-protected etc. to keep it all safe! Licence management doesnt have to be difficult once you get in the habit of keeping the paperwork updated, but it can be a real pain to get everything together in the first place when no-one has taken responsilbity for it yet - be prepared to find lots of "single user" licences for software that they want installed all over the school! I had to spent quite a lot of money to bring this place up to legal-level with it licences!

I've added over 30 printers to this school from Danwood in the past year or so Danwood - Print Management & Consultancy - Home Very good customer service, most problems sorted within the day they are reported, fast toner delivery etc.

Yes you can, in Windows 7 open the "Run" command and type in "SLUI 3" - this will open the window to let you enter a new product key.

Excerpt from http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=OEM+licence+and+imagining&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CEsQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.microsoft.com%2Fdownload%2F6%2FA%2F1%2F6A1647EE-3FC7-47F2-9AFE-470AD5E5D856%2FOEMSoftwareLicensingRulesandRestrictions.pdf&ei=nyhnT5mVGoXd8AOtuqi5CA&usg=AFQjCNGqfKcqoXSmh9vw6nTiwVzXjK5xlg So yes, as long as you use your own Volume Licence key and media, you are covered by the OEM licence for each machine. Edit: If you were going to set up one of the OEM machines and then distribute that to the other machines, you still can, but you will need to activate each copy of Windows using the product key that is supplied on the sticker on the base of each laptop, you can't use just 1 OEM product key for every laptop in the set.

Armourgeddon - paintball, but using tanks and other military hardware. Armourgeddon the home of Tank Paintball

I am actually looking into buying some shares in GAME. Wish I had done it a few days ago when they were 0.5p per share, they're up to around 4p at the moment which isn't much but would have been vey decent profit on any purchased at half a penny!

Our VLE is used for email, nothing more. Staff don't like it, pure and simple. Yes, it puts all their resources in one nice place, but the learning curve to actually make decent VLE resource is far & above their interest level in using it to teach, especially when they already have hundreds of Smart Notebook files, powerpoints and websites they are familiar with already. [voted "never"]

To my best knowledge Apple's Educational Licensing is only available in the US currently. Never heard anything about an Android Eduction licence / site licence. We got 30 iPads which were set up for us by the LEA, and we had to pay for each app individually on each of the devices

It's not always easy to tell is it? One of the PAT testers who came to my school yesterday asked if we had any old IT equipment or textbooks we could donate to schools in the Congo, he and his charity are flying out there for a month next week apparantly. We did give him some stuff, but only things that were going to be disposed of anyway. Even if it is a scam, or an "in" as 36degrees suggested, it's not like you are going to give them your new and/or working equipment is it? As long as you don't need the stuff you donate (and in the case of IT kit you ensure it's properly wiped of all school data of course!) then what's the harm in them taking it, it gets it out of your way.

GF has both, I wouldn't personally buy either, but on the spec of the kit and the games that are out/coming soon I would choose the PSVita, purely as it has titles like LittleBigPanet, Uncharted... and a new Katamari game

I just read the story on Wikipedia before I started playing Revelations

@Rawns Don't bother with Brotherhood, it was kinda boring imo. Just skip to Revelations, that's where the story goes WHOA! on ya

It's being announced, but won't be out until near-Christmas time, so you've plenty of time to finish Revelations As for the film, well, check this out... Bollywood Assassins Creed - Clip 1/4 - YouTube! Watch all 4 parts, it's rather good (funny at least!)

Step 1: Get all 800 children at your school to write a similar letter to different stores throughout the UK Step 2: Get giftcards sent to your school for Care Of [insert your name here] Step 3: Go shopping! lol Seriously though, that's a sweet thing to do for a little kid