Pete10141748

Of course, if you are using Vista Home then you can still access networked resources using folder redirection - one of the laptops used by us here came with Vista Home, and aside from not being able to join the domain, everything else works fine. You can use \\servername to get access to your server/s from the VH computer, and add shortcuts to any programs held on the server/s to it for use. As we use roaming profiles + a domain here, I wouldn't give a VHome laptop to staff to use, but for us techie's who know ways around it there's no bother really. Pete

Our dept. never gets consulted / spoken to by visitors / acknowledged by anybody! The head walked in the office on Friday (well, I say office; I mean the resource room / general school dump where we were given a corner to work in ) and presented me with a bunch of new software, which I wasn't even aware was being purchased. Oh, and of course, no effort was made to ask me to check it would even work with our network before it was purchased, or if we even had the budget for it (the head informed me "she'd find some money for it from somewhere". Too bad she can't find some money for the new chairs the technician and I need to cure our backpain!) It seems unfair to me that any of the members of staff can purchase software / hardware etc. when they are out on trips, training etc. and yet we in the IT Dept. have to get permission from both the Head and the "budget holder" to order it and then wait around for the Fincance dept. to actually fax off the order. Last time I needed to place an order for toner it took over a week to go through!; other staff get items bought right off the bat). Just the way it goes I guess. Wonder if it's the same in IT support in businesses, or if it's a school-thing? Pete

I often see a mouse or two on the left-handed side of the keyboard after a class has been in the ICT Suite. Never had anyone ask for the buttons to be swapped over. Far as I can see, learning to use the mouse is a new skill; as the child has no pre-concieved idea of what buttons do what, they'll just learn to use it left-handed without changing the buttons round. As for requesting a (physically) left-handed mouse, I'd have to laugh at the person who made the request. Most cheap mice (which schools seems to use!) are symmetrical, so where's the need? Failing that, tell the teacher to provide her child with his (or her) own "left handed mouse" to bring to school with him/her. I know for certain there's no way I'd spend what little budget I get on a such a daft piece of child-specific hardware (except for SEN, but being left-handed doesn't count in that I'm sure!), especially with it being something we have 15+ spares of in our office! Pete

For the staff who want to use Internet at home, we have showed them how to remove and replace to proxy settings for the school's network. They don't have any admin rights over their machine; they can't install software / run .exe's etc. and so far we've not had problems. However, we have had a few postitives in that staff have asked for things to be installed and we have said no, as it was nothing to do with school. As someone previously said, at the end of the day its the school's laptop, and it must work correctly in school by default. Teachers can't mess with settings that will make it not work when they return to school. To begin with, the SMT (mostly the head) was on the side of the teachers when they said they "should be able to do what they like" with their laptops. However, after the progress the school has seen since the technician and I started here 6 months ago, SMT have started to come over to our side now . Pete

We've used Ramesys in the past for XP pro and Office licenses. They were good value, I'd recommend them (we are definately going to be using them again to get offce 2007 lisences soon!) Pete

I agree with Joanne. Get new laptops for the kids, let the staff carry on using what they have. The last thing you want to is be giving the pupils 6 laptops, each with a different model / make / spec. They'll spend the first 20 minutes of each lesson fighting over who gets what laptop for whateve reason (look, spec, "I used it last time!" and so forth). That'll be waaaay more trouble than its worth! Also, im my experience, give a new laptop to a member of staff, and within a week it'll be looking worse than it should. (In my case, last week a new laptop was given out, on Tuesday it had coffee stains on it, and today we were informed that last night it has been "lost" ). Give the pupils those same new laptops, and aside from the obvious wear & tear they'll take from being handed out, swapped around etc. the kids will look after them better than most staff members will (in our case, do ). Pete

See if you can find someone in school who already has it - then you can grab it from their machine and set it up on the one/s you need it on too. (not sure of the legality there though) Pete

If they have mp3 music files which they want to use regularly (such as we have here, our 'Morning Music' as they call it), offer to burn them to a CD for them and then remove it from their machine. The way I see it is always worst-case scenario; They download a file at home - law break no. 1 They copy it to their memory stick - law break no.2 They copy it to their school-assigned laptop - law break no.3 AND policy break no.1 The server takes a copy of all files, including a copy of the illegal music file - law break by the SCHOOL no.1 We make a backup of the server onto tape - School and us techie's break the law no.2 NOT GOOD! Just yesterday I sent out 3 notices to individual members of staff, asking them to remove their music and (personal) pictures from their laptops by the end of the week, else we would do it for them, regardless of backups not being made by them. Our policy clearly states that there is no provision for personal storage on any machine belonging to the school, which has the Head's backing as well, so if anyone argues the point, we just point them to the sheet they have signed, and..... end of. Pete

Yellow Screwdriver :S It seems like there is a correlation between working in IT and having an abnormal mind, if this thread is anything to judge by! hahah! Pete

Thanks for the info, Andrew! It was there in the menu, we have it now, but it turned out to be the same number as the one written on the side anyway! Pete

Does anyone know where the serial number is located on this model of projector? Everything is written in Japanese except for 2 numbers, and our admin dept. says that neither of them is the serial number they expected it to have (a 200-number?). Have looked all over it and can't see anything else! Help! Pete

Here's a nice little screensaver which simulates a BSOD error, with correct information gathered from your system, and then procedes to simulate a reboot, resulting in the BSOD again! Mouse won't work, only keyboard will bring you out of it. Looks nice on your PC when you don't want others to touch it! http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/miscellaneous/bluescreen.mspx

yes please!

Depends on the school policy on notices. I only say that, as here I have been told that I am not allowed to put up ANY signs, posters, memos or warnings around the school and even in MY OFFICE. Yes, thats right! I have argued the fact that signs and notices are the best way to communicate with the masses (as we are in the middle of setting up email for everyone) but nope, apparantly they find my notices "offensive". see what you think; On my door, a sign which reads Would you find that offensive?? I even got told to take down my "please close this door behind you" sign!! So of course, everyone now leaves the door wide open...... Today's classic phrase; Pupil comes to the door, opens it, says "Miss says come now" and walks off. Nice.

Maybe its just me, but parts of that report from Becta seem to be contradictive BOTH of those phrases are from the same paragraph in the report! Myself and the techician here have been using Vista on our laptop here now for about 2 months, and aside from ironing out a couple of creases at the start + 3 of the schools programs not working on it (they are old prog's though), I'm really happy with using it. Plus Office 2007 is a really good upgrade too. I've definately decided that I'm going to slowly introduce them both to the school (getting it whenever we replace a PC or laptop), starting with replacing the 5-year-old PCs in the staffroom; that way the staff are free to have a play with Vista / Office 07 if they want to, in preperation for getting it themselves when thier own equipment is up for being replaced. Pete

Nooooo! Winsuite is horrible, and more importantly is no longer supported in any way by the people who made it. Either use mandatory profiles, or change the permissions on each machine. Simple, cheap and effective.

IMO the Ofsted inspections SHOULD be no-notice. As soon as teachers know ofsted is coming, they suddenly spring to life and actually do all the things they are supposed to do ALL THE TIME but don't bother to. I doubt that many other jobs let you ignore key things (such as actually planning the ICT lessons) every day but for 1 in 3 years note; thats not a teacher-bash, and I'm not saying that all teachers do this. But they certainly DO put on a show for Ofsted, when what they do on that 1 day should be what's done EVERY day. Pete

jeez, you guys are lucky. The kids here have been back since last Thursday (4th!). Mind you, I've not had a student-based problem in the the last few months now. Its always staff-based-and-caused! Pete

RM One. Lets face it, they were designed by RM for use in education! Timbo, when did Dell's prices go sky high? They still seem pretty resonable to me! OK you can get a PC fom dabs for £57 now, but do you really want a PC that wont last the next year? Pete

Currently got a Nokia N73, not brilliant but its over a year old now. Contracts up soon though! Looking into those dual-sim phones from CECT (the CECT599). My cousin got one for christmas, and it seems a pretty decent iPhone-clone; http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/8513/cect5991wt9.jpg http://www.digitalplayworld.co.uk/free-cect-dualband-dual-iphone-styled-touch-screen-p-128.html?sid=d9292ebe6a29fb44efe7c4b8209688a7# I know that the iPhone has mixed reviews, and a "clone" of the iPhone might sound like a dodgy deal but it really isn't. The dual sim works well, the touchscreen and motion sensor (for the games and the shake-to-change song app) are really good, the in-built stylus works well (as does your finger!) and the Internet / SMS / MMS etc is as good as any Nokia or Motorola phone. I was pleasently suprised when playing with it, and looking at getting one in the next few months myself. Pete

The way we set ours up here was to map a drive using My Computer > tools > Map network drive (in our case we assigned it U:\) to the folder of the person needed (in your case e:\users$\year9\user ). If you do that you can then just change the path of My documents to the same drive letter as the mapped drive (i.e. U:\). Not had any problems with this so far (5 months in use). Pete

The rep system seems good to me, those who post good info will be repped and therfore will be shown to be those "in the know". As for well, what are we; mature adults or immature children? I'm sure the majority of us are above negative-repping someone just as we don't like what they've posted. Pete

You could add your initials (in my case PWD) to the tag for each post you make, then it'd be easy to find all of the posts you have made without trawling back through the site. Combine that with a more related tag (i.e. PWD, Vista) and it'll be nice and quick to find an old post of yours. Pete

I kinda did too, although it was the look rather than the usability. Blue and green on the taskbar with "rolling hills" in the background? nasty! For as long as I can remember I've always set my PC and laptop to use the Windows Classic appearance. To me its always looked more professional. The default XP *looks* like it was made to be used at home, by children IMO. Maybe thats why the kids here are so much better at using it than the staff? I have to say, I do really like the look of Vista, but OK, I'll also admit that I'm one of those people who enjoy flashy-cool-looking things. Uhuh, thats why I basically plan to make a gradual introduction of Vista to our network, only getting it when we actually *have* to replace a PC or laptop - looking like 4 or 5 planned this year, maybe more if things work well (or if existing stuff breaks!). Me too! Guess thats just my natural inclination to fiddle with things I read a comment by someone on a Vista review article, which said something like Interesting point, I think. Whatever new invention comes around, wether its software, hardware, OS, or whatever else, its undoubtably not going to work as well as something similar which has been mass used and worked on progressively for the past 6.5 years. But I'll bet that Vista will surpass XP soon enough, once enough people have given it time to expand and be used and improved, and 6 years from now, we'll all be happily using Vista, worrying about the next version of Windows that is coming in 6 months time, and be wondering why we thought XP was so god-like anyway.

Seems no-one likes Vista! We have it on 1 laptop (which stays with us in the tech room) and 2 laptops which were given to the Head and Deputy Head, as well as another Vista laptop personally belonging to a trainee. Had no problems with any of them so far, and the H&DH both like using Vista now they are used to it. The reason for my OP was that a lot of equipment we have here is getting old, and replacements are going to be occuring throughout the coming year. We can't afford to buy a lot of equipment before the middle of the year, by which time XP may not come installed on any machine. I'm a bit worried that downgrading to XP may have reprocussions (such as drivers / recovery disks not working properly, problems with warranties as has been mentioned on here before, etc) and it also seems a bit daft to buy what is essentially a higher grade machine (dual core, masses of RAM / HD etc) and then stick XP on it thus not using the PC to its potential (or maybe thats just me, I do tend to want to push things as far as they'll go!) We have an e-learning centre here in Luton, and all of thier ICT suites, laptops and other machines all use Vista and Office 2007. It all seemed to run pretty smoothly when I visited the centre before christmas, and so this has me wondering if a lot of the "fear of problems with Vista" hype comes from fear of change combined with the few issues that are actually known. Hmm, more reserarch is needed I think. @ gwendes; you said that but surely with any new piece of software (even hardware) you have to learn how to use it before you can support it? For me, I think its good to look into how other things work, and not just know the old 'tried and tested' stuff. Have you used any other OS's besides windows? Didn't you have to figure out things in them too? There were differences between Windows versions too, OK maybe not so much as in XP>Vista but there were. After using something for many years, of course making a change is going to seem like a pain, just as I'm sure that when XP came out people said the same things they are saying now. I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, thats just my POV.