Fazza

Buy a hot air rework station and have a go at replacing them yourself!

We used to use Seton Labels but for some reason the ink either used to disappear or the so-called anti-peel ones started coming laminated so they were so easy to peel off! Then we found Avery Labels did some 'Extra Security' labels the same size. They are 'NoPeel' permanent labels and to pick them off would take absolutely hours!! I think they work out at around £44 ex. VAT for 20 sheets of 40 (800 labels in total) - we just print out asset tags on them through a laser printer and have not had a problem with them and we've been using them for 3-4 years now. Saved so much money and they're better for us than the previous labels we used. Avery L6145-20 on Amazon We put our Trust logo on them, barcode, asset number (linked to the barcode) and two strapline/mottos that the trust has along with the Trust name and postcode.

OK no worries but if you do need to try a hard reset of the BIOS that's the way to do it, both batteries must be removed and then short the 2 pins of the CMOS battery on the motherboard out to remove any residual power on the board, then when you connect the batteries back up the BIOS will do a hard reset which normally involves the laptop rebooting automatically 1 or 2 times before finally loading Windows, then you can try and go in the BIOS.

The problem with Lenovo BIOS's is to reprogram them requires some jiggery-pokery as they are all coded to the laptop so it normally involves getting help from someone on the BadCaps forum to edit the .bin BIOS file before using a chip programmer to then program the BIOS chip on the motherboard, not for the fainthearted!! If I have understood correctly, this model has 2 batteries, one 3V CMOS battery and the normal main battery. One last thing to try is to remove both batteries and then using either some tweezers or a slot screwdriver, short out the 2 pins of the CMOS button battery connector on the motherboard and then put it back together and try and go in the BIOS again. If the screen stays blank for a while then leave it for 10-15 minutes as it sorts itself out and then take a look.

That's very odd then, looks like you'll never get back in to the BIOS then as it sounds like the chip has become corrupted and only someone like Sorin would be in with a chance of fixing that if you sent it to his company.

If you can get in to Windows, click on Restart whilst holding down the shift key, wait for it to reboot in to the Advanced Startup Options Menu, click on Troubleshoot and then on EUFI Firmware Settings and it should then reboot and automatically enter the BIOS.

I remember receiving the original game for Free! One day we turned up at work and the Big Box version was there in all it's glory so we promptly installed it on to one of the MPC computers (Multimedia PC - i.e. it had a soundcard, CD-ROM drive and speakers)! It was the original pre-censored version so there was not a zombie in sight!!

Maybe try removing the NVMe storage and then booting up the laptop as it may then let you enter the BIOS?

More and more people are saying that this is Apple's most repairable laptop since 2012! Even the keyboard that in most Windows PC laptops are stuck on with plastic rivets appear to be screwed in place on the MacBook Neo - still a pain to replace it but it is at least replaceable. The battery and USB-C ports are very easy to change but the fact that the RAM and Storage are soldered to the motherboard/logicboard is still a big negative for me but that's the way it seems to be going for a lot of manufacturers sadly.

They're a distributer supplying to the likes of Misco etc. but they also have a reseller arm as well so Schools/Academies can order that way. We're currently in talks with them about a replacement wireless system and their presales (and pricing) has been very good so far.

I'm going to have an educated guess and say that if you have a non Office365 install it will still work but there is no support and will no longer be Cyber Secure as there will be no more updates to it. Already we are seeing popups appear when opening Publisher up saying that it goes end of life this year so I would have an educated guess that if you have the O365 version installed then it will simply stop working. I guess we'll just have to wait and see later on in the year..

Have a chat with SwitchShop as they're vendor agnostic so can give you quotes for different brands that will do what you tell them you want to do.

We stopped including Publisher in our Golden Images around a year ago and constantly remind staff in meetings, emails and newsletters that it's going to stop working in October so looking forward to the first support call saying they can't open a Publisher file!! We did some tests and LibreOffice is the most accurate when it comes to opening Publisher files so we can always install that for anyone that needs it.

That's a shame as I only just found out about Denby the other month when I was looking for a decent dinner set and got a bargain from Amazon and the price has since doubled so I know I got a bargain and the plates/bowls are amazing!

I just saw a post on LinkedIn for some exam word processing software that is Free for Primary and Secondary school.. https://exampadplus.co.uk/ JCQ Compliant and has a classroom mode so it can be used for students to familiarise themselves with the software so it's not a complete surprise on exam days. It says it's created by a UK Network Manager so (unless my search skills need improving) I'm surprised to not have heard anything about it on EduGeek yet!

It's what they used to do! We had a 10/100 switch fail (this was around 10 years ago now) and it was replaced with a 10/100/1000 one as the 10/100 hadn't been made in years! It's why (up until now) have always purchased HP switches as the cost was justified with the genuine lifetime warranty, times change and HP have altered it so it's not as good as it was.

Most of our switches are HP because of the Lifetime Warranty and then in the last few years we kept on hearing about issues like what you're having so as part of a wireless network upgrade we're not long automatically looking at HP PoE switches and looking at some cheaper brands instead as the 'lifetime' warranty with HP is not as good as it used to be. Get in touch with HP and see what they say but don't hold your breath!

Because it's End Of Life meaning the warranty is pretty much finished as it has reached the of it's lifetime. "HP typically supports products for 5 years after the End of Sale (EoS) date, during which standard Hardware Limited Warranties and existing contract services remain valid. After the End of Service Life (EOSL) date, on-site repairs, software updates, and spare parts become unavailable, with some exceptions for commercial, best-effort support"

So, what can you do on a 'proper' MacBook that you can't do on a Neo? I'm assuming from the price it's not just a case of a slower CPU and lower storage but there are other key differences to a standard MacBook - for example the MacBook Air starts at £1,099 so what can the Air do that the Neo can't?

We're the same and have been discussing this exact thing, I believe with FSRM you can specify a last accessed date rather than creation and you could argue if a resource that was purchased 10 years ago and was last accessed 8 years ago it can be deleted! Our DPO (also our IT Director) has a very firm line with this sort of thing as he would rather just err on the side of caution (data protection wise) and just do a hard delete of most (but not all) files!! It all depends on how your DPO wants it handled. Going forward (in years to come due to licensing costs) we are going to move our file servers in to 'the cloud' as with Microsoft you can automate labels on files so anything to do with Pensions etc. that needs to be kept until after someone has retired for example can be automatically labelled with a label called 'Pensions' which can then be included or excluded from being deleted etc. - the standard license doesn't allow labelling so I think you need A5 licenses which come at a cost so that's why this will take a few years before it's sorted. It's a bit of a nightmare but we will get there (I hope)..

If you're not allowed to keep old student photos for longer than 7 years for example, it doesn't matter if the teachers still use them, they have to be deleted if that's what is in your policy. With regards to FSRM, deletion is only one option, you can even compress them to take up less space on your server or move them to another location and then only if someone says "oi! where have my files gone" you can always move them back as I believe (not tried it yet so can't be 100%) when they are moved to another drive/volume you can keep the same file structure making it easy to move them back. You can also use modified date rather than creation date as a parameter too - plenty of options to choose from but I'm currently messing about with Office365 SSO and FSRM is next on my list so not up to speed on it fully yet! If you backup at file level rather than vhdx/hyper-v level then there must be a way of having to backups performed with different settings, again Redstor support should be able to advise on a good solution going forward as you can't be the only place where different types of files have different retention periods. Let us know what they say as there are probably more schools/academies in the same boat as you but don't realise it yet!

Then you'd need to make sure people saving files that are only kept for 12 months are stored in a different location to all the other files. With regards to the safeguarding files, they should really be on a different system separate to your file servers - a lot of places use CPOMS for that I believe. Mistakes happen all the time and quite a lot of the times we don't realise that we've made a mistake until things like this happen - over the years we've identified all sorts of issues with data retention, even our Director who is our data protection guy has identified things that we are keeping for far too long, the thing is to identify the issues, notify your DPO for advice and then come up with a plan to 'fix' it going forward. Redstor support is very good and should help you sort the settings out going forward and may have an answer for how you can delete data from the immutable backup you have, you may have to set it to expire and then wait for it to expire before you can do it. As long as you DPO is aware and documents your plan of action then you'll be fine. With Teachers coming and going all the time we have god knows how many files that we shouldn't be keeping on our file servers - we have found that Microsoft File Server Resource Manager (FSRM) can be used to delete files of a certain age or even archive/move them somewhere else so maybe going forward you could use this to search for keywords and then move the files to a folder that is only kept for 12 months etc. so for example if the files you can only keep for 12 months are to do with Pensions you could update your data protection policy to say that everyone must have the word Pension in the filename so FSRM can deal with it. Not played with FSRM yet but I have just done a restore of one of our file servers that has all sorts of data it shouldnt have on it and will be testing to see how it can handle/delete/archive files over 7 years old etc. I believe it can even email out to the original creator to say it has been moved/archived so it sounds promising..

You need to contact Redstor for advice on what your options are. Even immutable backups can be 'opened' so data can be deleted but it's a complex procedure (as by definition this is not supposed to be possible) it can involve MFA and all sorts of encryption keys. Redstor support is very good so just explain the issue to them and they'll tell you what to do to prevent this from happening in the future.

Only your School/Academies Data Protection person can answer those questions. The law says something about keeping it for a reasonable time, no mention of indefinitely. There must be a retention setting/policy on your immutable backup, if not one needs setting up and you should contact your backup companies tech support for assistance on this matter.

If you are keeping data longer than stated in your policy then you (the school/academy) is therefore in breach of that policy. That's between their tutor and the student, as long as you get it in writing from the Tutor that they say the student is who they say they are then you're good to go - the tutor could always ring them if they never emailed them on their personal email account etc. If in doubt you need to take advice from whoever is in charge of Data Protection as they are ultimately responsible for that sort of thing. It's not different I guess to anybody doing an SAR for example, how do you know they are who they say they are - whatever procedure is followed for that is most likely what you need to follow for a student - again your DPO (or whatever they maybe called these days) will tell you what 'evidence' you need to prove they are who they say they are. If they are still in your MIS system and have a photograph you could always say the files were too large to email so you have put them on a CD or USB stick and they will need to come in to collect it and then if they look like their photo, you're good to go!