Quackers

Just installed vista over the network, all went OK. I'm confused as to why it never asked for a CD key or any activation. As for reasons for running Vista? Well we have just had 8 new PC's for a special office. Using that as my Vista test lab, the PC running vista is a lot faster and smoother than the 7 PC's Windows XP. I've gotta buy Windows Licenses for them so why not buy Vista ones and use Vista as its faster. So far all the software i have tried works fine, they are pusing out MSI's with group policy from Server 2003 fine, its smooth, fast and looks nice. Any PC's (apart from new ones) will continue to run Windows XP. Just any new hardware i want to put Vista on. If all is OK in this small suite its going on 70 new pc's i'm getting in the summer.

Currently with Windows XP we have a Volume License edition which requires no activation or activation server. So for example we buy 30 new laptops with Windows XP Pro, we wipe them and use our version of XP Pro, because the version they come with is not compatable with RIS. We do not buy new licenses because they come with XP Pro Licenses Now how does this work in Vista? If i read correctly EVERY version has to be activated, either normally, or with an internal Activation server. So if this is the case, with our new laptops they are coming licensed for Vista (free upgrade). Can i still just wipe them and put our volume license vista on? I am thinking i cannot because our Activation Server internal will have to have X amount of licences? Does anybody undertstand what i'm saying :?:

Just to put a spanner in, does it have to be laser? We got rid of all our colour laser printers and moved to Inkjets (HP K550DTN's) due to Colour Laser's we have had costing too much to run. The Minolta 2300DL is so expencive to run its stupid, the Tally thing we had cost a bomb too. In the library for example we put one in, its done 8750 pages since the summer and its had £280 in consumables go in it. Thats 3p a page. Before the 2300DL Laser would cost more than £280 to do 4000-5000 pages if the drum wanted a change too. and on draft it can do 20+ pages a minute colour, very fast, full duplex, twin tray, built in print server. great printer.

Anybody else read about it? http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/optimizeddesktop.mspx Makes me want Vista on all my clients now. Adds some nice features such as Real-time application usage tracking makes it easy to determine how applications are or are not being used so customers can better manage license compliance. Virtualization enables applications to run as network services—without ever being installed—on-demand. Applications run reliably without conflicts, increasing user uptime and accelerating deployments and OS migrations. Looks good if you read the full list of features.

Yeah, they are certified, school make sure the caretaker keeps going on courses to stay up to date with current regs, as he has changed all the light fittings etc in the school too and other things.

We do everything in house including the building of ICT suites, so if we want to turn a room into a new 30 pc ict suite we get the caretakers to put the worktops in, feed the electrics in (one caretaker use to be an electrictian as previous job) etc, and we do the cat 5 cabling and put the sockets in our selfs too. Just wondering how much it costs people who get contracters in? We want to know how much were saving. Say an old classroom to a 30 PC suite.

We currently run ISA Server 2000 for student proxy, the reports/stats are good, but i was wondering if anyone with ISA 2004 or 2006 could tell me if they allow you to lookup usage per user in the reporting? The only way i know of doing this at the moment is to buy Webspy and import the log file, and webspy is not cheap.

I gave our head of IT the same rights as staff, and i would like to take that away from him. He keeps going home and leaving him self logged on all over the place, not even locking the workstation, and kids are in the room. Staff can get into kids documents, reset there passwords, add printer credits, turn the walled garden on and off, it scares me how complacent he is over security.

Using Group Policy assign a batch file as a script. In the batch put for example regedit /s "L:\Scripts\Configs\lrc\power.reg"

We have it, and use it. If your willing to put the time into creating content its a fantastic peice of software.

£5000??? You've been stitched up mate! Don't you find it interesting that the alleged 25% of people who are losing money seems to be a lot greater than the supposed 45% who are gaining? To be fair our Head is being very supportive to everyone and is intending to fight all the cuts! Our head said one option is to "just opt out", apparently she has the power to (but those having a raise would not get it, and then they would not be happy), another is to give us fake job roles, another is to take the council to court. There is only 1 outcome from this job evaluation. You have a pay cut - pissed off because its a cut You stay the same - pissed off because its not a raise Have a pay increase - pissed off because its not enough

£5000 pay cut for me , on the plus side the head said she will not let it happen and has listed a long list of things she can do to stop it.

You say the client PC's "hang", what exactly do you mean by "hang" ? Can you say still press "ctrl+alt+del" to login but get no response? or they completly freeze? and no keys will work?

When there was a font i needed i just did a "snap shot" before and after with an MSI Maker (Winstall), i copy and paste the font into the c:\windows\fonts dir. It worked for me.

We took e-mail off our students they started e-mailing porn pictures to each other (and not just a few students) head was not pleased, so she requested e-mail was taken off there user accounts, but until then yes they could via exchange web access.

I'm not planning on deploying Vista on any of the current PC's. Any new ones i will prob put vista on if they can run Areo, need to wait for final version to come to me via technet so i can test that all our current apps work on vista first.

No sign of an MSI for deployment via Group Policy then? I do not want to deploy it via WSUS.

How much do you get charged? RM Provide our broadband via the LEA and we get charged stupid fee's. In september, i want the www A record of our domain changing to a different IP. There is no web based control for this like you get with say 123reg. Instead we get charged £50. £50!!! to change an A record entry. I then wanted a new A record, moodle.ourdomain.lea.sch.uk. Yet another £50 charge. Apparently this is the agreement. Personally i think the charges are discusting, but i'm not sure if is the LEA's or RM's fault. If they can have a webcontrol for the filter lists per site, why not provide one for domain name control.

Time to respond, £100 A client licence is what it said on the RM web site back in 2003 when we were looking at removing RM Connect 2.4 and "moving on". As for the time frame, i had 1 week half term before July 2004 to completly move the Connect 2.4 network out and get 110 workstations moved over to a new system. (The reason we decided on that time and not the summer holidays was to allow the kids to use it in a non critical time, so any problems could then be sorted before september) They were all the same PC's so how long does it take to pull Windows XP down of the server, install all software and drivers and it push it back up? The only jobs done before that half term week was to install 2003 Server on the new 3 servers, setup the domain, and transfer DNS and DHCP services over to the new systems. Its still sitting here now, more or less in the same config as back when it was put in, it just works, and the only time it requires of me is the patching. I still fail to see what CC3 actually does for its money. Even things such as RM Tutor is not made by RM its Netops "Netop School" rebadged. Sorry if i upset anyone with my comments but RM is a very heavy topic with me, like a hell of a lot of people i detest them. What i ment by real tech was when we ran RM Connect 2.4 i was more like a secretary, anything went wrong i never got to fix it my self it was always tell the LEA the problem. All i did was put build disks in the PC's and install software with the repackager, my year 7's could have done that.

RMCC3 is short hand for "how to waste money". £100 per PC client licence alone, that would cost us £23,000 just on that, never mind the the actual server software. In the 9x era there was a stronger case for it, as NT on the workstation then was not a viable option in high schools lots of educational titles would only run on 95/98, and NT is where MS aimed its managment tools then, RM Connect 2.4 had some good tools in that MS did not provide for 9x (only NT with SMS Server 2.0 etc) Now that NT has moved on into the 2000/2003/XP type OS most of the tools you will ever need are there (nice one MS), only one its missing is print quota, and thats a £400 third party add on which is more powerful that the one provide by CC3. Bulk creation of users (Sims, Excel and a batch file, 5 min job) Pushing out the OS's to the client PC's (RIS FREE with 2000/2003 Server) Managing users look and feel of the desktop (Group policy which is not difficult, or use mandatory profiles to have full control over the look and feel, just need a few tools like delprof which is in the resource kit, and a few small batch files) Pushing out new software (again group policy or ris) Printer allocation (just allocate a .vbs file to each OU for each room in Active Directory, 3 lines of code not hard or use the managment console provided in R2 2003 Server) Printer Auditing (Pcounter £400) Use Microsoft Managment Console to create "Task Pads" ie a password manager so staff can reset pupils passwords, gives them only what they need to see, takes 10 mins to create the task pad. Remote files access (use webdav, free and comes with Windows 2003 Server) Should take 1 week max to have a whole system setup and ready to go, and when its in it should just work, anybody who has Administrator rights on an Active Directory should be more than capable of setting up the above. Save tens of thousands of ££££ in money Have a fast and clean network system Move client OS when YOU choose to, not when the 3rd party managment software supports it and then get charged stupid money for an upgrade. If your a school with no tech and just teachers then CC3 would prob be a good move then, but if you have a REAL tech on site an industry standard system is the way i would go.

Just spoke to the assistant head he knows about the scheme, but knew nothing of the outsourcing ICT. His faced dropped at the thought and said its worth finding my wage to have in house ICT support and would do what ever possable to make sure it stays in house.

Whats this BSF Cloud??? It sounds scary! and is it only certain LEA's or the whole country?

HP 1220C's here too. Do not cause me any problems

Before i got a moodle box running we used Class Server for odd things (never used it massivly) but was very very happy with Class Server for homeworks, the worksheets just look great on it. Try to do the same things in moodle, the question types are there but the whole thing just looks dire and manageing the questions and sheets is just not as simple. Apart from the testing/quiz part in moodle i really love moodle. My question is there an alternative to "quiz" in moodle or some better way.

I just have an old PC with big disks inside the PE building, everynight robo copy syncs everything up. So if the server died i could just redirect all the home dir paths to the server accross PE (or shares etc). So downtime would be next to nothing, if there is a fire the PE building is a seperate completly detached building so fire would not spread. Once every couple of months i do backup onto tape just for absoulute emergency. For the backups of "i've deleted my work by accident" i just use Volume Shadow Copy, not only hassle free, but kids get the backups them selfs. No need for all these over priced and slow backup solutions. Cost of large SATA disks is peanuts.