CyberNerd

Central heating is pretty useful to have online, especially if you don't know when you are going to be home/away. Lighting I'm not so sure about, CCTV is always a good one with PIR sensors that tell you if someone has broken in.

I rather thought that the point of wiring a house to connect to the internet was to connect things to the internet!. The same security argument goes for anything you plug in.

Whilst you doing it; try and find some devices like fridges, heating systems, lights that come with RJ45. You'll probably find they most are only wi-fi compatible, so you could save time and money by only wiring in the things that will need the Cat5/6.

Sometimes the introduction of IT (learning) systems is the driver of that change in culture in schools.

Really? I very much doubt it would make the slightest difference to the house price unless you're converting it to an office block. I think the internet of things will be a wireless one.

I've had 3 staff/students come in with their bricked home laptops after bodged update to W10. Seen a couple working so it's not all bad.

classic case of "blame the technology" rather than "blame the behaviour". Only the worst teachers do this.

I must agree with this. I think the domain model is out, google proved it's perfectly possible to manage a fleet of user accounts for BYOD with their tools. MS's best move would be to adopt this model too.

.. and computers? or just computers that can make calls? or ones with microphones, or a text app?

3x3 802.11ac is "upto" 1300mb/s per device. Even with 10% performance it's still better than most home internet links.

Huh?! So copy to Google Drive? Works for us.

Which model is it ?

I think I'll like windows10, it sounds like a beta linux distro.

The students are pretty vocal in informing the teachers that they should be saving the environment and sharing their work with the teachers via Google Classroom. As for budgets, we pay centrally for student printing. Each yeargroup gets a top up per month - if students go over quota that's it until next month. Upon the ok from a head of department we will transfer "money" (that the department pays for) to the student account. That is very rare.

I wholeheartedly agree with @SteveHill about the time taken to learn the product. I think the "problem" with smoothwall is that it is very flexible and configurable - this takes a lot of time to understand compared to some of the more basic solutions. When we've had to call support, it is usually over a new feature that didn't work in exactly the way that we expected, or with the specific config that we were using and one one occasion how we designed the network. I think companies should waive the 'charge' if the fault lies with the product or the documentation; if it's a problem configured by the user or the users network design at fault then I can't see the company to blame.

yes it allows them to link the printer to their profile, so they could be on a regular windows machine, chromebook or macbook in school or at home. As soon as they login to the browser (or chromebook) they get the printer. We put all yeargroups in their own Classroom, as well as the individual ones that the teachers create, so sending a link isn't too difficult. Staff that print to shared accounts are a bit more awkward - the chromebooks need to allow them to select a dropdown box and to do this they first need to login to http://yourpapercutserver/client and when they print they need to go back to that window to authorise the account. It works but isn't as seemless as the students.

We share a centralised "follow me printer" that uses a print release system from papercut. We share it from a central account. We then send students a link to the printer via classroom. They only need to add it once and I never had much luck assigning the printer in from the management console. Students can then print from home or school and release the print job when they get to a printer.

If you are looking for something for general browsing and a few apps you can't go wrong with Chromebooks. You'll get a rugged touchscreen yoga (tablet and laptop) that was designed for education for £250. Boot up is about 10 seconds ( that is to say logged in and on the internet, the boot is about 6!). Really good performance since the kernel is designed for the hardware, and comes with enterprise grade 802.11ac. The management capabilities are very good too with GAFE. Or pay an extra £80 and slow it down with windows. ThinkPad Yoga 11e Chromebook | Lenovo Â| Lenovo UK

Millennium bug ?

We also use Google calendars. The particular advantage being that you can subscribe staff to public and private calendars and embed the public ones into your website for parents. Staff can be subscribed to all calendars (ie have one for each yeargroup) but choose whether they hide ones that are not relevant to them to unclutter things. A simple login script would open the webpage on login and it is very easy to connect to mobiles and tablets.

I think gmail isn't open on 25 as it requires encryption. Try on 465 (ssl) or 587 (tls).

You'll probably be able to access them using a console cable and PuTTY or minicom; configure the address and save the running config.

yes that would make sense.

If it was a DNS problem the machine wouldn't be able to reply from the 'wrong' address. ..unless the server has multiple addresses

'interesting' NAT rules on you router/firewall would cause this.