CyberNerd

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/Open-Standards-Principles-FINAL.pdf From what I gather, Schools and Local Authorities are 'encouraged' to adopt these principals, but they are mandatory for DfE

The ones I downloaded on 31st don't appear to need to e registered, upon clicking "Register and Unlock this Demo" I get:

If you are windows trained then yes. If your nix trained then no. A bit of education on nix systems goes a long way in improving services for users

I guess, to those in the know, that you get the features that you want in your network for a cost effective price rather than what your current vendors have to offer.

Not at all. Its been in commercial solaris for years. Many solaris environments are there to serve windows networks. BSD has it and its even available for linux albeit with fewer features. So why the interest now? If not Fanboism or pretty interfaces, is it just down to a lack of knowledge in the people making decisions?

Backups is usually the primary reason fordedupe especially if you can dedupe over the network as with solaris bsd etc. So how come the interest in dedupe now? Its been in windows serving networks for years.. is it fanboism with ms or just love of a pretty metro interface?

Didn't you integrate it with Office? or using Google drive linked to their homedrive through SSO? staff shouldn't need to sign in to something else just to get student work! https://tools.google.com/dlpage/cloudconnect Install Google Drive on your computer - Google Drive Help

Thats assuming the EC2 is doing a log of processing with 'high i/o performance'. It's not going to cost a fraction of that for a test rig.

yes you can define virtual networks

Build a server farm as large as you like. A huge degree of scalability, flexibility and bandwidth, yet only pay for what you use: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)

What some of the more forward thinking teachers tell me they like is to be able to see how students essays progress over time. They want essays to be submitted electronically so they can add comments and let the students work on through those points, they want to be able to see if the student did the essay the night before or if they have thought about it over time, they want to follow students live in lessons and they want revision histories and they want collaboration features. Google apps does all these things on chromebooks, IOS, android, windows and mac. To get Office 365 to get even close to this you need the A3 plan Students: £1.87* per user/month and windows machines plus a wealth of sharepoint experience. Office 365 is really no match for Google apps yet.

I might be inclined to agree with you if there was an area where Office 365 was actually ahead, but it isn't. It feels about the same standard Google apps was 4yrs ago when they started.

Zimbra :: Wiki

Office 2013 and sharepoint are not free, and don't work on chromebooks, android or IOS. Google apps does work on chromebooks, android, ios and windows - it is entirely free and has way more features than the free version of Office 365. There isn't much competition comparing the two because google apps wins hands down.

Try hiding the SSID. I had a problem with blackberrys that could only connect to hidden SSID's.

thanks @Soulfish. Time for rethink

I was hoping to use the prebuild copper cable assemblies like this: SFP+ Copper Cable Assemblies - Siemon Interconnect Soutions Direct It would be cheaper than buying fibre modules!. Our server room is above the admin office, and the admin office is being rebuilt. I'd like to keep a switch in there as it serves a lot of other places and was hoping I could get a 20M or 30M cable to uplink the switches.

Does anyone know the Maximum SFP+ Copper cable length @10Gb/s and where I can buy long ones?

Four years on and codeweavers are doing this again: Flock The Vote

I ran Zimbra for 1800 users for a couple of years. It was very successful, I used Centos and backed it up with scripts. We ran Exchange for staff and Zimbra for students. Zimbra was much less hassle than exchange. We since migrated all the accounts to google apps, which is even less hassle.

Capita say:

thats forums for ya. anyway. 2016 is the year for linux Android to overtake Windows in 2016, says Gartner | ZDNet

another ZiLink school here, highly recommended.

I'm sure things in the former colonies will catch up with the rest of the modern world in time Well no, we don't use Word because you can't type up a Word document on one - and the basis of our ICT strategy is to make learning resources available to all not just those that can afford Word (and the equipment to run it). Then again, IT isn't all about typing essays up on word processors. Anyway, yes WTG is a nice edition I just think its getting a bit late in the day for MS to capitalize on this. They desperately need to pick up things in the mobile market I just don't think they are doing it the right way.

A smartphone is a computer in pretty much every definition you could cite. Once Microsoft had a domination here and now they don't. The amount of smartphones must easily eclipse the amount of desktop computers nowadays - in a class of 30 that I was in today, only about 4 kids were not connected to the wi-fi using their phones to search for sites in French. Any using windows phone? No. Why? there are no apps. Exactly the same reason people use Windows over Apple and Linux in the past - because it had apps. Now with RT entering the market watch the dominance decline.