Norphy

For a classroom, arguably. For a hall where you need a picture larger than 80”? No, not yet. Screens that size are nowhere near economical enough for that scenario yet.

These are likely to be using DisplayLink chipsets. In my experience, these are generally OK up to a point. I’ve tried two different models, a Dell d3100 and some generic thing I bought from Amazon. Both performed similarly, the Dell perhaps a little better but not significantly. You have to understand the main difference between one of these and most USB C docks: Most USB C docks work as Display Port MST hubs or in USBC alternative mode, which means that any external monitor is driven by the internal display adapter of the computer it’s attached to, whether that’s a discrete GPU or integrated graphics whereas a DisplayLink Dock IS the GPU for those external monitors. This means that you’re having to drive those 2m pixels at 1080P, audio, networking and anything else attached to those docks over that 5Gbps USB 3 cable. CPU usage will be higher, performance overall of the laptop will be slower and video may or may not be very good. I used to run these from a laptop running Windows 10 with a 4th gen Core i5 CPU (2c/4t 2.4GHz) and it could just about cope with two monitors at 1440x900. When I replaced those with two 1080p monitors, it couldn’t cope, CPU usage spiked and the whole thing got very jittery. Moving the monitors onto the laptop’s own external monitor ports solved the problem. They were also next to useless on a Mac, if that’s a consideration. You had to disable transparency effects in the GUI to make them usable, plus an update to the driver model in (I think) Mojave gimped them entirely. So in conclusion, I’d say give one a try before you buy them en-masse and check to see how well they work for you. They may be fine, they may not.

It doesn’t need a static ip (although it would help!) but the carrier can’t use carrier grade NAT. It’s not a question of allowing incoming connections, the 4G router needs a direct connection to the internet, not sit behind NAT. An easy way to check is to do a trace route. If one of the hops is a private IP address range outside of your network, you know you’ve got carrier grade NAT.

That sounds very much like the arrangement my MAT has. We use Charterhouse as a telecom provider, who in turn provide leased lines for internet at two of our sites and l2 point to point “wires only” connections between the rest of them. They in turn subcontract out to OpenReach and Virgin so we get a bit of carrier diversity but that’s transparent to us, we pay Charterhouse to manage it all

It’s a cheapest of the cheap piece of 22” garbage I borrowed from work when the lockdown started. It’s adequate as a second screen but I wouldn’t want to use it long term.

Yes, it will depend on the monitor. The low end AOC monitor I've got sitting on my desk right now is awful, the viewing angles are so bad that the colours shift just by shaking your head. The cheapo LG I've got in the corner of my living room is much better in that regard.

The thing that I've found with TVs vs monitors is that TVs tend to have wider viewing angles than monitors do so that could be a concern.

You don't put any effort in to get multiple quotes. You put your spec into the website and it's then down to the companies who are registered on the framework to get back to you. You've done your due diligence because you're using a recognised framework so even if only one company returns a quote, you're covered. You're not obliged to buy, even when the process is complete either.

There's also Cresent https://www.thecpc.ac.uk/ When I did my recent switching project, I put in a spec and left it to see who would pick it up.

Good lord, has it really been 20 years since Chicken Run came out? I feel old.

What is this I don’t even...

Ah. I see.

I think I must be being dim. I still don't get it.

"Chief Apologist" by the looks of it. also, phpBB is 80s design? The first release of phpBB was in the year 2000. PHP itself was only released in 1995. I'm no fan of either but come on!

I don't think that's right. I have 3.5GB of stuff in the c:\windows\ccmcache folder on my computer at the moment and I didn't set anything on my hierarchy to turn local cache on or off..

Did it have this: in it? If not, why not?

Ugh. No thank you. Google already has too much data about people as it is. The last thing we should wish for is for them to get even more! Plus, given their history, it would probably get discontinued after two years when they get bored with it...

I have a SuperHub 3, it’s still acting as a router and I’ve got its wifi radios disabled. I’ve got an Aruba InstantOn AP11 access point, cost me about £70. The difference is incredible. It can act as a router if you want and supports AP meshing. They also do a version with a built in switch, the AP11D.

This is what I said to my boss about the Windows laptops:

SCCM is a massive product and requires a lot of time to get your head around. I've been using various flavours of it for the last ten years or so and even now, I can't honestly say that I know every nook and cranny. If you can get the budget, it's well worth going on a training course. I've been on earlier versions of that course with that company and I can honestly say that it is excellent. Guides on the internet are all very well (Windows Noobs is a good one) but sometimes there really is no substitute for instructor led learning. That said, to view the status of a deployment of an application, go to the Monitoring workspace and click on Deployments. Search for your application and click on it. A pie chart will appear with the number of successful and unsuccessful deployments shown. You can then click on the View Status link to get a more detailed breakdown of what's going on. To view AV status, go to the Monitoring workspace again and go to Security. Expand Endpoint Protection Status and click on System Center Endpoint Protection Status. You'll get a detailed breakdown of what's going on in there.

Good call, actually, considering you also get a free two year warranty thrown in with any electrical goods purchase from them.

Enterprise comes with various features that Pro doesn't that you might want to use in an Enterprise environment such as: Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) U-EV App-V Virtual Desktop Usage Rights Windows Defender Application Guard and Application Control You're able to manage store access and the consumer experiences on the Enterprise/Edu versions, which you can't do with Pro. The Enterprise/Edu versions also get 30 months of support on the September releases, while Pro doesn't My organisation is using several of those features, so Enterprise or Edu is the way to go for us.

Do you have a local Active Directory? Are your students in there? If so, the easiest way to get them into Office 365 would be to install Azure AD Connect and have it synchronise your student accounts and groups to Office 365/Azure. This can also synchronise passwords from your local AD to Office 365 as well, so they don't have to remember another password. You'd then be able to assign Office 365 licenses to a group that your students are a member of and they'll be able to access the resources that your school wants them to accesss. If your school/MAT is willing to spend some money, it's worth contacting SalamanderSoft who would be able to automate exports from SIMS into Active Directory and/or Office 365/Azure AD for you. Other options are using CommandReporter.exe inside SIMS to generate CSV files with your students information and writing a script to process this and create accounts. There's also a feature called School Data Sync which can take the output of a CSV file and create Office 365 accounts for you.

I was getting similar yesterday. I could still use the panel, albeit slowly but I was getting the same messages. Ever since lockdown started, perhaps unsurprisingly the experience has been a lot poorer

You need to make sure that your WDS is an appropriate version too, I think 2012 R2 was the first version which supported EFI clients.