truebluesteve

I don't have the quote details with me so I can't say which HP model it was, but thanks for the info.

Sounds cheap by comparison! Ours is a CX4 and when I spoke to my service manager at EMC recently over a complaint about the time it took to replace a faulty drive he said the renewal wouldn't be cheap. He wasn't wrong!

Hi all Our EMC Clariion SAN is about to come to the end of its warranty and EMC have quoted us £8000 to renew it. For a year! Clearly they think this is more of a bargain than I do, so I have had a quote for a HP SAN for not an awful lots more money and with 5 years warranty. Does anyone here use them and have any comments - good or bad? Thanks Steve

Ours is at the end of a corridor on the first floor and access is via 2 doors both with access control locks on them. Access to is only available to IT, Property Team and SLT. There is also CCTV in the server room.

Sorry, but isn't the salary information about the job?

We use the Hitachi software but there may well be SNMP traps you can use - I will take a look and let you know

We have 3 of the Hitachi short throws (think its the model you are describing) and they are really good. They have tons of inputs and soon good software to control them remotely. Can't really comment on the BenQ as we only have one and its fairly basic.

Same problem here....

Videk do some pre terminated cables that are designed to be pulled in easily and without much risk of damaging the cable. They are more expensive than standard pre terminated though

We have virtually all hard glass - although they are plastic and not glass, and they have served us very well. There seems to be a temptation to prod other screens with pens and pencils which doesn't stop them working but it doesn't look good.

Thanks for the replies - I shall take a look into the suggestions and pass my comments on to the relevant subject leaders. After putting my riot gear on first!

Hi All I have asked to look at the provision of Apple hardware in the school - specifically iMacs and whether there is a case for replacing them with PC's. This really due to the fact that in a year or two we will have a lot that will need replacing and the costs of doing this are extortionate. We use them in Art, Photography, Media and Music and the first two essentially use the Mac version of our CS5 site licence so I don't see any issues there. Where I am going to have a battle is in the last 2 where there is a perception that only Macs will do. Music use Garage Band but want to get licences for Logic Pro and Sibelius (which is available for PC). Media use a variety of software but predominately Adobe Premier. What do you guys use and have you encountered any issues if you have moved away from Macs? Cheers Steve

Here's the link http://www.education.gov.uk/aboutdfe/advice/f00218617/biometric-recognition-systems- The OP has got a couple of points wrong - 1. It's not retrospective - existing parents do not need to be contacted 2. Both parents have to be informed but written consent is only needed from one (although if the other objects in writing then the data cannot be collected) The link is pretty clear. Hope this helps Steve

Our new intake come in over several days in June and July and we take their photos for SIMS and do their bio registration (Cunninghams using Biostore) at the same time. We have to do some jiggery pokery so we don't get duplicate accounts (it's a long story) but it all works fine and the kids have their online payments accounts setup too.

We have a Extreme BD8800 as our core switch. I don't think there's much it can't do but damn its expensive to add blades to it!

We pay about £11k for a 50 meg leased line with ASDL failover from Eclipse Internet. We are in the final year of a 3 year contract so I expect that cost to fall considerably when we renew or move ISPs. Watch out for other costs that you may incur - installation and maybe the router

We use Tucasi and its pretty good - especially the support. It's an awful lot cheaper than ParentPay which IMHO is a rip off - certainly when we looked at it a couple of years ago.

There's nothing wrong with those boxes - they are designed just for that purpose, but you really need a network cable tester to make sure they are ok from end to end and connected correctly. There is the possibility of more than one break or the cable run might simply be too long.

Off to Corfu in August for a very well deserved break with the kids!

Technically if a staff member leaves or retires then they should uninstall the software (they download the media or pay for the CD) but I suspect that will be tricky to enforce! We use the HUP and it has been very popular with staff and removes the headaches of dealing with KMS etc. the program doesn't include OS's - well not for us anyway.

Many thanks for this. With your DHCP server have you set up a different subnet configured for the IP phones. We also need to allow the Avaya box to talk to the outside world as we are using SIP trunks.

Hi All This week we've had our new VOIP phone system installed - well the box and a few phones intially so we can play with it until the full install in 3 or 4 weeks time. During that time I want so set up a seperate VOIP VLAN on our otherwise flat network. Now I have struggled with the concept of VLANs - you know how some stuff goes in easily and others...well not so easily! With that in mind I need the help of the VLAN whizzes on here - of which there are many I'm sure. I have attached a little drawing that I made earlier which shows how the network is set up (very basic of course) and how I think the VLANs should be set up. The Avaya box has 2 NICs and one of these is set up to be a DHCP server for the phones. The phones we have installed all work but are all on the default VLAN at the moment, and it seems that that have to be initially to get an IP address (I assume that this is because the phone only look on VLAN 1 when they are started up). Anyway, I'd appreciate any comments or tips you might have enormously (except on artistic ability!) Thanks Steve VOIP Vlan.docx

Same here.... Very good piece of kit!

I think employing a teacher probably starts at around £40k once you have taken all the other costs like pensions, NI etc! I can see both sides of the argument regarding working at home. If you want staff to work at home then they should be provided with the tools. After all if they only have one computer at home then its going to be unfair on the rest of the family to monopolise it doing school work. Plus there is the whole issue of keeping sensitive data on home computers and so on. On the other side there is the whole home/worklife balance thing and encouraging staff to work at home could tilt that the wrong way, even though there are probably plenty of them who would prefer to go home and work rather than stay on and complete it. An idea that has been mooted is a loan laptop scheme where staff can book out a laptop for up to a week and take it home.

It's nothing to do with the wireless card power settings is it - although 5 minutes seems a long time!