j224

Feel free to thank my post

I put together this one for our school- Google Classroom Guide

We use hosted SIMS (hosted by local ICT company) and it's been absolutely fine. But it is just temporary measure until we move to one of the cloud-based solutions in the next year or two.

Yeah, the hosted SIMS is a stop-gap really. We were going to see how the new SIMS turns out (if it ever arrives) and then weigh up the competition at that point. I'll have a look at Bromcom.

Which ones would you recommend? We looked at Arbor but with training costs it worked out more expensive than hosted SIMS, plus we'd upset the secretary who is in (probably) her final year at the school after many many years using SIMS. Our LA also buy Capita licenses so it's part of our budget. I'm not really involved in that side of things though. Also, we use FMS and I couldn't find a suitable alternative to that. Again, we've got staff who have used it for many many years, so we'd only switch if something is considerably better and cheaper. Apart from the copying and pasting hassle, the hosted SIMS works completely fine.

For storage, we just uploaded stuff to Google Shared Drive. For SIMS, a local company is hosting it for us so we just access through RD Web. Not had any dropouts. The couple of admin PCs we have use remote desktop which allows them to run the SIMS reports and print locally using 'TSPrint'. The fiddly bit is copying and pasting the reports which get saved onto the hosted server's documents folder onto the local computer. Otherwise, when the secretary goes to upload it or attach to an email, the system can't see hosted server files. It works though. And the secretary likes being able to access it from home when needed.

Hi Jon, I also found very little in the way of funding in my searches. So I thought I'd ask the good people here. I'll have a look into Salix but I'm not too hopeful because we replaced the vast majority of our lighting to LED panels a couple of years ago!

Yeah, few differences. AMD instead of Celeron. Bigger, Full HD screen. Speakers on the side rather than under the keyboard. But bigger bezels so looks uglier and £50 more.

Sorry if this is the wrong forum. I couldn't see one specifically related to grants/funding. Does anyone know of anything available for UK schools to help with buying new IT equipment? We've got a 5 year plan containing lots of computer, Chromebook, iPad and interactive display purchasing/upgrading. I've got a few lease quotes if we have to go down that route but obviously any grants available will soften the blow! Thanks.

It's a good idea to check the Auto-Update policy for an idea of when the device will lose Google updates- https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en I personally don't like 11 inch Chromebooks due to them feeling cramped. So I look out for 14 or 15" with as much RAM as possible. The Acer 314 looks like great value at £230 and updates until 2026. The Asus C423 is the same price but updates until 2024.

Directprint.io for printing. Doesn't need a server. Works with Chromebooks and there's a client to install for Windows and Mac.

We've recently gone 'serverless' and looked into options for getting our Chromebooks to print and having a management system to track prints and set up Secure Print so each user has their own PIN to release the job. We've found directprint.io does exactly that and the support is excellent too.

Similar to MartinDT. We were already using GSuite a lot and have had some shared Chromebooks for several years so everyone was used to that way of working. Our server died in April so we decided to make the leap. Converted the ICT suite and classroom-based teacher PCs to CloudReady Hosted SIMS Directprint.io for print management DHCP, etc on the switch Just kept a couple of admin machines on Windows for emergencies!

For anyone following this thread- it turned out to be a small section of broadband wire which had worn a bit thin! Although, I still think the Sonicwall was broken because out Chromebook loading times improved as soon as we switched it to Watchguard.

So, I think the WatchGuard has solved the problem with the slow Chromebook boot. However, we're still getting the internet grind to a crawl several times a day. So we're now thinking the modem may be playing up too because after rebooting it, the connection is back to normal for a couple more hours. I love technology!

It is and they are. We're going to swap out the Sonicwall for WatchGuard and hope it works!

One minute we have everything PASS and the next we have the top 6 results all FAIL: Connection timed out What's going on??

Yep, tried Powerwash. No luck. Something isn't working right with our network, but I don't know what.

The Crosh was failing on accounts.google.com and accounts.gstatic.com Our IT Support made some changes and now it passes on everything. HOWEVER, we still have the same issue with the slow boot. It does it MOST of the time. There's a few boots where it goes straight through to the login screen within a few seconds.

Not for anything Google-related. Just for FFT Aspire, Teachers2Parents, SchoolMoney and My Concern. - - - Updated - - - Thanks, I'll give this a go!

No, Meraki and the fact that it's happening to the ethernet connected CloudReady computers too, should rule out a WiFi problem? Unless there is more than one issue going on here.

Hi All, Long shot, but hopefully someone here has some suggestions. Recently our Chromebooks have been taking ages to reach the login screen. This can be best seen in this video I did- https://drive.google.com/file/d/16v1c_Ibd3a25Ycm7U3WIzcRTXQUEfuef/view?usp=sharing It's not very clear to see in the video but the WiFi shows it's connected with a strong signal from the start. It doesn't happen all of the time, just most of the time! We use SonicWall and have all the recommended domains whitelisted and have also tested disabling DPI-SSL but still the same issue. I've taken the Chromebook home and it goes straight to the login screen within a few seconds, every time I boot. We also see this on our CloudReady computers which are ethernet, but it doesn't take as long to reach the login page. Help!

Yep, or the Affinity apps. A lot of professionals have made the switch.

I think I've found a workable solution- https://smallpdf.com/jpg-to-pdf The Chrome print settings have the option to print 'Pages per sheet'. Default is 1, but you can choose 2, 4, 6, 9 or 16. This should be sufficient for our needs. Still open to any other ideas though.

Hi All, Has anyone found a good alternative to the Windows printing wizard, which allows you to easily print multiple pages on one page? There are loads of collage maker websites but not found one that just prints in a basic way with a gap around each photo. Cheers.