HTCPCP

APC in nearly all the primary schools (APC Smart UPS - usually 1500VA tower, except one which has a HP UPS system which is shocking!) and at the main base we have rack mounted 2 APC SmartUPS 3000VA and an APC SmartUPS 5000VA powering all our servers. Slight overkill, but when it was installed it was what was needed, but since then the number of physical servers has been reducing as we virtualise more. Can't fault APC when there are problems like the rotten egg smell coming from one of them, they immediately sent out a brand new replacement for it, not just the battery pack and extended the warranty too. As for changing batteries, I have swapped over 1 battery pack in a 1500VA and one in one of the 3000VA, all the rest have been fine and no issues with the hardware after a battery change.

A mix and match between Zoostorms with either a Pentium G850 series processor, varying i3 processors or currently i5 processors as they are cheaper. cheap, cheerful and easy to replace parts if something goes wrong as there is literally nothing in the case except the core components. My primary schools mostly use laptops - i5 for staff who use more intensive stuff, and i3 for students and other staff, and usually a top end i5/low end i7 processor for the front office/head teacher to keep the LEA happy with it running SIMS, although they are mostly bought through the LEA for that one, as they can do the boring set up work for them!

We have had a box of Family Circle, a box of roses, a box of celebrations and a 4 pack of Stella! Oh wait, they were thank yous from a parent after we fixed their laptop, a teacher after we helped them save a few days of remarking and showed them how to back things up, and the celebrations and stella was from a company who came in to do the ECDL after they kept breaking things and making last minute requests such as extra user accounts, and software packages! Nothing from Christmas yet, but we still have a week (gonna take a lot to beat our haul last year - we had 2 members of SLT ask if we were starting an off license... (staff bringing us bottles after the kids had gone home at the end of term, not us becoming alcoholics...)

WE bought a load of Ergo windows 7 tablets a few years ago, and were less than impressed with them. Yes, they were never going to be record breakers with the specs of a netbook, but did have a great stand on the side, however implementation was poor, with a lot of case flex which wasnt there on the show model we tested. within 2 years all were essentially dead, with failed batteries, or legs broken off. since then, we haven't even looked at them!

we got our first set of chromebooks as soon as they came out, and now have about 130 now, but we are no longer replacing laptops or chromebooks as we move towards One device per pupil. Can't fault them really, except the massive delay in being able to get the management system over here so we could stop certain changes. We have a nice mix of samsung 3 series, Acer AC700s and whatever else we could get at the lowest possible price. Of all of them, the Samsung 3 series seem to be the most unreliable really, but they have had a tough life though!

I have 3 pairs (and yet can never still find a pair...) 2 have my latest prescription, and one is an old pair which I use as a last resort pair, or when I am somewhere where I could break my glasses but a bit of fuzz doesn't matter that much. Even then, some days I just don't get on with my glasses either.

We have Server 2012 running on a bog standard Zoostorm tower with a 1tb hard drive as our Transparent Proxy DHCP server, and have had it in place for about a year now. No problems for us to report. It is well in budget, but you do need to factor in the license for Server 2012 on top of any costs, which means you may well be out of luck with your price range. ZooStorm Microtower PC /Intel Core I5-4440/ 1TB/ 6GB DDR3 / DVDRW/ No OS/ 1Yr RTB (7877-1042) - www.misco.co.uk

We have it connected to the digibox, Video Machine, DVD/VCR player and we use it to build machines with too. It's quite nice really to be able to watch the squad announcements/Wimbledon/sports during the day when it's quiet!

I quite like my prime membership, but that does mean I have to remember to sign out of Amazon BEFORE going out on a night out... Not had anything hugely wierd, just a load of books etc that I ordered but have no recollection of...

When it was installed, it worked well, but not as well as the sales person said/showed it would (We are sure that he had an AP under his coat run off batteries so that when he showed us the coverage well away from the AP at high signal... The signal was never brilliant, even relatively near the AP, unless you had a direct line of sight to the AP which was annoying. (something that doesn't seem to be such a problem with the Meraki gear) The kit was fine for what we wanted, until we wanted to set up the transparent proxy when we found out that it wouldn't allow us to use multiple DHCP servers, something later confirmed by the support provider when we asked. All in all it was just a bit of a let down, although with newer buildings I could imagine that Ruckus could be a great solution. Just wasn't the right one for us!

The LA when they were looking at our site, to get the coverage that we could get from the Meraki gear, we would need more than double the number of APs throughout the site and have to get the cabling done, whereas for the Meraki we could do a like for like with the old ruckus. We spent less on the Meraki, albeit we will need to buy new licenses in a few years, but even then, we worked out that it would take 6 years before we the Aruba would work out cheaper.

All depends on what you want to do with it really. We currently have a Meraki system which is brilliant for what we need it to do, but isn't cheap at all. The web based management is brilliant meaning you can easily see how many devices are connected to it, and are able to use multiple DHCP servers to enable transparent proxy system for the roll out of One Device Per Pupil and a 6th form BYOD. We have previously had a Ruckus system which in our mind was a pain, but at the time did everything we needed it to do. For smaller schools that the team i'm a member of manages, we have a mixture of Aruba managed systems which are brilliant for primary schools, albeit not really that effective at a secondary level. The other option is the unmanaged system which you can just set up and ignore until something goes wrong. One of the primary schools has an old D-Link one which works fine, albeit its rather slow now, although there are plans being made to replace that with another unmanaged system at the start of the next budget year! Just need to get approval from the head/Governors for it!

For us, standard projectors are Epson EBX-11s or 20s and short throws are usually Hitatchi due to price constraints, but if any of my schools had the money, then it would probably be Epson again. Epson support is great, even if you can accidentally get a whole projector when you want a bulb... However, word of warning, I have had only bad problems with BenQ UST projectors, replacing bulbs can be a nightmare and have had 2 projectors just out of warranty completely die on me...

We have some LapSafe UnoCarts which we use for everything from ipads to laptops. As long as you have long enough cables (which chromebooks normally come with) then they are perfect. I also believe I have seen somewhere a netbook version which should work with Chromebooks. The cable management is relatively good and the oldest one we have is just over 2 years and still moving like it was new. Bit fidly plugging the chargers in to start with but apart from that they are fantastic!

We now have a blanket ban on all staff emails for anything that isn't related to school matters e.g. medical or behavioral issues that could affect all staff. However we do have a slight issue that we are trying to work on, but it's all well and good telling all the staff that child XYZ is in isolation, and understand that teachers might need to know, but do all the support staff/technicians etc need to know too? As for the general chit chat all staff emails such as "i'm running a half marathon/eating my bodyweight in chocolate for charity, all have to go into a staff only part of the intranet! Seems to be working so far...

we are very fortunate that our kids don't try and steal the ram or anything, but we do have a load of machines missing blanking plates! Just out of interest, why do you need new PSUs? surely you can get something like Xenta Computer Case B138A - Ebuyer which only seems to have a single slot and just reuse the rest of the kit? I have always found bundled PSUs tend to be really cheap and nasty, and you can buy a decent PSU if you need to replace any. Then to stop that one getting punched out quite so easily, use a glue gun or superglue to stick the blanking plate in place

down below 16 stone for the first time in too long. 1 stone 8 lost this year, bringing total weight loss to 8 stone since 2008 and the ballooning waist band of not being able to play rugby... Only another 2 stone to go!

We now have a Meraki system having pulled out of the Ruckus system as soon as the warranty expired and it started becoming unreliable (oh and not doing everything we want it to either). Meraki is good, but the MR24 access point isn't great, meaning that any mobiles/seperate rooms have unreliable wireless access...

We bought a load of these http://www.misco.co.uk/product/137373/Lindy-VGA-Splitter-Cable-2-Way- a about a year ago from Zones for less than a fiver each and can't fault them. The only place they don't really work is where we have a projector mounted on an abnormally high ceiling or for whatever reason the AV loom is incredibly long, where we use whatever powered splitter we can get.

I have a pair of ProLite P1905S-B2 monitors on one machine, and an amazing ProLite XB2783HSU-B1. Can't fault either of them, and have been using Iiyama monitors since I started buying computers.

We use Chrome Enterprise without any issues at all on CC4. When we were rolling it out originally though, we did notice that it appeared as installed but wasn't properly, but a right click and repair worked. However we rolled it out in the summer so we had reset everyones profiles before they logged in. This hasn't been done in my primary schools, however there hasn't seemed to be this issue except in the odd case for staff. However, does this issue happen on all machines including recently rebuilt machines? Also what OS are you using on CC4?

Wasn going through our inventory this morning removing a load of machines we had collected today, and we have a load of old Pentium Dual Core E2200 / 5400 , Athlon 64 X2s, a couple of Pentium 4s and some original Intel Atom processors still in active use... All running Windows 7 successfully though, so not too bad at all!

First thing to do is see if your LEA has a package at all. I know HGFL have created one. However initially we just packaged an old version ourselves without too many issues. For the ADM template, as FooFighterJim said, it doesn't work through the RMMC, so we imported it straight into Group Policy and set it that way and touch wood we haven't had any issues with it...

We've never had any problems with Python, in fact our LEA gave us a package of it that they had done for CC4.

They are never going to break any records, or achieve much at all really. I picked up a netbook running the E-450 to test some stuff on it, and it was a nightmare. HP 250 G2 Laptop - Laptops | Ebuyer.com has a more powerful processor, and the Intel integrated graphics that look slightly better than the AMD one. Having never played minecraft, don't have a clue regarding what it needs to run, but I can't imagine it being too Graphics heavy... I would probably have a word with ICT Direct though to see what they have that would fit the bill first...