HTCPCP

Dual 24" height adjustable Dell Ultra sharps for all finance and IT staff (albeit not education), other staff get dual monitors if they can show the value from it. That number is currently sits at less than 5% of the head office staff, and tend to be people who deal a lot with some of our databases Should also note that all our monitors are height adjustable, not just in finance and IT!

I tend to use Insight for most orders now

I'm always a big fan of the HP kit - not as bullet proof as they used to be - but parts are replaceable, they can take a bit of a beating. That and i've never had any issues with getting hold of unbranded toner either. Another one to look at is Canon - My home iSensys 6230dw printer is currently on over 200k prints. Downside is finding non branded toners can push costs right up.

Samsung Evo is what I have always tended to use, unless it's for a video workstation, when its Samsung Pros. Word of warning about some m.2 SSDs (WD Green and Blue for instance) - they are not NVMe drives, but use the slower SATA 3 protocol.

One of my former schools would never go anything but lease - and then at the end of the lease would buy the all in onces instead of returning to use them in Nursery and Reception. Nearly all the others replaced piecemeal - so a laptop trolley one year, teacher laptops the next, another laptop trolley the year after, then the admin, hall and libary etc the last year.

Dell Optiplex 5040 i7 6700 16GB RAM, 240gb SSD GTX 1050

Personally, I'd go for VeryPC and get them wrapped too - Looks really impressive (especially in a full room kit out) for open days and visitors. If however you are using it for somewhere they aren't going to be seen that much, or could come under a bit of abuse, then a refurb from ICT Direct is where to go. Yes the Optiplexes and ProDesks and ThinkCentres (IMO) don't look as good, but they are well built machines. However, a word of warning, they do use some non standard kit - fan headers are my main gripe here.

When we introduced this a few years ago in my last place, we used to charge students who went over the print levels. It was year 7-9 £5 a year. Years 10&11 - £5 every 6 months, and 6th form were given basically free reign on printing (within reason). However, exceptions were made. If for instance a student was doing History, Geography, English and Art, then they would get extra print credits. By the time I left, we had basically given up on that, as students had to pick on departments (with a random selectable one on the top of the list which was monitored). Department heads then looked at who printed that month and reported to us any students abusing the system.

All depends where you are in the country. We used to use a smallish repair shop that wasn't too far away (they came recommended by a lot of people, including from IT staff at the LEA who had used it for personal equipment when we were having the issue with They collected and returned the device, gave us updates if they were delayed or there were bigger issues (e.g. bent frame etc), and a hefty Edu discount too! Might be worth asking if any local schools have experiences, as accidents/kids happen to devices.

My experience on the cheap brand SSDs are you actually don't know what you are getting. Different batches will have different controllers, different chips, and quite a few of them are what is known as sweepings - so ones that might not have passed quality assurance for the big names. If you are using it for something where it doesn't matter too much if it fails prematurely - then fine, but for anything else, I will tend to stick to the establishment where we know what we are getting. Especially with it being so easy to forge storage capacities. A 1tb MicroSD card for £20 anyone? In all seriousness, my experience of hard drives not working properly on HP or Dell systems, is usually down to a few lines of code that basically verifies that it is the overpriced, I mean verified, drive...

Have you previously changed the battery in the UPS? If not, buy a replacement, and test it. I tend to buy the batteries themselves rather than the cartridge, as it's considerably cheaper, for not really any value added (except some of the metalwork can be a bit sharp)

Not had an L380, but have used an L370 series laptop for a while last year (was the spare laptop, while waiting for my new one to arrive). Yes, they are quite nice laptops. Are there better ones at the price - probably. The chasis seems fine, and it feels well built, the keyboard was reasonably comfortable to use (as someone who normally has a USB keyboard in his laptop bag). Screen however was a big let down, and despite it's SSD it did feel a bit sluggish. They might have sorted that out. USB to RJ45 adaptors however, just don't cut it for me. We have a Dell Precision laptop, which requires a USB adaptor, and it's just a pain. Do they work - kind of. I always feel they are slower, and more cumbersome, and just something else that can go wrong. From what I can see, they included their proprietary 'miniRJ45 port' - why couldn't they include a full size port - other manufacturers seem to be able to. Other ones to look at - HP Probook 440, Dell Latitude 3380 & 3490

For me it's a seperate excel document per PO. Then it is a description of what the order is followed by the PO Number e.g. HP PCs for *department here* 123456 Each one is then in a folder for year and quarter.

No longer education - but if I were I would be all over the Ryzen chips - The 2200G is a great performer and brilliant bang for the buck! Then again, including VAT and without volume purchasing, you can get a GT710 which is more than capable for everything you need at the moment. Now, over in business, when purchasing new equipment, I am now actively pestering my account managers for Ryzen 5 and 7 kit, as even with a 1030 GDDR5, or even a 1050, it's really competetive

Used to be part of my job as one of the IT techs, excluding during the school day, when I was outsourced to other schools. When I left - there was a massive arguement, and basically, IT got rid of the job.

Another happy PRM customer for many years. Arrive when they say they will, always professional, and you get a transfer notice and data destruction certificate. What's not to like?

Huge number of issues with users - "But I want to use word on them", "It works on the other laptops" and also logging in with an email address, rather than their username. In secondary, they were brilliant, to the point where we had 64 of them for the 6th formers to use, we had departments that had banks of them, and it worked really well. In primary however, the value and agro factor and potential confusion imo is just not worth it

In primary, I always found a blend of ipads and laptops were great - iPads because there are some great apps for education out there, they are great for learning about how to do research. Also really good for getting kids out and about (if you buy good cases) Laptops - useful life skills, office, using keyboards etc. In primary, I was moving away from the full size laptops too, moving towards 14" and 13.3" laptops. If you are a microsoft email based school, don't muddy the water with G-Suite. It really isn't worth the agro!

I have heavily used office 365 and Google Apps over the last few years. Going back to when I was working in Education a couple of years ago, one of my primary sites was really heavily o365 based. With the right staff, and leadership buy in, it works well. As with everything, if leadership are on the fence, you risk a gap between those who do and those who don't, and then eventually a break down and resentment. The primary tried basically everything, and the only one that they got put off by was teams (after my time) as they were early adopters and it didn't do what the wanted to do and generally got annoyed by it. When I left, all staff were using OneDrive, Skype for Business (used by reception a huge amount to prompt about registers, getting kids to come to reception, to hand out letters etc), Office online, and had started to use Yammer a bit - at least to for whole school notices, but they didn't seem to be big fans. Not sure what happened after my replacement left after 6 months though. Staff basically used OneDrive for everything document wise, especially when doing colaborative work i.e. lesson planning etc.

iFixit here - love the Pro Toolkit. Has basically most things you would ever want, and the lid doubles up as a screw holder too. Only gripe is that it could do with some larger drivers for projector mounts and racks, but tbh, I normally have a Stanley Stubby multibit with me too.

Not education, but one of our property development team has a Surface book and it works fine - as long as you have a display that has display port (and if you are anything like our user - a lot of mini display port cables as either they are really weak, or the user is heavy handed). We didn't have any luck with adaptors.

A big mallet, and a picture of the latest member of staff who has annoyed you. Works a treat, and you feel so much better after too!

A massive fan of Das Keyboard - not cheap, but really reliable and absolutely love it. It just feels solid, well built and easy to type on! Will be really sad when my 3 Professional pops it's cloggs. Cherry MX Red is my personal go to, or the equivalent in either Razer or Logitech Romer G keys (although I still think the Cherry switches are the best) If you can, find somewhere when you can play with the different types, it's well worth it, however, be aware, cheap unbranded switches most likely are cheap for a reason.

Had this before on a smart board - and it was a sensor being blocked by a blob of kid snot in the tray. Is there anywhere where the tracking just seems a bit out/a bit where touch isn't recognised at all? Similarly, have seen it on smaller touch screens where it's caused by outdated firmware with a new driver, or new firmware and an outdated driver. Might be worth getting the latest version from the manufacter?

The fact that there are 4 in one go usually implies there is an issue. Might be worth going into an apple store just before Christmas, and being a bit loud. Make it their problem, not yours. Batteries, no matter how old, should not swell!