flyinghaggis

We've been asked to look into a Wireless connection for our projector in the Hall. We've tred Wireless projectors a while back (though admittedly that was when speeds were only 11Mb) and they were terrible so I'm a bit unsure about how well they'll work now. Basically we need a device to send Video/Audio from a laptop to the projector itself wirelessly. Have things improved or are they still as bad as before? Any recommendations for a specific model or things to look out for? TIA

Windows 7 x64....We had enough trouble trying to get it runnning reliably on WindowsXP as few years back!

I bought an Inspiron M101Z (virtually the same as above but 11") and I'm happy with it. Screen is really nice and the keyboard/trackpad are good too. Battery life is about 4 hours which is kind of average. My only real compaint about it is that the fan's a bit noisy.

Those Dell XPS 730's were lovely looking PCs. I'd have been tempted by one if they still made them when I built my last PC. It's a shame Dell bought over Alienware and ditched the whole line-up as the Alienware's are just overpriced tat compared to the XPS's My Current gaming rig :- Intel i7-920 CPU 18Gb DDR3-1333 Asus P6X58D-E Motherboard Nvidia GTX 470 Video Card Nvidia GT430 Intel X-25M 80Gb SSD 2 x Samsung F3 1Tb HDD Coolermaster HAF 922 Case Corsair 850Watt Modular PSU 23" Alienware AW2310 + 20" Dell Ultrasharp 2007WFP + 20" Dell Ultrasharp 2009WFP Logitech X-540 Speaker System

Cool, would love to see exactly how you went about designing the enclosures to house the PC components in the false back desks! We've looked at things like iDesks in the past but could never justify the added cost.

That's some excellent out of the box thinking. Would love to see some pics of this once you've done it!

FYI - There is a firmware udpate for the P2055's, only available via HP support AFAIK, which has resolved the issue for us. See thread below :- http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/36047-hp-laserjet-p2055dns-going-offline-not-responding-14.html

Just wanted to pose the question to everyone of how do you handle training staff within the IT department and making sure everyone has an up to date knowledge of all the systems/software used in the school? There are plenty of threads on training admin/teaching staff but nothing that I can see relating to how you do it within the IT department itself! Speaking from personal experience it wasn't such an issue when I started as we were quite a small team where everyone knew what everybody else was doing. We were all in the same office for most of the day at the same time and were able to discuss/cover everything done amongst ourselves so we all had a good overview of everything. Since then the networks trebled in size /complexity along with the number of staff (actually that's only doubled!) and it's now proving tricky trying to make sure everyone know's how all of the systems work and hang together. What's tended to happen increasingly, as we've been seriously pressed for time during the last couple of years because of several major IT migration projects, is that we've all ended up specialising in our own separate tasks/areas and when someone's off nobody else is able to fully cover for them to the same level which obviously isn't sustainable in the longer term. So how does everyone generally go about organising training within the IT department? Do you organise weekly departmental training sessions, daily catch-up sessions, give staff books to study at home, send them on 3rd party training courses (MSCE/etc), Use wiki's/helpdesk systems to create standard procedures and guides? Any thoughts/ideas/insights would be appreciated TIA

Hmmm, they're a bit expensive at £200 which is pretty much double what the flip camera's cost. Anything similar for around £100?

That's a shame, we were using them in a pretty big way for whole class video editing! Can anyone suggest an appropriate alternative given it looks like the Flip's aren't long for this world?

Thanks for the explanation Marc. We had a projector where the lamp was run for about double the recommended duration and sure enough, as you've suggested, when it finally went and was replaced the new bulb didn't actually make that much diffrence to the image quality/brightness which meant we ended up having to throw it away and buy a new projector. I'd never have thought that simply running a lamp for slightly longer than it's rated duration would physically damage the other components in the projector but from our experience and your explanation it sounds like thats exactly what's happened!

Microsoft Volume Licensing / School Agreement I know some folks complain about it but for the money it costs on an annual basis and the flexibility it offers (ie. freedom to update to the lasest version whenever you like/etc) it's a bargain IMO!

+1 If that's the case and a formal qualification is required there will be an official docuent/legislation stating which qualifications are appropriate. Put it back to the person who 'thought' they needed it to produce the above document!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2R7KGeDSKQg/TJ6KKBGzuxI/AAAAAAAAAHs/AEoem_y3wWM/s640/kill-it-with-fire-demotivational-poster-1235695993.jpg

I've currently got a Nvidia GTX470 and an Nvidia 880GT in my PC running Windows 7 with 3 monitors (1 @ 1920x1080 and 2 at 1680x1050). Works just fine! It's a shame there isn't native support for triple monitor DVI-out on more cards as it makes for a really nice setup. Nvidia granted my wish by bringing out a GTX590 that can do it last month but at £600 it's sell your kidney money unfortunately!

I still think I'd hold out for the upcoming Samsung Android tablets due to be released shortly. They're rumoured to have a sub £400 price tag anyway so you're not saving much by buying the old model. http://www.which.co.uk/news/2011/03/samsung-galaxy-tab-8-9-and-10-1-announced-248491/ They've got Android 3.0 pre-installed aswell as having better hardware specs.

BBC News - School Report: John Terry looks to inspire new generation "The School Reporters held their nerve and popped this testing question: "You are an inspiration as a player. But what kind of role model do think you are for boys of my age?" "

I'm looking to upgrade the memory in my computer to >=12Gb (for running virtual network images of 2008 server/exchange/sql/sharepoint/etc.) Currently I have an Asus P6X58-E motherboard with 3 x 2Gb DDR3 1600mhz (8-8-24 1.65v) DIMMs in it. Another 3 x 2GB of the same stuff costs £70 but i've read somewhere that you can't run 6 x 2Gb DIMMS on the motherboard at 1600Mhz and you need to throttle it back to 1333Mhz? Because of this I was thinking that a better option might be just to buy 3 x 4Gb DDR3 1333Mhz (1.5v) DIMMs instead as it's only £30 more. Would it work running (3 x 4Gb DDR3-1333) and (3 x 2Gb DDR3-1600) at the same time to give me 18Gb total? I understand that the 1600Mhz RAM will have to run at 1333Mhz but is this possibly on a triple channel X58 motherboard? Normally this would work fine on a DDR2 motherboard mixing the RAM speeds but I wasn't sure if the triple-channel memory, different voltage and DDR3 memory would be a problem as I've heard DDR3 is a bit more fiddly in getting it to work? Any thoughts and advice appreciated! TIA

I can only assume there have been deals in smoke filled rooms with the other Arab State leaders who have all privately agreed they want rid of Gaddafi. Whilst in order to keep face they publicy denounce the evil actions of the decadent imperialist West Speaking of which did anyone else ROFL after seeing our own politicians/armed forces commanders saying that there are no plans to attack Gaddafi or instigate regime change. Then just shortly afterwards we launch a Tomahawk Missile right through his front door. You couldn't write this stuff... honestly

I quite like the concept of a tablet computer but this is the one thing that stops me from buying an ipad. I just can't get my head around the concept of not having a 'my documents' folder that I can simply store files in! That coupled with the fact you have to use itunes to synchronise the thing means it's never going to be a device you could use as a stand-alone computer. Having said that if you want a 'tablet' computer it's still pretty much the only option at the moment. Android/Windows slate/tablet devices are still a year or two away from being ready to take the fight to Apple unfortunately.

AFAIK it works OK with Office 2007 though we use it anywhere in the school so I can't confirm this 100%. We're still looking at options for getting it working but we literally dont have the resources availalble to have to try and purchase licenses/deploy another customised office install / and continually test future developments on the platform (for the sake of literally 2-3 PCs) so for us Office 2007 isn't an option. At the moment the choice is looking like either make do until Blackbaud resolve the compatability issue or move to another product. Edit: We've had no direct contact to confirm but it does look like Blackbaud are promising an imminent update which may resolve the issue. I'll update this thread if we get any further information. http://forums.blackbaud.com/blogs/raisersedge/archive/2011/03/09/raiser-s-edge-and-office-2010-compatibility-update.aspx Raiser's Edge and Office 2010 Compatibility Update Posted: Mar 09, 2011 by Caroline Howell Filed under: The Raiser's Edge 7.91, Microsoft Office 2010 In Support, we’ve been getting lots of questions about Raiser’s Edge compatibility with Office 2010. Clients are either curious about our progress or calling in because they’re experiencing issues in merges, queries, or reports after installing Office 2010 on their workstations. These errors are due to specific changes that Microsoft made to their software which no longer uses Collaboration Data Objects (CDO.) While we’re still working on the all clear, we are getting very, very close. In the next couple of months, it should be official, and we’ll be making RE 7.91 compatible with 32-bit version of Office 2010. (There’s still a bit of work to do on 64-bit.)

We're using Blackbaud Raiser's Edge. The software itself seems OK but the real show-stopper at the moment for us is that they still don't support Microsoft Office 2010! Because of this our RE administrators are still stuck running OfficeXP and so far, nearly a year after release, Blackbaud are unable to give us an indication of when, or even if, they'll ever fix the issues. Taken from Blackbaud's KB :- Is The Raiser's Edge compatible with Microsoft Office 2010 ? Solution ID: BB710347 Product: The Raiser's Edge 7, Microsoft products Published: 02/18/2010 Updated: 02/08/2011 Description: Microsoft Office 2010 was released in June 2010. Answer: Office 2010 and Office 2011 are currently not compatible with The Raiser's Edge (RE) and they no longer support the Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) functionality used by RE for Office integration. For more information about Office 2010, please review Microsoft's website regarding planning for Office 2010 desktop configurations. We dont have any direct experiece of the Webalumnus software but our RE staff seemed to think it was somewhat limited in it's functionality compared to Blackbaud's solution the last time they looked at it.

Yeah, got it on a computer here for testing and so far looking like a good solid improvement over IE8. Seems faster and I like how you can how 'pin' websites directly to the Window7 start menu and add context options to them. I like how they've simplified the display, removed the status bar and freed up a lot of room at the top of the browser by getting rid of the seperate toolbars for search and URL. Hopefully IE9 will finally put an end to all these horrible 3rd part toolbars companies kept on adding. I've literally seen some users at home with half their screen in IE taken up with 3rd party toolbars! Not sure about losing the favourites bar by default though as I found it really useful for quickly opening groups of websites. You can re-enable it but somehow it now looks 'bolted-on' as it doesn't have the nice transparency effect like the rest of the Titlebar UI.

Possibly but but playing back a video/audio clip to a classroom full of pupils definitely isn't going to be covered by "personal use"!

In fact YouTube, We7, etc all pretty much state that their service is for "personal non-commerial use". Sounds like we'd be breaking the law for accessing and using pretty much and streaming media website in school?