flyinghaggis

I'm not bothered about using the drives TBH. My primary concern's really what the sticks do as I don't like the idea of pupils bringing in USB drives that install virtual hardware onto a PC and appear to bypass security policies! As you say it looks as though these drives actually contain different hardware controllers (rather than just being regular sticks formatted in a special way) to handle the CD emulation so you'd need a specifically written piece of software for each hardware controller type to alter/format them Would be nice to reformat them if we could but failing that I'd be happy to block them altogether if anyone knows a way!

They certainly make it difficult to reformat the drive (assuming it can be done) but then I guess they don't want you removing their advertising material! You can't easily do it in windows because it sees it as though it was a CD drive and only lets you format the 'other' USB partition on the drive natively. The only way I could think to carry it out would be to use Linux (or some kind of DOS cmd prompt boot) where you could physically see the partition structure on the drive and remove it?

Yeah, I'm amazed MS haven't blocked these sticks in windows as it's basically using a hack to fool windows into thinking the USB stick is a CD drive. Given this works as a limited user without admin rights it leaves the whole thing seriously open to being exploited! We've using a blacklist rather than whitelist which may be part of the issue? I've tried it myself using our test pupil account so it's definitely not a problem caused by pupils unplgugging network cables/etc. Admittedly the ones I've seen so far have been innocent in what they've done but my fear was that one might get infected with a virus and/or pupils might find out how to create their own customs sticks that would allow them to run programs bypassing our security (which looks like these specifically formatted sticks do) ! It's also frustrating because after plugging in these devices they install then prompt for a reboot (because of the virtual CD drive) so it's acutally permanently altering the configuration of the PC which is a concern. Has anyone found a way to block them yet other than blocking all removable USB drives?

We've been finding that pupils (and staff) seem to be increasingly bringing in USB memory sticks they've been given as freebies into school. Most of these seem to be formatted (I'm assuming it's done purely using software rather than custom hardware in the sticks) specifically so that they appear in windows as both a 'virtual CD' partition and a partition that contains the USB drives data. When connecting them to a PC the USB stick autoruns and windows detects it as a virtual CD drive which launches an app (often a Menu or a promo screen) from an .exe file and them mounts the USB data partition. What's really worrying is that despite us having autorun turned off for users and Windows GP file path restrictions in place to stop executables running from removable drives the way these sticks emulate a CD drive seems to bypass this allowing the initial menu program to run ? Has anyone found a fix to stop these type of memory sticks from being used and/or autorunning when connected as they're potentially a pretty major security loophole ? Also is there any kind of program to reformat these sticks so we can get rid of the hidden virtual CD partition? I've tried the U3 removal tool but it's not detecting the USB drive as being a U3 model ?

Ah, I see the problem. Somebody's plugged the mouse into the wrong port

I've never used one but looking at the photos/dimensions it's hideous looking brick IMO and I wouldn't consider it purely because of the size and dodgy looking ergonomics of the thing. It's literally like Google went to HTC and said "can we buy one of your old designs you've never used (because you thought it was rubbish) on the cheap!"

Then you only live about 15 mins walk from your work so no need to worry about it! On a serious note I hope it fails as it's not something I want to see spreading across the country. We pay enough for the priveledge of driving here as it is IMO! Wish the Government would stop treating motorists like a cash cow they can squeeze for more money all the time.

I think you're best bet is to try show your bursar/accountant that there's an annual running cost for every projector and they need to take into account that it should be treated as a consumable like printer toner. It's not really something that should directly affect your annual budget IMO. If you asssume an average running time 35 hours a week * the amount of school weeks in the year and divide that by the cost of the bulb (taking into account the ratio of how the projector life divides into the the amount hours usage in a year) you should be able to get some indications of how much it will cost you to replace the projector bulbs as an annual cost. We've been trying to work out similar figues for our PCs/etc to try and factor it into an annual budget. Problem being that management keep buying new PCs whenever staff ask for them and then complain when we have to keep increasing our annual spending to keep all the PCs in the school on a 5 year refurb cycle! They dont seem to realise that once you buy a PC / Printer / projector/ etc that it generates a costant ongoing cost from the moment you install it in terms of licences/consumables/repair/replacement and maintenance.

The final video would generally only be used in-house for pupils projects and staff recording pupil performances / school trips / etc. The camera's dont need to be professional quality but we don't want anything so cheap that it wont look half decent if they want to display it on a projector or large TV. We'd certainly appreciate it if you could let us know how you get on with the Toshiba/Sony and the pro's/cons' of each. Thinking about the practicalities of implementing the lab I'm starting to think that getting camcorderes with SDHC rather than HDD's might be the better option. Otherwise staff are dependent on holding onto the camcorder itself to edit footage which obviously prevents other staff from being able to borrow it for the entire filiming/editing duration. If each dept had a memory card (and possibly a card reader) for filming then they could loan from a central pool of camcorders and it would stop an individual department 'hogging' the camcorders after filming. Because I suspect if they had an HDD model they wouldn't want to return it until they'd finished editing (and probably deleted) the material they had on it! Are there any drawbacks to SDHC memory-card based camcorders that you don't get with HDD-based models?

Up until now we've been using MiniDV camcorders that connect using firewire but this has resulted in two major issues:- 1) You need a firewire card installed in each PC you want to plug the camcorder into which seriously limits where staff/pupils can edit video! 2) We use a dedicated NAS for streaming the recorded footage onto and because of the bandwidth required for uncompressed DV footage the NAS can only cope with a 3-4 users streaming video too it at once before it starts dropping frames whilst transferring recorded video. Obviously Removable USB harddrives are an option to get around the bandwidth issue but we'd ideally like for the video footage to be available on the network so pupils aren't reliant on lugging around portable harddrives which are liable to break and go walkabout! Given the above could anyone recommend a Standard Definition Camcorder that automatically saves it's output as AVI/MPEG files that can be transferred to a windows file share directly using USB. Ideally the camera could just be plugged into any PC, without specific drivers/software, and would show up as a removable disk with the video files listed (like a camera/USB memory stick). It would be helpful if these files were a fairly standard type as we'd be editing them in MS Movie Maker or Ulead VideoStudio so would want to avoid anything too proprietary that required unusual codecs or conversion software. I've been thinking along the lines of getting a camcorder that uses removable SD memory cards or possibly one with a built in HDD though haven't looked into the pro's/con's (or prices!) of these yet? Anyone any thoughts / recommendations? TIA

By the way...Did you see that ludicrous display last night !

Alienware are massively over-priced IMO. You're basically paying for the name and the fancy case which other than looking cool probably isn't very thermally efficient with all that plastic around it! At any rate £1300 including monitor isn't enough to buy what I'd consider to be a good spec'd gaming PC from Alienware! Regarding spec I'd definitely say go for a Core2Quad i7 spec PC. The benchmarks are well ahead of the previous gen

We tried the software a couple of years ago but IIRC correctly we couldn't get it to run without setting group policy on our computers so that non-admin users could see the "C:\" drive (we hide it by default). Our computing dept are still keen to use it but we can't really change a policy as fundamental as that for a single piece of software. Does anyone know if they've fixed this problem yet?

PETA cooks up gory game in Cooking Mama protest | Register Hardware Those folks at PETA are nutters

We're running the networked versions of the software (Wordshark/Numbershark) and they run happily without admin rights (or the CD in the drive) if upgrading your licences is an option?

You make it sound pretty bad Can you elaborate on any of the specific issues or reply by PM if you aren't happy posting it on the forum? TIA

What's your thoughts on the system? Are there any issues with it and how does it compare to others you've seen? Sounds like you're not having much luck with it? What stopped it from going live if you don't mind me asking?

Agreed, it puts us techies on very dubious legal ground when we're witness to pics/vids like the above on pupils personal devices. For that very reason we (as a school policy) don't allow pupils to connect phones/PDAs/laptops/etc to the school network and we insist that USB sticks only contain schoolwork. If pupils are on a trip and need to take photos our library lends out digital cameras as required. Most mobile phones have rubbish camera's on them anyway! I'll back you up on that one for sure. DONT ALLOW IT! It's a disaster waiting to happen when pupils start bringing in their own phones/laptops full of all kinds of dubious material with pics/vids of what they're up to at the weekend and copy it across onto the school network!

Gratz!

What kind of pricing are you looking at on an annual basis for using Zimbra Email?

Just to put a bit of balance in the argument my opinion is that MS Office (especially in 2007 guise) is way ahead of Open Office (and Star Office) in terms of features and functionality. We've looked at migrating in the past but other than the costs savings there aren't any good reasons to move away from Microsoft Office IMO.

Cheers for the replies everyone. Reckon I'll check out the Hauppage USB models to see if we can find one we like the look of with a composite input.

Our Biology department have got electronic microscopes in each or their rooms that have composite (yellow) video out. Any recomendations for a TV Tuner card (USB /PCI) or a graphics card that has a composite video-in connector so that we can display the video output of these microscopes through the PC screen? TIA

We use a fixed background for both staff and pupils here. Saves having to worry about any issues arising from offensive/unsuitable images on users screens, the associated bandwidth/storage for them and any technical issues like slow logons caused by large desktop background bitmaps. We get a few complaints from some quarters but so far SMT have backed us up as they can see the problems it could potentially cause and the time it could waste for no real benefit!

It's not the cheapest option but you can buy an xbox360 for £130 these days and it will link up to your TV and play pretty much anything on your PC straight out of the box without any hassle.