flyinghaggis

I guess you're probably right regarding IMAP but it seems like slight overkill punching holes in the firewall to enable an entire protocol for a single device/user. I'll have a hunt on the web and see if there's any way to get OWA sync'ing via it.

We're currently running exchange 2003. I'm not especially keen to start opening up IMAP/POP3 access to the server as every other device (windows mobile/iphone) works perfectly with 'activesync'.

One of our staff has just bought a blackberry phone (which is shockingly bad IMO!) and wanted to synchronize with his school email. I notice there's no 'activesync' option on the blackberry's but there seems to be an outlook web access sync option? I've tried entering all of the relevant details to sync (and we have outlook web access running for other users with a valid signed certificate). Details as follows :- Account Type: Outlook Web Access Email Address: [email protected] User Name: companyname\smitha Password: ****** (For security the password is not displayed.) Mail Server: http(s)://companydomain.com/exchange I've tried entering the mail server with and without secure login info but neither works? Any ideas other than tell the guy to bin the blackberry and get an activesync capable device?

Just managed to get one of the pages to load and it looks like as you say they've doctored most of the resources on their site so they now need the toolbar installed to download I'd be seriously reluctant to install some dodgy third party toolbar in IE. I've seen tool-bars and IE plug-ins break so many fundamental things in windows that there's no way I'd risk it TBH. If I were you I'd refuse to install it because of potential future compatibility issues. If they force you to go with it I'd suggest maybe installing it on one PC so staff can download resources there. Chucking random toolbars on all your networked PCs is asking for trouble IMO. Especially if staff start asking for toolbars from other websites to be installed as you wont be able to say no if you install one for somebody before as it sets a precedent

Sorry to hijack the thread but we've noticed our access the sparklebox website has become really slow today and staff have been complaining they couldn't access the downloadable resources? Do you know if the requirement for the toolbar to download resources is a recent change? I'm wondering if this is why their website's running so slowly today? **** Update **** Just checked their website and noticed they're in the process of changing servers which is presumably the cause of the technical problems on the site? SparkleBox Blog Saturday, September 06, 2008 We've moved! After hours and hours of work, we've finally moved server! Most of you should now be able to access SparkleBox without difficulties and downloading should be back to normal - no site crashes! N.B. Some people (particularly those outside the UK) may still not have access to the site - please be patient whilst the change of server filters out around the world. Give it time, and you'll be able to view the site again. Thank you to all for your patience and understanding whilst we've been resolving this. With nearly 60,000 visitors a day the site was struggling to cope. We should now be able to offer a much more reliable service. UPDATE 06/09/2008: These things never quite go to plan! The site is now experiencing further difficulties. Please bear with us whilst we work to resolve these. The SparkleBox Team Posted by The SparkleBox Team at 8:57 AM

AFAIK all GX620s come with a 3 year warranty as standard so I'd definitely give them a call on their support line and ask. Worst thing they can do is tell you it's out of warranty so you've nothing to lose!

Sounds like PSU or Motherboard fault unfortunately. First thing I'd try would be to plug in a PSU from another working GX620 and see if it boots with that. If not there's a good chance the motherboard's dead? PS If they're GX620's you should have a 3 year onsite Dell warranty as standard so you could probably log a call with Dell and have an engineer onsite tomorrow to fix them?

Now you're worrying me! What did you not like about the Canon?

Time to make like a sheep and follow the flock We've ordered a Canon Lide25 to test so should be here at the start of next week! Thanks for the recommendations everyone

We're looking to buy a batch of A4 USB flatbed scanners and wondered if anyone had any recommendations? We've used Epson's in the past but I'm not too impressed as a lot of their drivers aren't signed (especially on older models) and need to be installed manually as a result. We've also had a few fail over the years so we'd be keen to try a different brand. Ideally we'd like something with signed drivers that they can be copied into the shared drivers folder so the scanners will install automatically when connected to a PC? It also needs to work as a TWAIN device so photoshop can import from it and should support the default windows (WIA) scanner and camera wizard. Any recommendations? TIA

There most certainly is a place for Promethean Activboards and it's called a skip We bought a batch 20 Promthean boards last summer and 25% of them failed in the first year. The drivers and software are a royal PITA to deploy thanks to the fact that Promethean want to screw you for more money to hand over their 'special networked' version of the software. That and the activpens that come with the boards seem to break after about 6 months of use and at £30 each it's no laughing matter when you've got to buy replacement pens for 25 boards! We've bought a Smartboard 680i2 recently for testing and I'm amazed anyone bothers with Promethean these days given how much better designed and built the Smartboard is!

Kind of an interesting study into social engineering! Anatomy of a malware scam | The Register Cant believe they went to the trouble of creating a fake Windows security centre dialogue, online help and Terms and Conditions! Malware Authors are getting way too crafty these days

Also worth bearing in mind is that fact that goldfish all look the same so if goes up to that big tank in the sky you can always replace it with another one before she notices

"OK one last time. These are small... but the ones out there are far away. Small... far away... ah forget it! PS Shamelessly lifted from Father Ted !

2GB of RAM only costs about £20 these days so no point in worrying about it. It's a simple enough job to upgrade!

I had that problem but the nice thing about the start menu / control panel in Vista is that you can simply hit the Start Key, type in what you want to run/access then press return and it'll automatically launch it! No more having to search through 2-3 screens worth of start menu listings to find what you want which is a colossal improvement IMO

IMO Windows Vista is a great OS for home users and has some significant improvments over XP for that purpose. ie Media Centre, Built-n Search Functionality, Simplified start menu and explorer view. The UI is massively improved for the most part aswell and it has better native support for a lot of devices/standards than Xp ever did (DVD writing, DVD playback/etc). The problem is that nearly all of these improvement are either useless for business (aero graphics/DX10 and Media Center functionality) or need a good deal of additional work of MS's part to be used to best effect in a server/client environment (ie. start menu and instant search)

QFT! Personally I wouldn't bother with a Blu-Ray player as I dont think the format will last (given Sony's history with proprietary formats and the way digital downloads are going) but the PS3 is the only sensible bet for Blu-Ray at this point in time IMO!

The problem is that iPlayer contains so much unsuitable/time wasting content that IMO it's too much of a gamble to open up the whole site just because it might contain a couple of educational documentaries. Over 99% of the stuff on it won't be of any educational value so I don't see why it should be accessible unless there is somekind of filter or option to download only educational content? Especially seeing as a couple of labs worth of pupils streaming rubbish could potentially soak up all our bandwidth and stop people doing legitimate work! Are we being too harsh

Why would staff have any reason to install/use I-player in school for teaching? We've actually blocked the site on the grounds that we don't want staff/pupils soaking up bandwidth catching up on last nights episode of eastenders/etc Is there any legitimate reason why they'd want to use it?

The Plot thickens. It looks like our Dell Optiplex 755s have Intel ME but don't have the AMT features (see link below). Apparently you only get the full set of functions if you specifiy that you want the management chip when you order it :- Intel® Software Network Blogs Is your Dell Optiplex 755 Business PC Intel AMT capable? It would still be good to know if anyone's had experience of it so we know if it's something worth looking at in future as the features it has sound like they could be useful?

We're in the process of setting up our batch of Dell PCs (Dell Optiplex 755's) and they've got this option aswell. You can't disable it within the BIOS (though you can disable it showing the shortcut key on POST) as it seems to be a seperate control chip onboard access (much like a RAID controller/etc). I'm going to log on and change the defautt password on all of the PCs we setup for the Intel just to make sure the kids don't find out about it and decide to have a play. When you change the default passord it needs to uber-strong BTW or it will be rejected (> 8 chars, upper/lowercase/, contain a number and contain a special char)!!!!!!!!! It appears to be something that allows you to access BIOS settings, Power on computers and generally remotely carry out tasks that would normally require you to be on the local PC. It sounds good in theory but does anyone have any documentation to hand before I go for a trawl on the web looking for info? I guess Intel's site would be the first post of call ?

QFT! Nothing can put you in debt like taking out a large loan on a car then finding you need to sell if for whatever reason in a year or two. Often the sale of the car won't make much of a dent in your loan which risks putting you in serious negative equity! The moral of the story is never spend more than you can afford and if you think you may not keep the car long enough to pay off the loan consider whether loaning that amount of cash is really necessary. Plus don't get me started on road tax increases! Mine's up from £205 > £265 or something similar IIRC

Was gonna post this aswell. Love their new album! "All your Pork and Beans are belong to us"

It depends on the car but whatever you're buying I'd try and look at 2-3 year old models of the one you're looking at so you can gauage how much it's going to lose in depreciation over 3 years. You can then decide whether to get a new one of save some cash on a second hand model. If you're being quoted figures of 12% APR I'd be inclined to go for the second hand option if you don't want to buy it outright. What make/model of car are you planning on buying btw?