flyinghaggis

Insurance companies are about the only folks who can legally 'discriminate'. They're allowed to do this because they take their figues from averages and statistics which can prove the reason they've charging "person A" more than "person B" which alledgedly 'proves' they not discriminating. It's a slightly dubious practive but I can see the reasoning behind why they're allowed to do it in most instances.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Good to know that HP offer a free version of Procurve manager. They certainly aren't keen to advertise that fact on their website! Happy to hear that we'll still be able to use our existing 3com network management tools even if we decide to go down the HP route aswell. We've looked at stackable options but for a core network switch I'm swaying towards a modular solution as I feel it would be more resilient and offer better expansion options than buying several switches and stacking them.

Just resurrect this thread we've had a look at the HP and have noticed that the Procurve management software seems to be cost option. Is anyone using this software and/or are there any alternatives available? Ideally I'd like something along the lines of our 3com network supervisor software that will allow us to view a diagram of all our switches to monitor network traffic for both 3com and potentially HP switches?

BT billed me out of the blue to the tune of £200 for 'exessive-usage' by changing my contract T&Cs without notifying me. During the prior 6 months they'd made a point of trying to tie me into another 12 month contract which I didn't want. Then when they did charge me they "kindly" offered to wave the charge if signed up for another 12 month contract with them! Nowt but a scam to try and get folk to sign up with them again. Wouldn't touch them with a barge pole

We looked at doing this a couple of years aho but were worried that some of the more 'creative' pupils might be able to download a copy to use at home and create their own configuration file with some on the more sensitive settings (network cards/etc) enabled. Not sure if there's a way to stop this on newer versions of the software?

Just been trying the free evaluation Axel we got sent and it's awesome! By far the best thin RDP client I've seen as long as you can live without sound. Pretty impressive considering it's also the cheapest. Also a big thumbs up to Axel for providing the management software for free so you can deploy firmware updates and import/export config's. We literally had the thing up and running in 5 minutes and had the management console installed and ready for rolling out configs/firmware udpdates in another 10 minutes. Basically it does exactly what we want and is easy to setup unlike the Wyse/HP which seem to make it really awkward unless you're willing to pay them extra for the management software. They also provide you with the TFT monitor mounting bracket as part of the pack aswell. Both HP and Wyse charge you £20-30 for a piece of metal and screws if you want to do this ! The only thing I'd personally prefer is if they got rid of the PS2 ports on the back and replaced them with USB connections to leave the front ones spare for memory sticks/etc (I assume these work OK though I haven;t had a chance to test them yet?). I'll run some more RDP tests with various software tomorrow but so far it's looking like it's a great piece of kit

It looks like great fun with a few mates but I'm really put off even contemplating it just because of the price tag! I balked at having to shell out £60-70 for guitar hero so paying what you'd pay for an Xbox360 console for a game just seems crazy IMO!

We've just recieved our HP T5135 and Wyse S10. Initial impressions so far are :- HP T5135 The terminal itself is a bit on the large side for a thin client! I like the build quality though as with most HP kit. The biggest problem with it though is the startup time of 60 seconds! I'm not quite sure why it takes so long as my home PC running Vista with a shed load more components and hardware boots in about the same time! Despite its cheap price that might be enough to put me off. The OS itself seems fairly intuitive to setup though. Wyse S10 The terminal is much neater though the fit/finish isn't up to HP standards (it actually wobbles slighly on it's stand and the power button feels pretty flimsy). For some reason (dont know if anyone can explain) they've boxed the things with a PS2 mouse despite the fact that the wyse only has USB connections? There's not adapter either! Have to say though the wyseOS boot time is literally a few seconds which is much more like it for a thin terminal. The OS itself seems better though out aswell though I've not had a chance to play around with DHCP and FTP for auto-config/yet. I need to generate a WNOS.ini file somehow but I've ot found any details of how to do this yet! Just away to download the Wyse Deployment software and give that a try. In general I'm favouring the Wyse just now but would appreciate if anyone else has any comments on these units or any general thoughts? Do all of the HP thin clients take so long to boot or is it just the T5135?

We've recently moved from Alice to Oliver and my personal opinion is that it's rubbish. Alice generally worked without any trouble but Oliver seems to be full of bugs and half the modules properly don't work either. Despite being promised by the sales staff it would it also doesn't interface with our active directory structure nor does it automacally link into our MIS system either. Really disappointed with it given how long it's been in development/producion for. It's basically just a web-interface with a database running at the back end so it should have been realatively easy for them to setup aswell given they already had the basics of the system (Alice) in place already. It feels like an unfinished beta product and all the support staff I spoke to were useless 1st line script monkeys. I've still to speak to a dev despite asking on several occassions

Agreed, Recuva rocks (Just remember to uncheck the yahoo toolbar option!)

Class

We'd be happy to buy a copy for each PC but the problem is that it states in the licensing terms that it isn't legal to use it on a public/commercial network and that it's only intended for private/ personal use at home. This is why I wanted to check with the company themselves regarding what's required. My interpretation is that we'd be in breach of their T&Cs if we installed and ran it on a PC in school using the (off a store shelf) verson we currently have?

We're looking at buying in a half dozen thin client terminals for our new PE base so staff to carry out basic admin tasks (typing reports/online ordering/etc). Because of the limited nature of what they'll be doing we thought thin clients might be the ideal solution given we already have a terminal server that staff use at home anyway and it's virtually idle throughout most of the day! Regarding the Hardware I was thinking about getting a "Wyse Thin Client S10" in to test. I've had previous experience with Wyse terminals and they seemed pretty good. Having said that I've not seen any other dedicated thin clients though so cant really offer a particularly objective viewpoint. We just need something fairly basic that plugs in via ethernet and can connect to a windows RDP session? It would also be useful if it supported USB memory sticks aswell so staff can copy files back and forth. Given those requirements what thin client would you recommend buying for around £175? TIA!

Our history department and strategy gaming club want to run Rome:Total War over the network in a couple of rooms so they can run it in a similar vein to the Time Commanders programme that used to be on BBC2 a couple of years ago. I've checked the licencing and the version that we have states it's not for use on a network but we can purchase a networkable version? The problem is that it used to be owned by activision but now appears to have been bought over by Sega. I've tried contacting the creators of the software (creative assembly) but haven't managed to get a response. Has anyone else used this software in school and/or managed to purchase a networked version?

HTC Tytn (Tmobile Vario 2). Contract's expired and I'm looking for an upgrade but there's nothing out at the moment that's caught my eye! Like the look of a HTC Diamond but not sure if I could live without a full QWERTY keypad!

Yeah, looks like it could be really good. Not sure if i could live without a QWERTY keyboard though as I've gotten pretty used to it after having an HTC Tytn (Tmobile MDA2) for the last 2 years! Other than that it looks awesome thought HTC Diamond HTC - Touch Phone, PDA Phone, Smartphone, Mobile Computer

To the best of my knowledge in the UK at the moment (for individuals at least) backing up music CDs or making copies of anything is illegal and a breach of copyright law. In order to back up a (copyrighted) DVD you'd have to break the encryption on it which would breack the DCMA and would also be illegal. Generally when it comes to making MP3's from CD's or copying them to cd/tape it's one of those things that music companies 'tolerate' for home/personal use but according to the letter of UK law it is still illegal. The only thing I'm not 100% certain about is what kind of rights you have as a school/educational institution regarding taking copies of entire/parts of recordings/movies for educations purposes. It would be useful if someone could find a definite answer as to what rights schools have as unless we have something in writing exempting educational establishments (I'm sure there must be some as there are for books/publications/etc) for music/video making any kind of copy of a DVD/CD is illegal regardless of the purpose AFAIK.

The way things are going just now with PC gaming (DRM, net based authorization when you run a program, limited number of installs, cost of hardware, compatability issues, lack of any exclusive software) I think it's more likely that the PC will die off as a gaming platform in the next 5-10 years!

How about Windirstat? WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics

I think the issue above with memory sticks is that you have to (and need the right to) scan the drive for legitimate stuff just like you need the right to search a school bag for things like weapons/etc. Without the ability to actively monitor pupils files you've now idea whether a jpeg image on their stick is an innocent logo or a hardcore pornography image. Just like you've no idea if the lump in their bag is a knife of or a PSP until you open it! It's acually in our RUA to say that pupils are only allowed to bring in materials on a stick/HDD that are directly used for school and that they shouldn't contain any other files. It also explicetly states that we reserve the right to inspect (passively or actively) any files/devices connected to the network. IMO once a pupil, or staff member, connects a device to the network it has to and should comply with all of our rules regardless of whether it belongs to them our not. If they're not happy with that they can email in the file or print it off! At the end of the day the ability to connect their personal devices to the network is a priveledge rather than a right!

Are you sure it'd definitely a P4 3Ghz chip and not a slower model that's been overclocked! Is the fan running at the correct speeds?

You'd only have to save up half as hard if you bought the xbox360 version Bought it last night in Asda. Couldn't believe it as there was literally a queue of over 200 folk standing waiting to get a copy! Only played for about an hour but it seems pretty awesome so far!

The man's a legend YouTube - William Shatner Common People live

Everyone I know on Tiscali seems to have constant issues with it. Especially with their email not working as was reported on the register last year after they introduced a new spam filtering component that was a bit over zealous by the sounds of it! I think it basically knocked out their whole email system for about a week. One of our staff has random issues connecting to our school VPN link and I'm near certain it's thanks to Tiscali's 'Traffic Shaping/port throttling. They'll never admit to it being their fault though. IMO You'd be well advised to get shot of them as an ISP. In Email terms even a Webmail/Gmail account would be a much more reliable option.

Not had any experience of their software but their sales dept wont stop spamming, cold calling and mailing us with their 'offers' despite us asking to be removed from their lists. Admittedly I've not used it but at a glance most of their software looks pretty outdated IMO. I reckon it looks as though it could be easily replaced by simple scheduled tasks/scripts, built in MS group policy settings and open source software that would work just as well if not better.