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Well I've just received two HP dc7700 Minitowers for use in the Server Room and as a way to test if they are OK on CC3. I've tried making a custom build disk for it and tried standard build disks but not no avail. If anyone has any experience (or drivers) of building HP machines like this onto CC3 I would be very grateful for any tips. The onboard ethernet is Intel 82566DM. PS. I should also point out that I've been able to use SmartClient but what if the disk fails etc.? Which is why I need to be able to build from floppy as well.

For you then it is different, but my contract and that of technicians employed by schools in our LEA is permanant.

For that to work they would have to sack you first.

Back to the issue of breach of contract, I thought this page might be of interest: http://www.direct.gov.uk/Employment/Employees/EmploymentContractsAndConditions/ContractsAndConditionsArticles/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=10037116&chk=yHtPmT According to this, if an employer tries to change your contract and you don't agree to it then you can take legal action: ".... if your pay is reduced because of the change, you could make a claim for unlawful deductions from wages ...." It looks complicated but there seems to be scope for legal action if wages are deducted (or a change in contract attempts to put this into place).

I see that, but since my role covers both how is this likely to affect me?

Sorry to post twice in a row with two different questions but looking at the framework (http://www.becta.org.uk/techcomp/docs/ict_competences_framework.pdf) I am certainly in D category but do more which isn't even touched on - mainly focused on developing and maintaining complete in-house software systems which form core parts of our overall management systems. Is level D a ceiling above which one cannot rise or is their something else above it?

Isn't this all breach of contract? If you have a permanant contract between the LEA and yourself which states a wage in figures then changing this without the consent of both parties is breaching the contract.

Just in case anyone was wondering what I went for in the end it was: Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pro V8210 - Intel Core Duo 1.66 - 80GB HDD - DVD Combo - 15.4TFT widescreen - 5 Hour Battery - XP Pro - 4 Year CandR Warranty From Tracline, £ 529.00

If the networked printers are installed on a server, when you reboot your machine are your authenticating with that server (i.e. if your running a standalone / workgroup workstation then).

It's very interesting this, most of the posters on this topic have always been civilians so presumably represent society. If this is so then why is decent defence spending,equipment and manpower of our forces such a low priority? Just out of interest, we ran a school poll this year and last year asking whether students intended / had bought poppies, about 90% said 'Yes' on both years which is encouraging.

Why didn't you just use transparent GIFs?

With regard to the 17ins comment, we're just looking for base units as we recently bought Neovo hard-glass monitors for the room. The machine I listed has an Intel Pro 1000 MT Gigabit NIC, has anyone built machines with this card onto CC3 with / without custom build disks?

I'm looking to move away from having all RM workstations on our CC3 network because in some situations price is the over-riding issue (although in others the benefits of the RM One for example are more important than price). I've been looking at some HP machines and want to know if anyone has built them onto CC3 and if so their experiences of doing so. The particular machine I'm looking at is: HP Compaq Business Desktop dc7600

Every teacher in the school has a laptop, some of the older ones now need replacing. They are a mix of Toshiba and RM, the RM machines are generally pretty good but the Toshibas have been troublesome. So I'm looking for a reliable, good spec laptop, robust enough for teacher use and with 3 year warranty for under £700. What's out there?

Every teacher in the school has a laptop, some of the older ones now need replacing. They are a mix of Toshiba and RM, the RM machines are generally pretty good but the Toshibas have been troublesome. So I'm looking for a reliable, good spec laptop, robust enough for teacher use and with 3 year warranty for under £700. What's out there?

Thanks for all those sugestions, its working fine now.

Our school's notices take the form of a web-page which is printed every morning and circulated in registers. Does anyone know how I can schedule the particular web-page to be printed every day at a given time automatically so that a nice big pile of notices is sitting waiting for collection from a printer first thing each morning? Since this would be unattended obviously any solution must not require user input.

Yes it is web managed or managed by a web-like full-screen interface on the actual machine. My point though is that: a. The older Lacie NAS we have allows normal access to XP but the new one doesn't. b. The web config allows most things but you can't install software or modify the machine's settings other than shares from there. It is just far more confined than just letting you do what you want.

Tried that, in the File menu (where 'New Task (Run)' is on a normal PC, that option is not there, just 'Exit Task Manager'.

This morning a new 1TB Lacie NAS arrived. We already have one in school which runs Windows XP Embedded, so if you plug in a Mouse/Keyb/Monitor you can log in and create shares, run whatever software or services you need etc. which is brilliant. The new one is annoying me to hell though. On booting up I get the usual XP loading process but the Windows Gina picture has been changed to a Lacie logo (which I can live with). However when I log in, either as a local administrator or a domain user all I can run is the Lacie interface software (ED.exe) which allows you to do the basic tasks of a NAS. If you Ctrl-Alt-Del and kill this app then you nothing, just your cursor. Does anyone know how I can get to the usual start menu / taskbar etc. so that I can set up shares and customise the machine as I did with the older one?

You do pay more, in the same way that you pay more for buying your car on finance rather than outright. If your annual funding is so low you cannot afford to replace a set of machines that require replacement then this is a solution that will allow you to do so, which is in the school's interest more than blowing more than you can afford (at the expense of other areas) or saving for four years and putting up with obsolete machines for that time. I recon if you add 10-12% on to the total value of you equipment and then divide by the number of years then you will have a pretty good idea how much leasing will cost you. You will pretty much own the machines at the end if you want to for a peanuts sum, or you can force the supplier to take them away and you can restart the process.

We have an 8-port KVM in our server rack which obviously allows us to control all the servers from one keyboard (PS2), video (VGA) and mouse (PS2) set. This all works nicely by pressing the relavent button to get the corresponing server on the screen. However, when an engineer visited a while back I noticed he was using a keyboard hotkey combination to switch between machines, but I didn't note the combination and forgot to ask him what it was. Does anyone know what it is likely to be? As a clue, when I press Escape once, the KVM bleeps but does nothing again for a while and then does the same again. The KVM brand and model number are not obvious.

Does anyone have any advice about installing a temporary aircon solution in our server room (with a long term view to "proper" climate control being installed in the future). What I'm looking for is a portable aircon box that can cool 22000 BTUs, which is what I estimate is required based on 4 staff, 7 servers, 6 workstations a few printers etc in a room about 40m2. The best portable I have found is 12000 BTUs and a max room size of 30m2.

If I were you I would avoid the cost of going down a Network Management layer route like CC3 since you are already running vanilla. Many schools (including ours) run CC3 because it's what was in place and the job of moving to vanilla is significant when the network is in constant use. Although some of our machines are vanilla these days. You can use Group Policy to deploy software. What do you want from a "Desktop Management Suite"?

We use an online inventory system which is part of our Intranet Portal which also encompasses machine service logs so that we can build up a service history of problematic items etc. I developed it and it supports barcode scanning because barcode scanners turn the data into numbers anyway. It runs on IIS 5 and 6 and can be integrated with Windows Authentication so that different users have different levels of access (e.g. full, add but no delete, different areas, read-only).