Irazmus

How about a Wiki? It is after all what they were designed for and there are plenty to choose from: http://www.wikimatrix.org/

Well, we've just updated SIMS .Net to 7.79 without incident (apart from the fact that the new 'simple' interface is more confusing than the old). However as expected it hasn't done anything to solve our problem, and I suspect that some of the reports that did still work, were broken by this latest update >_<;

You tempt me greatly, but as the answer was needed today and the school are willing to find the extra cash to keep the teachers happy, I think I may call it quits and settle for the Dells, overpriced as they may be. At least that way if things go pear shaped, SLAMNet will get the blame rather them me ^^ Given a slightly more realistic timeframe I'm sure we could have found an Acer to suit our needs, maybe next time. Thanks for all the info and advice guys. Now to find the parts for the new server & workstations I need ^^;

Nice looking little machines, but if I'm looking at the right model, it's a Celeron-M, and as I expect these to run Vista someday, I'm not sure they'll take it very well (Judging by how my AMD 1800+ crawls running Vista). The battery life isn't remarkable but as they should mainly be used in school, that shouldn't be a great problem. It's certainly something to consider, as these would save ~6.5k over the Dells which I could certainly do with right now. So, do I go for the more futureproof Centrino Dell that will send me 3k overbudget, or the Celeron that'll keep me 3.5k under budget? Pity I only have until morning to decide. Oh well, I did ask for alternatives ^^;

That sounds like most of the Mac laptops we have, they've got that screen feature now. Yikes, that is a little worrying, but if that happens to the Dells, at least they'll match the curriculum RM's ^^; Good reliability, that's what I'm after. They're going to teachers not pupils, so I'm sure they'll be looked after and no damage will be done. After all, none of our G4 Powerbooks look like someones taken a hammer to them, so I'm sure these will be fine too £390 for similar spec, including 3Yr warranty? You wouldn't happen to have a link to that would you?

@ChrisC: Don't tell me that, I want good news But even if they're not perfect, with a 3Yr warranty on them, we'll have some backup if things do go wrong. I hope ^^;

Software that doesn't work: AVG CCCP Software that does work: ClamWin Office 2007 SIMS .Net Thunderbird Trillian DeepBurner

Well it seems I can't get it cheaper, the lowest Dell would go (even without Office) was £660 Excl VAT. Either the quantities were too small or my negotiating skills are carp. If I had the time I'd try a couple of resellers, but we need a decision today so I think we're pretty much stuffed on that one >_< Thanks for the advice anyway, even if they are overpriced, at least I know we won't be buying a box of lemons.

@apeo: I think I did try that without success, but I'll give it a try when I get a minute incase I imagined it EDIT: Nope, doesn't work >_<

Well, I've contacted SLAMNet and that price is excluding VAT, I've tried Dell once this morning but only got voicemail >_< I'm about to try again. I'll let you know ...

@NetworkGeezer: Am I seriously going to run Vista anytime soon? Hell no. But I agree, we should always be thinking of future developments so the higher spec is the preferable choice, and even with the higher spec we should still be in budget (well depending on the cost of the new Mac, but that's for another post). @GrumbleDook: Cheers, that's what I was hoping. I'll probably call our local rep tomorrow to see if they'll do it cheaper, but it's only a small order compared to yours, ~20 units so I hold out little hope.

There's no mention of VAT in the email so your guess is as good as mine. The 3Yr onsite warranty has me leaning towards saying yes, the curriculum laptops we got last year only had a 1Yr RTB warranty, the school will be regretting that soon as the screens are cracking at the hinges, but it was before my time here so we'll just have to deal with it. We're currently covered by an MS Schools Agreement so an office licence per machine isn't vital, but would be useful if we decide to drop the Schools Agreement in favour of an Open or Select licence, which is one of the things I'm currently investigating.

@Geoff: I only said it was more compliant than IE6, which really doesn't say alot. It's still better IMO than IE6 as the fancy menu systems (CSS only, I refuse to use javascript for critical navigation elements) on a couple of my sites now work in IE as well as FF (where they've worked perfectly for years) I'll happily admit that MS have a long way to go before they're anywhere near standards compliant, but at least they're making steps in the right direction (however slowly) @CM786: You'll get no argument from me there, IE is a pain to code for.

In the normal fashion of Mushroom Management, as I was leaving tonight I was handed a copy of an email from CSD - SLAMNet (first line LEA IT support) regarding 'laptop computers at a greatly discounted price'. As our current staff laptops are due for replacement this year, money has been allocated and SMT want to know whether we should go for these, and if so which, and they want to know tomorrow as they will have to be ordered by the end of the week >_< There are two specs on offer: #1 £655 Dell Latitude D520 Intel Core Duo T2300 (1.66GHz 667FSB 2MB L2 Cache) 512 MB RAM 40GB HDD CD-RW/DVD Office 2K3 Pro I'd assume XP but it doesn't say if Home or Pro Dell 3Yr onsite warranty (I'm assuming NBD) #2 £555 Dell Latitude D520 Intel Celeron M 420 (1.60GHz 553FSB 1MB L2 Cache) 512 MB RAM 40GB HDD CD-RW/DVD Office 2K3 Pro I'd assume XP but it doesn't say if Home or Pro Dell 3Yr onsite warranty (I'm assuming NBD) These laptops will never be given to kids, they'll be staff use only, mainly running MS office and the occasional DVD (Teachers will not be given access to SIMS). So, what I need to know is, how good are these laptops? Has anyone got any and what are your impressions? What's the build quality like? How good is the wireless? Can we get something better for the same price? I'd also be interested to hear from anyone else who's recieved this email, and to know if you intend to follow this up.

Which is daft as it's entire 'business model' negates the need for major financing. What do we have to do to prove that you don't need to throw money at a problem in order to fix it?

@Ric_ 6 And I agree it'll probably be as quick to do it manually, but I'd much rather script it if I can, but with only 2 weeks left and a pile of other things to do I doubt I can justify the time to automate it (this time ) @bossman 6.78 is the only version I have a full installer for, so it'd be that. I've considered the MSI route, but with my history of botched MSI's I think it'd be safer to AutoIt, but thanks for the offer.

Whoops ^^; OK, try again nbtstat -r gives NetBIOS Names Resolution and Registration Statistics ---------------------------------------------------- Resolved By Broadcast = 15 Resolved By Name Server = 0 Registered By Broadcast = 6 Registered By Name Server = 0 NetBIOS Names Resolved By Broadcast --------------------------------------------- ODIN <00> ODIN STOWMARKETM <1B> THOR <00> THOR ODIN THOR <00> THOR <00> and nbtstat -n gives Local Area Connection 5: Node IpAddress: [10.163.4.24] Scope Id: [] NetBIOS Local Name Table Name Type Status --------------------------------------------- ALICIA <00> UNIQUE Registered ALICIA <20> UNIQUE Registered STOWMARKETM <00> GROUP Registered Wireless Network Connection: Node IpAddress: [0.0.0.0] Scope Id: [] No names in cache I figured I'd also try nbtstat -c which returned Local Area Connection 5: Node IpAddress: [10.163.4.24] Scope Id: [] NetBIOS Remote Cache Name Table Name Type Host Address Life [sec] ------------------------------------------------------------ ODIN <03> UNIQUE 10.163.4.106 -1 ODIN <00> UNIQUE 10.163.4.106 -1 ODIN <20> UNIQUE 10.163.4.106 -1 Wireless Network Connection: Node IpAddress: [0.0.0.0] Scope Id: [] No names in cache Which looks a little more promising, but seeing how wrong I got the last one, I'll let you answer that

When I started here we had a single domain running from 2 vanilla 2K3 DC's on separate IP subnets (PDC sat on both with dual NIC's, BDC only on admin). In the summer we'll be moving all admin machines over to the curriculum subnet and using the admin subnet as a DMZ for the web and mail servers. Having a DC which 3/4 of all clients can't see was a PITA. Regarding convincing the LEA, easy, I havn't told them ^^

@ChrisC: New reports seem fine, I've just made a new one with no probs. @Glensc: That's a possibility as we don't have a WINS server (AFAIK), I'll give it a try. I've added 10.163.4.106 odin #SIMS Server to C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\lmhosts.sam and rebooted and it's still not working. To confirm I've run nbtstat -a odin which returns Local Area Connection 5: Node IpAddress: [10.163.4.24] Scope Id: [] NetBIOS Remote Machine Name Table Name Type Status --------------------------------------------- ODIN <00> UNIQUE Registered STOWMARKETM <00> GROUP Registered STOWMARKETM <1C> GROUP Registered ODIN <20> UNIQUE Registered STOWMARKETM <1E> GROUP Registered ODIN <03> UNIQUE Registered MAC Address = 00-13-72-F6-4A-69 Wireless Network Connection: Node IpAddress: [0.0.0.0] Scope Id: [] Host not found. I've never played with WINS before, does that look right?

The biggest benefit I can see with IE7 is that it's more standards compliant than IE6, and it can understand (at least part of) CSS2, which from a webdesigners point of view, is a God send. I'll still be sticking to Firefox myself though, It'd be a pain to go back to surfing without Adblock, Filterset G, and NoScript (among others) ^^

Right now I'm ready to try pretty much anything, but I doubt it's the SQL connection as I have people working in SIMS .Net right now and the only problems we've got are: * Some reports don't work as they need updating to v7.76 * We can't update the reports as they always fail when we try If you still think it's worth restarting the SQL server, I can give it a try.

So am I

Well neither the server reboot nor running SIMS .Net locally helped at all. I've now tried setting the Document Server location (on server) to admin IP, curriculum IP, host name, localhost, 127.0.0.1. The server test shows OK, but the reports still fail to import with 'The underlying connection was closed: The remote name could not be resolved'. A quick Google shows that's normally caused by a proxy server, but there's no proxy between the SIMS server and the clients. To be safe I've disabled the proxy in IE hoping it was picking up settings from there, still nothing, so either it's geting settings from elsewhere, or I'm barking up the wrong tree again. As if that wasn't bad enough, i've just found out that no-one's tried importing updated reports since March (when the SIMS server was replaced), so it could be a fault with the initial server setup >_< Any ideas guys? This one's got me clueless.

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Since replacing our SIMS server back in March it's been running like a dream with only minor infrequent problems, until today. It seems the last SIMS update (or maybe the one before that) changed SIMS in a way that our current reports don't like so we need to import updated ones. While that isn't a problem, the process of importing them is. When trying to import Predefined_Reports_v776.RptDef SIMS freezes, if we limit to trying to import only 1 or 2 reports/templates we get a message of 'The underlying connection was closed: The remote name could not be resolved'. This seems to suggest a DNS issue, but my DNS server is reporting no errors or warnings, and is resolving names properly. I've been in contact with the local SIMS support, and following their advice we've tried: Stopping and restarting the Document Server Service Changing the Server location in Document Server Manager from the host name to the IP address (which actually made things worse as the 'Test server connection' fails when using the IP ? ) Importing Predefined_Reports_v774.RptDef incase 776 had become corrupted None of which has helped. We've tested this on multiple machines on both IP ranges (SIMS server sits on both curriculum and admin ranges) and even a couple of multihomed machines. Same result everywhere. I've got 2 more things to try, rebooting the server, and installing SIMS.Net locally on the server to see if it'll work from there, but I'll leave those until tomorrow so tonights backup can run undisturbed. This has both myself and the local SIMS support a little stumped (especially the IP failing the connection test while the machine name passes but still doesn't actually work) Except for this import problem, SIMS is working perfectly. Has anyone come accross anything similar before? If so, did you ever find out what caused it? Any ideas will be greatfully recieved.