MikeGilbert

OVS isn't "a" licence, it's a way of paying for various different licences. The "Desktop Edu" bundle does include Office Professional and Windows CALs, but it also includes other CALs too, *which you may not need*. The nominal discounted price is only of value if you're using all the servers to which the CALs in the Core CAL package apply. If not, it's cheaper to take separate licences for Windows Pro, Office Pro and Windows Server CAL, and even to add the Exchange CAL.

Interesting looking, but will give him the link to that one, seeing it's a free ebook. Not the sort of birthday present I'd get many kudos for. - - - Updated - - - Oh, how I laughed. :/

Looks good, will be going through Amazon and am confused on the products two prices on apparently the same book. Sigh. And mildly annoyed that a new one is coming out in January...

Briefly - what Python manual would anyone recommend? No 1 Son is on an apprenticeship, getting keen on the Sysadmin stuff, has expressed an interest and has a birthday coming up... TIA

Briefly - I've a school with a Meru MC1500 controller and a bunch of APs bought in 2010 as a bundle deal purely on price. They've just been sold a set of iPads and AppleTVs, but Bonjour is blocked by the controller. Having spoken to various people, it seems that there is an upgrade to fix this, but that they will need to buy into the support services and backdate the purchase to cover the intervening period. Can anyone give me an idea of an indicative price of this? As it stands, I'm waiting for a quote from distribution, but they'd rather sell me new stuff. TIA Mike

It opened the last tab I closed. Fair enough...

IME, any Enterprise wireless will deliver what you need if the site survey's done right and the supplier talks to you and knows what they're doing. 99% of wireless installs I've had described to me as being bad are bad because someone has done something wrong. Including buying the wrong kit for the job, whether that's cheapo consumer routers or incredibly high spec stuff in the wrong environment. Bad site surveys, too - we've just had a vendor "specialist" nominally do one for a potential customer, and he might as well not have bothered. So, I'd agree totally with pantscat - talk to people locally who can do the job. Note what flavour of stuff they want to sell (should be on their website), and take that into account. Ask about reference sites, and talk to them direct. Take a look here: Wireless Access Point Comparison - Best Enterprise and Home WAPs It's an American site, but the only place I've found that gives independent ratings of a wide range of APs. And also, the fact that vendor X made bad products once doesn't mean they still do... And finally, 802.11ac isn't in many devices that you're going to have yet, it's new tech and therefore will cost more than 802.11n, and so put it in your plan for a refresh in three or four years...

AppleTV needs a HDMI port (there are VGA-> HDMI adapters, but they're rubbish), so the old projectors will need replacing with something - and are probably well dim with expensive lamps, too. By "TV" you need to mean "Large Format Display with Commercial Grade panel" - otherwise it'll be less than brilliant/suitable. There are plenty of options out there; NEC E-series are nice and reasonably priced. Short throw projectors will cost less than a panel, and can be interactive, if necessary - the new BenQ unit is pretty decent, and can go to pen-interactive for about £150 over the base price, as a retro-fit that anyone can do "Proper" interactive screens need to be 6-touch and will work as a Windows or Mac input device, rather than requiring proprietary software. There are other options, too...

So glad I put that caveat...

As long as the OS runs on the VM, any program that runs under that OS will run in the VM. Within reason. You can set up an Acorn RiscPC and run BBC BASIC, or whatever, never mind any of these fancy modern things. I'll get me zimmer frame...

Having listened to an interview with the guy who actually formulated the concept on PM yesterday, wasn't entirely surprised to discover that the whole "it's Michael Gove's fault and he hates " wasn't the case at all. The core of the policy is that teachers can choose to teach books they want to teach, within the constraints given as to period and type. Professor Bate's (or it might have been Bale) suggested replacement for the "modern" strand represented by Harper Lee and Steinbeck was Zadie Smith's White Teeth, on the basis that books from the first half of the last century aren't actually that relevant to kids' experience. Which is fair enough, really. We did Steinbeck 40 years ago, and it felt archaic then. Mind you, I was more into Larry Niven and JG Ballard and John Wyndham and Michael Moorcock and...

Personally, I'd look very hard at ChromeBooks as an alternative to Tablets, certainly for students. Do be aware that the nominal vendor price will need to have £19 added to cover the Google management software licence, so you can have the multiple user login thing you need, etc., and that all users need a "complex" password. A good solution as a PC/laptop replacement rather than the sexy "look ma, I've got one of them" side of tablets.

All the public holidays should be easy - there's a tickbox option in File -> Options -> Calendar to "Add holidays to the Calendar", so you should have a GP switch somewhere to do it. As far as the other goes, there should be a way to do it using Calendar Groups - there are quite a few results from a search for same, but it'll depend on the flavour of Outlook and exchange you're using.

As Helen Mirren said recently (and has said before), forcing kids to read Shakespeare is pretty well guaranteed to put most of them off. Especially if it's being taught by someone with no empathy, understanding or connection to the plays. Having read, watched, performed and directed Shakespeare (pretentious little sod, ain't I), I'm quite happy that the plays are bloody amazing, the language is a piece of cake and the stories flow like a dream. BUT, if you suffered under some poor sod who had to try and force an understanding of the texts into a relentless sequence of teens over an interminable number of years, with any interest s/he might have had in the task atrophied to nothing under the yawning disinterest of said teens, then it's not surprising nothing connected. Some kids will connect, though. Like my daughter, all by herself. Which is great.

Saw the new BenQ short throw the other day, which is quite nice, well priced, and can be bought with (or retrofitted very easily with) an interactive kit. This is pen-only, but there's also a finger-touch add-on.