teejay

It's a shame for the staff, but the writing has been on the wall for Jessops for quite a while, same with all the other chains that have gone under recently. They were all running with too much debt as they looked for short term gain rather than long term stability. The sooner we see the back of a lot of the chains the better. They contribute very little to the local community as they demand tax breaks etc to open up in a town, would much rather see independent stores as they pay their way and contribute more to the community. As for charity shops, they pay no business rates and the landlord get tax breaks renting to them, so that is why you see so many of them.

Happy New Year! 2013 should certainly be an interesting year with naff all budget yet again and no likely improvement for some time to come. Windows 8 certainly isn't on the radar, Samba 4 and more open source technologies to look at getting rid of our annual Microsoft EES tax certainly is on the radar:p

Another thing, how much would the government have spent on some research project looking at the use of tablets in schools, several million as a large underestimate. It's far cheaper to let a few schools forge ahead and go for it with these devices, from which the experience and knowledge learnt can be passed onto other schools. Look at all the expensive failures from central government projects over the years, even if this is a big failure, then £500,000 is relatively cheap.

Typical Daily Fail article. The devices are insured for accidental damage, so the ones that were broken have been fixed at no extra cost. They also learn't their lesson on cheap cases and now have a much lower failure rate. The cost savings in other areas with be pretty big, for instance reprographics, printing, projectors, smart boards, etc etc which offset against this. With tablet type devices it really does need to be a 1:1 deployment to get the full benefit out of them, yes you could argue that a cheaper tablet would be more cost effective, you could also argue that the bling factor of having iPads means they are getting more use. Can't believe I'm defending use of fondleslabs, but I actually think this school has gone about it the right way and I applaud their courage to take some undoubted flak over it.

Personally I'd stump up a few quid more and go for a 2 bay zyxel, they're a much better NAS than the DLink. http://http://www.dabs.com/products/zyxel-nsa320-2-bay-power-nas-appliance-7BFV.html?q=Zyxel&src=16

Does a whole packet of chocolate hobnobs count? They were for medicinal purposes, honest.

This looks tempting, a lego quadcopter:cool: Drone made of Lego takes flight. | sUAS News

It's started!

Ooh, good, ebooks can be format shifted, wonder if that will see the end of the stupid DRM on them.

Really weird, we've had 3 account managers in the 10 years I've been here, all have been great and they tend to beat HP for equivalent kit. We also have no problems ordering spare parts by purchase order, yes it is a different department but we just email them the PO. Really strange how they vary so much. The worst manufacturer I've dealt with are Oracle when they bought out Sun, we had some Sun Unified Storage boxes, they were decommissioned in summer.

I've noticed a few posts above about Dell being dearer than HP, if you go direct to Dell through their Edu team or work with a Dell Reseller who has access to their Edu team you'll find the pricing is very favourable to HP and others.

Dell on servers, not so bothered by brand of desktop/laptop these days, I just pick whatever does the job at the best price but with a bit of haggling then Dell usually come out well on price anyway. Why do I dislike HP servers, well: Inability to retain extended warranty information that you've registered with them, also taking the start date of any warranty as the manufacturing date rather than the purchase date means virtually every warranty request means digging out invoices etc. Their servers are LOUD, one HP is louder than a rack full of Dells and yes HP have been out and say there is no problem. They love to use the 'it's a software not a hardware problem', even though the software works fine on other hardware.

If you have a high number of staff to computers, then you still have the option of the School Enrolment rather than EES as the School Enrolment is by number of machines rather than by number of staff. No it's not discrimination, you have two licence models, either by number of computers or number of FTE staff, same as anyone else.

Q: What's the perfect Christmas gift for the person who has everything? A: A broad spectrum antibiotic. Q: What do you call Santa's Helpers? A: Subordinate clauses Q: Did you ever hear of Adolph the brown-nosed reindeer? A: He could run as fast as Rudolf, he just couldn't stop as fast.

Mrs Teejay was 20, I was 19 when we had our son, wouldn't change things but it was flippin tough, so yes I would agree a bit later in life is better. Enjoy the joys of being young and free while you can

You can add mine is as well, completely free, in fact I'd offer £500 cashback if someone would take him

Just one, a 23 year old teenager

No Mankini, I'm disappointed:rolleyes:

Just seen this on the bbc website, BBC Sport - Formula 1: Ferrari consider Sebastian Vettel protest Vettel allegedly overtook Vergnes' Torro Rosso under yellow flags so could get a 20 second penalty, which would mean Alonso would be champion!

Anyway...the new Neil Asher Owner Trilogy books are quite good, not to everyones taste, but the second book is much better than the first.

Well you could buy him that, and a roll of duct tape and some rope....

This is one reason why I'm seriously looking at moving our DC's to Server 2012 as this fully supports snapshots/clones as a domain controller, VMWare 5 with the latest service pack and 5.1 both support this. Maybe worth looking at if you are on a Schools/EES agreement as it would ease your pain later ;-)

You can refuse to accept the terms of the Windows licence and get a refund off the manufacturer.

Interesting point on Question Time, most Starbucks stores are franchises, owned and run as local businesses which pay a franchise fee to Starbucks. The franchises pay their full taxes, including corporation tax, if you boycott local franchise stores you are directly affecting a local business who are doing nothing wrong. If you do plan to boycott Starbucks, it's worth checking if it's a franchise or Starbucks owned store before doing so.

Are there any vaguely competent ETA's or anything who could help out? Can another local school help? Can the LEA help? Employment agency temp contract? IT Support provider?