teejay

From being a complete sceptic, I'm actually getting quite enthusiastic about this type of device. What he has done so far is pretty impressive and I really can see the benefit. If they can get the manageability side sorted out I will be pushing for going down this route. I can see devices like the iPad working better than Windows 7 type devices, simply because the OS is designed for this type of use rather than being a generic OS that we'd had to lock down like mad a would have over bloated apps. Maybe if Google got their act together with the Android OS I could see that being some competition, but I think Microsoft have missed the ball on this one unless they can do something with Windows Mobile 7. Yes we would still need full blown PC's in some areas, but nowhere near as many as we need now. If we could also dramatically reduce our reprographics and printer budget, reduce our reliance on full blown desktops/laptops, and reduce our Microsoft tax my 'back of fag packet' calculations put us in the same sort of budget as we currently spend.

Test the machines with Windows 7 before you buy anything for them, you may have compatibility problems with graphics/sound drivers which we found on our older machines.

Those iPad users are really lowering the tone of the place:p Use my Android sometimes, just for browsing, my typing on it is too poor to contribute using it.

As long as they are set up properly and have supported hardware, you'll get absolutely naff all difference in performance these days between KVM, VMWare, Xen etc, purely because all the work is done by the processor virtualisation extensions. You do get variations down to other hardware components, such as NICS, SANs etc, but that happens just as much with all of them and I have seen VMWare knock spots off KVM on some hardware and vice versa.

Best protection from cyber bullying is to teach pupils how to use the delete and block buttons, not turn us into a survellance society.

Typical, one model we don't have! All our Ricoh Alfico MPC's are running the PCL 6 driver with no problems at all. We also have one queue running the RPCS driver with no problems.

Which model is it?

Which driver are you using? We've found the universal driver not so brilliant on the Ricoh and depending on model try either the PCL6, PCL 5 or RPCS driver specific for that machine. Also ensure that the 64-bit and the 32-bit are exactly the same version number.

Are the SQL services running? Try going to add/remove programs and doing a repair of SQL.

Make sure the machine has a record in its host file for the name and ip of the machine, otherwise it may not be resolving it's own name. Also, try using dbattach to detach and reattach the database.

If it's connected to the school network and the same name as your existing SIMS server you'll have a big problem as you'll have 2 machines with the same name and the dns lookup will point to the other machine, plus you'll have a conflict in AD with 2 machines with identical names. Make sure the machine you are doing the restore on is named differently to your existing SIMS server and rejoin it to active directory, plus make sure the dns entry is valid. The other problem you may be having is if the sql database hasn't been backed up properly as the file will be in use, you would either have to stop the database service and backup the database then restart it or use backup software which has a proper SQL agent.

We do actually throttle per connection internet access, not to internet speed/number of PC's, but to a level whereby having a load of people on iPlayer watching last nights Eastenders won't completely trash everyone elses use of the internet. As you say though, it's what works for you and your school, the size and structure of the network and your budget.

It's actually around 30 clients at 1Gb going full tilt to saturate a 10Gb link as you won't get 100% full duplex speed due to machine, switch, cabling, operating system overheads and other limitations.

live@edu will use the schools domain name.

Use live@edu instead, it's free and as its hosted in the cloud you have no server hardware requirements.

Yes and get it in writing, we had a situation where the manufacturer gave us incorrect verbal advice and wouldn't accept any responsibility when it didn't work. There are some very exotic connectors on some of the 10Gb stuff with some combination being impossible to get connector cables for.

not sure if it works with 2003, but you could try testing their account with https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/ which has helped us resolve various problems with external user connectivity in Exchange 2010.

The problem with 1Gb at the edge is that to utilise it fully you need 10Gb at the core and servers that can cope with serving files fast enough for the 10Gb links, which all gets expensive. There is a case for 'some' 1Gb at the edge for the more heavy duty machines, such as if the are doing video editing and dumping large files on the servers, or of course the NM's pc cough cough...

Excellent! (continuing the ! theme of this thread!)

Run the msi from a command prompt as msiexec /i nameofmsi.msi /quiet and see if it installs.

Either the server isn't up to spec for running the required loading, or your database needs reindexing/checking (see my post about patch 6635 earlier in thread).

For the purchase toners option, first you need to make sure you will actually need 2 sets of toners per printer, next you need to calculate realistic cost per page. To do this, each toner should have a manufacturers estimate of the numbers of pages it will do, if the printer is mainly used for text, then take about 20% off the manufacturers figure, if used for graphics take 60% off, don't forget the other cosumable parts like drums etc. This will give you a realistic cost per page to compare to your lease cost and charge per page.

Or Windows Server 2008 R2, or Office 2010! Oh well, maybe next time ;-)

You may well find it kicking around on your sims server, search for Patch_6635_Reindex if you haven't got it, contact your support provider for it or if no joy pm me.

Run patch 6635 on the SIMS database, this does a reindex and database check. Running this fixed the same problem for us after upgrade.