Gibson335

Whilst this has now become more of a political thread than intended, I would assume that no matter who is running our country by this time next year, they will all have to find ways to trim budgets. It's possible, therefore, that BSF would focus more on schools that have very little or are in desperate need of new/refurbished buildings, than simply providing cash for all those who want it. It may be that BSF won't actually be stopped, just prioritised very differently.

If they didn't put the points where you asked them to, then they are responsible - they should have ensured they had enough cable. However, who signed the job off as being acceptable? If they refuse, it may not be worth fighting it, but certainly you should make sure they know you'll never use them again.

I'm looking at various alternatives, and the Richmond one was the one I knew least about. Cheers.

Is anyone using Richmond Help Desk? I am assessing our options for introducing a Help Desk next year and wondered if anyone had experience of this one and if so what they thought about it. Cheers.

As a NM I await news of BSF with some trepidation. One good thing is that our Head is not sitting back on budget waiting for the BSF swag to roll in, in fact he recently told me that whilst the school would welcome the building money he couldn't see us ever getting it, that it would die out long before it got to us. Anyone else believe that, particularly after the next election, BSF cash will dry up?

I'd certainly start by deleting any relevant profiles - it may be that something is trying to run in that My Documents window, preventing anything else from running until it's closed down.

I'm afraid this is a fine example of people not living in the real word. Is it a noble goal? Yes. It would be great if all staff taught all students ethical and moral use of the Internet and then all students followed this to the letter...but in the real world, not all staff care enough, not all staff can be bothered, and even if they do the students themselves DO live in the real world and there are a core who will ignore what they are taught and will exploit the weaknesses of any security/filtering system. Sorry if that is an inconvenient truth, but it IS the truth. We work hard to unfilter sites deemed worthy of blocking by our ISP, but even then we have clashes between some staff who want a site available and others who don't. We had one particular faculty who demanded Facebook be left open, until it became such a pain for them that they then demanded it be blocked. The real world tends to be like that.

A comparison to Impero would be good, but if not then just a general impression, how easy to configure, ease of use, quality of support, problems encountered. Cheers

Anyone using LanSchool or know much about it? We're using Impero, but the suggestion is that LanSchool is better. Just trying to get a fix on it before trial. Thanks in anticipation.

Problem is, due to the way our lease purchase arrangements work, I can't purchase new laptops until July, therefore I can't build them and hand them out and start building from those handed in before the start of summer, never mind getting a decent number done. Also, and I should perhaps have mentioned this from the start, due to arrangements beyond our control, an element of crucial external support (which I cannlt divulge in public) will not work with a mixed economy of OSs and Office versions, which means we have to go from one to the other in one go!

Ah, but the OS in question probably won't be supported by Capita and our LEA SIMS support until closer to the summer.

There will be 5 different types.

(1) because it would be just one of about a hundred other jobs to do, (2) because the chances of staff bringing laptops back in on a schedule are so remote as to be incalcuable, (3) because then we get to do them in our time and fit in around the many other jobs, our holidays, etc.

If you had to move your 180+ laptop base from one OS and Office version to a new OS and new Office version would your senior management support you if you said you needed every one of those laptops in for the entire summer? I may be faced with doing that next year, and I know when I ask for this someone will ask the question, "What do other people do?" So I figured I'd ask. My thanks in advance to anyone who replies.

Hmm. Mine came out as Nottm, which is about 40+ miles away. They have much better systems on 'Criminal Minds' :-)

And they'd have to be a very clued-up ISP - mine always have to ask me what IP address I've been allocated when I call tech support. I don't know of any tool that would be able to provide an exact address...probably saw it on CSI or something ;-)

I think you'll find I never said that we've lost our identity because we don't go round waving flags. What I do find is that so many English people consider themselves to be British, where Scots, Welsh and Irish invariably say 'Scottish', 'Welsh' or 'Irish'.

What a sad state of affairs if that is true. It should not matter whether this flag has been abused. This is England's St George's Day and should be recognised as such far more than it is. It's such a shame that so few people seem to have pride in our country anymore, yet are only too happy to promote the days celebrated by other nations. Of all the British Isles, we appear to have lost our identity most of all.

You need to ask them those very questions. Such as: 'In what way do you mean 'improve'? Do you mean physically, the infrastructure, server load-balancing, the end-user experience, support?' Get them to be more specific. That will open the door for you.

We log everything in an Access database which I put together several years ago. It's not ideal, but it records every job, dates, times, users, stations, whether hardware, software or user error, whether re-imaged, also external contacts, serial numbers, equipment sent away for warranty repair, etc. Like anything like this, it relies on the support team to enter the data, and of course some things are missed, but mostly it's done and done well, and it really helps to keep track of what support work is on-going or has been done. Couldn't manage without it, I don't think.

We get quite a few software problems related to Appdata, often requiring the deletion of both local and network redirected Appdata user folders in order for the software to work for users experiencing difficulties. I just wondered what other people do - whether they automatically delete user appdata or have some other workaround.

Yes, I know that their server hardware support had slipped badly, and so worried that their laptop support may have suffered as well. Cheers.

Thanks. When you have had problems, what has HPs support been like?

Was just wondering what preferences people had when purchasing laptops for staff. We started with Tosh, then moved on to Fujitsu when the build quality improved. Went off Fujitsu due to their warranty support being so poor, and now back to Tosh. If any of you use Acer or HP or anything else, what's the support like (as the machines themselves seem to be so similar these days)? Cheers.

In answer to your question, yes we do...we also have pious, sanctimonious ones, too. And who the hell are you to tell me what I should or should not call them? Get over yourself and move on.