DavePa

Thanks all, looking at around 130 users plus a dozen or so servers. Labtech has the advantage of being already installed and familiar to users and techs alike so I'll look into the pricing of this vs SCCM. I am looking for another tech at the moment and one of the things I have specified is SCCM experience so hopefully it won't have to be a case of learning it from scratch if we go that way. I used Windows noob to setup an SCCM VM at home but the host died a few weeks later and I never got around to replacing it

I've been away a couple of months having gone through a redundancy at the college before finding a new job outside of education so 1st post from a non-education viewpoint The company I am working for currently has a 3rd party MSP supporting them but I have been brought in to manage/expand the internal team with a view to bringing support back inhouse. One of the issues (there are many others!) is that the MSP has installed Labtech on just about everything and they use it extensively. In the college we used Impero but the capabilities of Labtech go way beyond that. I have the feeling that Labtech may be an MSP product that is not available to end users (although I would be happy to hear otherwise) so I need to replace it with something similar that will allow remote access to PCs based both at the head office site and also at a couple of smaller sites (1 via VPN, 2nd via public Internet). The main products I have seen mentioned are those give in the title although I know there are others out there. I would prefer SCCM but do not the have knowledge of setting it up from scratch or the time to try and acquire that knowledge and the existing internal team consists of a junior tech doing the stuff that needs a physical presence such as changing toner cartridges. Any suggestions as to a good asset management, patch management, remote control etc. software or is SCCM the way to go?

If Elon Musk gets his way we won't need cars by 2040 as we'll all be using hyperloops instead. Having said that I can imagine electric cars being great fun if the could work out a way to upscale scalextrix....

That's the one - although in my case it's become more of a game to blast through the questions in 2 minutes and then take 10 minutes to keep clicking 'next' on the study material as otherwise you can't complete it. But hey, I now have a certificate saying I have passed GDPR level 2 (Level 2! That must be advanced) which must be a passport to a £50k DPO role somewhere

If anybody subscribes to EduCare they have now released a GDPR course that awards a nice certificate based on your ability to correctly answer 10 questions based on the course materials.

We used to buy HP enterprise HDDs at 146gb capacity, maybe whoever partitioned them was thinking that they may have to replace them with that size spares?

Yep, you can see that TeacherQ received XXX emails, sent YYY and opened ZZZ - but there is no way of knowing which particular emails were opened unless XXX = ZZZ and that has never happened where I work!

...and opened doesn't mean read - I suspect even more so in a court of law. How often does it happen that you open an email and then get called away to deal with something else so end up reading it later, if at all.

I almost had a seizure watching that! Nice build though, very neat - which is another reason for me to not have a window, I'm not patient enough to keep it all that neat

Lol, RGB was never a consideration - under desk, out of site and a window would be on the wrong side (and also a potential source of noise)

Although a good (I hope) gaming spec I was actually after low noise levels and longevity rather than FPS - I play MMOs, strategy games and driving games rather than FPS games and am hoping to still have a 'reasonable' machine in 5 years time: CPU: i7700k CPU cooler: Noctua NH-D15 Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix 270E Gaming Memory: 16gb of Corasir Vengeance LPX 3200mzh Boot drive: Samsung 960 EVO Polaris 500gb M.2 Storage drive (Internal): Samsung Evo 850 1tb SSD Storage drive (external): WD Elements 2tb USB3 Graphics: Asus ROG Strix OC GTX1080Ti Case: Corsair Carbide 600Q Fans: Corsair ML140 * 4 (replaced stock fans) PSU: Corsair AX860i digital Monitor: AOC AGON 24" 2560*1440 G-Sync (165mhz) I carried over the speakers, KB & mouse from my prvious build - not that they are special, just couldn't afford to replace threm and they work well enough as it is. Total cost a little over £3k, been a long time since I've build a machine so it took me a few hours to get it all together. Completely silent when working, web browsing or Youtubing but disappointingly noisy when gaming - those GPU fans make a lot of noise!

I must remember to park the drive before turning the computer off

Having a lump mallet at my desk might tempt me to threaten the next person who tells me GDPR is an IT problem although I guess that the screwdriver that I use to score the platters could also be used as a weapon...

Especially when you wear a backpack as well as the straps will cover the O and the T

It's been said many times in this thread but as an ex-ambulanceman, ex-driving instructor, ex-125cc bike rider (35 years ago) and father of a 25 year old who just got his 1st 125cc bike I'll say the same as everybody else - get your gear 1st and spend the rest on the bike. Bike is replaceable. Skin & bones not so easy. Don't be like the kn*bs I see on the way home every evening in shorts, A-shirts and trainers riding at 40mph between 2 lanes of traffic that is doing <10mph. Remember, as far as car drivers go, YOU have to think for THEM, There are people on the roads who have no clue where they are let alone what is around them! My late father used to say that you should never be allowed to drive a car until you've ridden a motorbike - but you should never be allowed on a motorbike until you've ridden a pushbike. Take care, they may not be out to get you but they may not even know you are there either!

Just as a note the notification at the top/right of the screen says Thursday 28th when it should (I assume) read Wednesday 28th.

I bouth my OnePlus3 from o2 (about 2 weeks before the 3t came out ), I needed to buy a £10 SIM with it as well but doing so saved me the 2-3 week wait that OnePlus were quoting. Might be worth checking if they do the same with the 5?

Decided last minute to eat out rather than cook yesterday evening. We ended up here : Angel Inn and with this thread in mind I selflessly opted for the burger which was so much better than anything you get from a high street chain - good size, nice bun, not overfilled with add ons but included everything you could want (maybe mushroom would have been good) such as cheese, bacon, lettuce, sliced gherkin, tomato and onion - but only a little of most of them so they complemented, rather than overpowered, the burger

It's a bit remote but if ever you are close to this place: The Chequers at Hainford ? A Traditional English Pub with Great Food, North of Norwich (A little north of Norwich) I'd recommend it. Big AND tasty rather than just being one or the other. I've eaten a lot of burgers in my time (as my waistline would testify...if I had one!) but that ranks up there amongst the best ever

I've always been under the impression that the maximum you can charge to respond to an FOI request is £10. I'll try and find reference to it and update if I can. Edit: Nope, can't find that anywhere but I'm sure it was in a recent document that I've seen. Additional edit: £10 is the maximum you can charge for a subject access request under the data protection act. Mixing up my DPA and FOI acts!

I went and spoke to them again yesterday, the fact that Facebook and Paypal were there was enough to convince them that saving passwords is not a good idea We are Office365 users but this is a Googlemail account used to create/manage various Google forms so delegation is not an option. They were leaving themselves signed into it all the time rather than only signing in when they wanted to access the forms or using a different browser like the other people that access it do but the saved passwords have been cleared so it should all be good now

We have a common Googlemail account that is used by a couple of people for a specific purpose - nothing unusual there. Recently however one of the users has elected to store passwords which is doing exactly that and so I can use them to log into those sites as that user. The user has been told of this but is still saving passwords and has now added a couple of personal sites to the list including Facebook. As I have no wish to see the sites this user visits I've switched to Opera instead - but by default Opera has imported the sites AND passwords (I don't recall being asked about importing settings but would have said no anyway) and of course Opera has the 'show password' button therefore revealing the passwords in plain text... I've now 'forgotten' all of the stored passwords and will only access the Googlemail account through Opera rather than Chrome but if anybody saves passwords within browsers make sure you are the only person using that account!

The offending paragraph has been changed, I looked at changing the wording but in the end decided to just omit it: Original - In order to protect you and safeguard our data we monitor and log the usage of our IT networks – that means all computer usage and all Internet usage. It is important that you understand that if you connect your personal device to our Wireless BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) network then all data sent or received when using our network is monitored and logged. You can have no expectation of privacy when using our IT networks – everything you type, every website you visit and every social media post you make is recorded. This helps us to comply with our safeguarding responsibilities and the governments’ PREVENT anti-terrorism strategy. New - In order to protect you and safeguard our data we monitor and log the usage of our IT networks – that means all computer usage and all Internet usage. It is important that you understand that if you connect your personal device to our Wireless BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) network then all data sent or received when using our network is monitored and logged. This helps us to comply with our safeguarding responsibilities and the governments’ PREVENT anti-terrorism strategy. I think it works just as well without the wording - just hope that the board agrees

I accept that we will, under GDPR, need to be able to produce a certificate to state that data has been destroyed - but for the last 2 or 3 years we have: - Reformatted 2.5" hard drives, encrypted them using Bitlocker and put them into caddies for people that need portable storage - Physically destroyed server / 3.5" hard drives - quite literally opened them up, scored the platters with a screwdriver, thrown all but 1 of the screws inside and then used the last screw to re-attach the cover Before that both 2.5" and 3.5" drives were destroyed so in effect we will be paying for a service that we have never felt we needed - we remove the HDD and process as above, we remove the memory and then keep the carcass for spares (WiFi, Keyboard, screen, touchpad, etc. until such time as it is just an empty shell at which point it goes to WEEE waste.

...and in the 30 minutes it took me to type that out (I get a lot of interruptions) some more posts have appeared with more good advice in them