DavePa

We had a steady stream of the "Jimmy in year 7 has lost his jumper - it's a blue one, with the logo on it (like the rest of them) with his name written on the label (like the rest of them) and he last had it at morning break. If anybody finds it blah blah blah". With the various items for sale and requests for help this reached as many as 20-30 a day on occasion so was eventually restricted to only key people being able to mail all_staff with others being restricted. Have to say it has cut down on the unwanted email considerably without noticeably affecting anything else. Not sure Jimmy ever found his jumper though

We purchased a bunch of HP 800 g1 usff and use them under the monitor as show here: https://youtu.be/E6uZdzGHykI?t=18s. Ours are i3 rather than i5 but think i5 was an option - we just decided that the i3 was enough for the proposed use. We also have a bunch of the 8200 that fit behind the screens but have had more vandalism with those for some reason

It's working fine for me

We've been using a couple of Magicard Rio Pro for a couple of years, excellent printer - not cheap but cheap does not always equal good

Thanks for that, I think I'll look to populate them more fully that I presently do - maybe 24 guests over 3 or 4 hosts rather than the present 8 hosts. I'll find a use for the spare machines without any problem

What is considered a reasonable number of guests to hosts? Obviously depends on the RAM / HDD space available but let's assume for a minute that there are lots of both. If I wanted the following servers on a Windows 2012r2 host system: DC (8gb RAM, 100gb HDD) Staff File/Print (16gb RAM, 1tb HDD) Student Fie/Print (16gb RAM, 500gb hDD) SQL (16Ggb RAM, 500gb HDD) SCCM (32gb RAM, 500gb HDD) Impero (16gb RAM, 200gb HDD) Plus another 1/2 dozen small servers/guests needing no more than 8gb/200gb each So 12 guests - too much for a single host that has 256gb RAM, and 12tb HDD? There are only 6 NIC available so some servers will need to share a NIC but is that an issue? Our problem is we have quite a few guests and also (finally) more than enough hosts. For licencing purposes it would be good to minimise the number of hosts but I do not want to overload them - but equally, having a 256gb server that has 12tb of HDD space seems overkill for a DC and a file/print. My typical rule has been to not allocate more than I have which was fine when our hosts had 32gb of RAM, 1tb of storage and 6 NICs but these days our servers have far more memory and HDD space (although typically still only 6 NICs) but I am still only using 2 or 3 guests per host.

Aaaaarrgh! Some of them are using the default blue reply text colour - I hate blue reply text! If I was in charge of it I would make black text the default colour for replies as well as for new emails! Seriously though, I'm not sure why but this is one of my biggest bugbears!

Do your students learn about deserts or beaches? A picture of a sandy beach/desert has a lot of skin tone in it! That was 10 years or more ago that I recall that being a problem so hopefully it has moved on since then!

Unfortunately some of our users still treat 'Deleted Items' (Bit of a clue in the name!) as a storage area so for the moment we don't force a delete. As we all get 50gb mailboxes now though is this actually a problem other than for housekeeping reasons? I remember working with Exchange when the *site* limit was something like 17gb and there was a registry key that you could alter to make it something like 60gb so 50gb each seems enormous at the moment!

I am! Started using Intel-based machines when DOS 3.1 was current - I think DOS 6 was the final MS version. Windows/286 and Windows/386 came along at some point as did Windows 3.0 which ran on DOS - you booted to DOS and then ran Windows from a command prompt. Windows for workgroups 3.11 added networking but was still basically a DOS GUI. At some point it became DOS running in Windows rather than Windows running in DOS - that may have been Windows 2000 which also unified the desktop and Server lines - NT3.5, NT4 used to be entirely different products from the consumer OS versions. I've possibly still got a Soundblaster modified Windows version (it came with a Soundblaster card) that offered a 320*240 display option for hardware that couldn't cope with 640*480 resolution. I've definately still got a floppy disc version of Win 3.11, the version with the extra printer drivers - 31 discs instead of about 28

Accept your point and should have stated that the link that I posted refers to desktop OS only. As somebody who started playing with computers in the early 80's I had a long period of using computers before Windows came along - but have used it almost exclusively since then as it's been the default OS wherever I have worked. Would I prefer Linux? Quite possibly - but there has been no reason to put time into learning my way around it yet,

Although I am firmly in the Windows camp at the moment I would be happy to learn Linux but the way the marketshare is going it may be better to all get Macs - Windows is below 90% for the 1st time this century with Apple making the biggest gains. Linux remains at less than 2% so no matter how good it is still a niche OS. Although I would be happy to learn Linux and the associated software I cannot say the same for the other 150 FTE which naturally includes some whose expertise lies elsewhere and not in using software - people who have taken, in some cases, years to learn their way around MS Office apps. We'd also need to train (or replace) the other members of the IT team to use Linux in place of Windows - none of these are impossible but equally, none are simple changeovers either.

My local council has recently awarded the waste management contract to a new company so now we have: About a gazillion different containers for different items (there used to be half a dozen or so - hardcore, wood, garden, general, etc.) More people to stand around and watch you struggle getting the car unloaded CCTV being introduced to catch people who use the facilities too often A shop! You get to struggle to a specific area with anything that may have a value and they will sell it for you..well not really for *you* as they keep all of the profits (gotta pay for those people standing around somehow) I became disillusioned with Freecycle after receiving a call from somebody I had given some old computers to - he expected technical support and was quite rude when I said he was on his own! Perhaps I need to look at it again though

Agree with all of the comments above. Also, a line-interactive (?) UPS is also a line conditioner as well so protects against fluctuations in the power supply and ensures that what is plugged in receives only filtered power.

The 455g1 power supply works with both the g1 and g2 variants although the g2 power supply only works with the g2 but even so, having 60 similar laptops at one site means we only need 3 or 4 spare PSUs for when people forgot theirs! That's a good spec and better price for the ones you bought, can you share the source?

Problem with refurbs is consistency - I'm trying to get a budget approved where we will potentially be purchasing 100+ a year and I'd like them to all be a single brand and a broadly similar specification. For one-off laptops I have no such concerns but at that volume I'd like some commonality for the next few years

When I started here some years ago the laptop purchasing policy was "Whatever is cheapest" and there were Acer, Toshiba, HP, Compaq, Dell, Samsung and various others floating around. I persuaded them that single manufacturer would be easier as, apart from anything else, there would be compatibility between power supplies! HP has been the way forward since then but the 455g2 (which we have occasionally purchased for as little as £290 - and then got £50 cashback!) is no more and has been replaced by the 455g3. Problem here is that the 455g3 incorporates a touchscreen which a) makes it about £100 more expensive and b) is not ideal for education. What are people's thoughts on laptops? Some things I will buy locally, some from smaller companies but some - like laptops - are expected to be well known brands. Would you stick with HP or switch to another - and if switch, who to? Lenovo? Toshiba? Dell? I'm looking for low cost laptops, most of ours have 4gb RAM, an i3 or AMD processor, 15.6" screen and a rotational HDD. £300 each is a lot more achievable than £400 each!

We use DigitalID for cards - £44.95 for 100 so not the cheapest but always plenty of stock. We tend to buy 1000 at a time so get a small discount

We are at the early stages with this ourselves and still working out what to do but one heads-up for you...we have found that both staff and students have been visiting 'dodgy' websites due to having installed a mobile app on their personal devices that then looks for updates as soon as it connects to a network. Stating the obvious here but make sure that everybody knows that ALL traffic is monitored and the fact that they may have a gay dating app or a casual fling app on their phone means that you WILL know about it - they don't necessarily need to be actively using it! We will block any device with one of these apps from using the BYOD network until the offending apps are removed.

Now *that* looks interesting and isn't too expensive either. Thanks

That's one of my concerns as well, also getting something that turns out to be incompatible with other systems is a bit of a worry.

I've been asked to look into setting up a room to video conference between ourselves and external clients - some of which may be using dedicated videoconferencing rooms with almost professional quality equipment. Some of course will be using the cheapest option available to them but we want to be able to teleconference with them all. A couple of years back we had a demo of a 'pro' system which was in excess of £10k+ and required something like £250/month on an ongoing basis. I've already been told that is not an option but what can I get for... Free - Skype for business? Is that compatible with, and good enough to deal with, the other parties' semi-pro (or even pro) setup? Less than £1000 - will there be quality issues? More than £1000 - are there 'standards' for videoconferencing that I need to be aware of? We currently have a 100m connection but later in the year are upgrading to a 1gb connection so hopefully bandwidth won't be a problem. Given that this may involve a couple of people at each end rather than being individual to individual I suspect that using a laptop webcam and mic is not likely to be practical but I would be interested in hearing others' experiences

Snap

Having dropped out of the webcast yesterday due to having no sound I thought I'd ask my supplier what the options were, this is the reply: Your OVS expires in July and has another year to run, You are currently on Level F pricing. We can either renew the agreement with the level F pricing for another year, when next year comes round you will have to start a new agreement with the latest Microsoft pricing which is set to rise after July this year. Or we can start a new 3 year agreement on level E pricing now, this way you know what pricing you will be paying for the next 3 years. So, do I restart on level E now or stick with level F for another year and then start a new 3 year agreement?

I'll have to pick it up from the recording, tried changing settings but despite system sounds working and being able to listen to audio in Youtube the meeting remained resolutely silent.