DrBeaker

Interesting - How are you doing the silent sign-on? Just for Onedrive?

Science labs I've had to work in, typically have the floor covered with linoleum-type flooring. Or some type of resin floor. Once it's sealed, it's sealed and you can't get it up without some serious work. There's only 3x ways of getting something somewhere AFAIK - under the floor, above the ceiling, or a pole in the middle of the room.

We've gone from 10-year old machines with 4GB RAM/HDD with no maintenance done on them since they were installed and a logon time of 10-20x mins. To i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB M2 SSD machines with a logon time of under 1x minute., This is with roaming profiles. Even with the typical IT crap in mine (probably the largest in the school) they still load fast.

We still use roaming profiles (an RM school) so I wonder how this is going to affect us over the next few years? I'm already getting messages about profiles not synchronised when users are logging off on Windows 10 at the moment.

+1 for Lindy stuff. Used one of their IR repeaters in a loooooong hall to repeat the IR signal for the projector over a normal ethernet cable. Fantastic bits of kit.

In what subject was the work plagiarised?

Yeah that's what my research led me to. Yet another online subscription based model. Don't tell me I'm the ONLY one who has to deal with this legacy stuff? I'm under no illusions that staff will have converted everything to another format by the time Flash stops being supported. Same as @localzuk. That's what my research led me to.

What version of Flash did you have installed to get this to work? My test today which seems to have worked. Windows 8.1, Office 2013. 1. Installed Flash player 2. Saved the PowerPoint file (which was in .PPT format) as .PPTX format to a new folder. 3. Opened the newly created PowerPoint file (saved in .PPTX format) 4. The Boardworks animations work fine. I wonder how this is going to work when Flash is stopped from next year? https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/25/16026236/adobe-flash-end-of-support-2020 EDIT: Tried again on another machine (Windows 8.1, Office 2013) and didn't have to put the folder to Trusted Locations.

Funnily enough I've been looking for something similar for myself the past week or so. We have Windows 10 laptop-come-tablets and even with the latest builds of Windows 10, you can't seem to control or enforce the tablet mode option. Bloody ridiculous! Nearest I've found was to either disable or enable sensors via GPO. That's as close as I've currently got!

They either need to stump up the cash then for Photoshop, or get used to - god forbid - teaching themselves how to use another piece of software. Who do they think teaches us the differences in versions and software? Because it's not Photoshop! We all know what it's like with teachers even if an icon for something changes and how that means "they can't teach". Affinity Photo seems to be getting more and more exposure for the replacement for Photoshop so +1 for this. I really think from our point oof view that with Adobe CC they've dropped a massive clanger.

Similar to what I do. In this school it's RM but IMHO their naming convention works for them, but not for me. so I'm renaming it. xxxDT255 tells me nothing about where it is. If it's been moved, if it's somewhere it shouldn't be etc.

I always find this topic fascinating, to see what others have chosen. There's no real right or wrong way to name them. I've gone for school code-classroom-xxx school code - code of the school classroom - name of the room xxx = number of computer We have normal classrooms where there's only 1x teacher computer. IT Suites just increment in number. Admin machines are called differently. The theory is the simple numbers help with classroom/seating plans e.g student x sits at computer x.

We did ECDL one year. After some initial issues due to lack of planning by the IT Teaching faculty. We had to get a plugin installed (a specific version of JAVA and something from them if I remember right). Enabled popups and a few other things. That was it. What really grinds my gears is these days how can the exam board NOT have software that simulates the different versions of Office? I get fed up of having to bodge and put workarounds in for their software.

Maybe going off topic slightly - Is this change going to make door access and control come under the remit of IT? Or do you have a site team that will be doing this? Just curious?

Ones I know of are: Home Professional Education Enterprise LTSC Any others that are common? I was tempted with LTSC but after reading here, other forums etc it seems it WAS originally intended to be a bit like Ubuntu - but now Microsoft have taken that back and seem to hold off any development at all with LTSC. They do seem to be pushing towards normal Education.

Remember how many versions of Windows Vista there were? They really seem to have dropped a clanger again with Windows 10 versioning. Surely it should be as simple as ... Home = Home use Pro = Pro use for advanced home users. Enterprise = Large companies with large numbers of computers Education = Schools No we don't want your crap apps such as Candy Crush etc installed by default. Would it really be that hard for MS to listen to us?

I see your point and fundamentally I agree.... but E.g. if they purchased a sign-in system that uses one type of cards and brought a door access system that uses another type that's incompatible - that's now become a technical problem due to lack of communication and teamwork, poor planning and bad management. On paper why should IT intervene and fix what would essentially be a social/business/management problem? From my experience IT never get the kudos for fixing things that are in reality nothing to do with us and IT not turning round and saying it was crap management that caused the problem in the first place people. Which is IMHO why in IT people get so cynical. E.g. with classroom vandalism - none of that is a technical issue, but it becomes our problem because management are either unable or unwilling to investigate the issues and root causes behind it (bad classroom management)

As much as I really, really, really want to come to the defence of Microsoft and say "they are brilliant, Windows 10 is the best ever OS ever" they are making it really hard for me to say that. * dodgy updates * broken updates * features that were fully working are now being broken The UK is really going to suffer with the lack of decent broadband infrastructure still. Never mind rolling out 5G, there are STILL areas of the UK with little-no 2G mobile coverage. I wonder how this is going to affect a lot of RM users, WE use offline files on some of our stuff!

Is this a case though again perhaps, of management trying to use IT to solve an issue - when it's a non-technical issue? This seems like more of a management/line-management sort of problem if people aren't doing what they are told to do. Solving non-technical issues with technical solutions only 1) enables humans to continue to be lazy 2) puts IT in a bad light (even thought it wasn't us who put these systems in place)

Exactly. Some schools may have had people who understood, supported and good management of the Apple Tech with SLT backing. Some might not have. It's simply not going to work for everyone and not everyone has the same level of funding or staff to manage a system like that. We've used Apple Macs, iPads and Apple TVs. In the end due to teacher feedback they were removed from the classrooms and replaced with a standard solution of Windows PCs and projectors which worked more reliably (from the teachers viewpoint). We've had constant issues with integrating Apple devices into an AD-based network it just gives us a headache. Not all teachers are going to be interested in the new solutions either. Some simply want to teach and aren't interested in learning anything new.

As the Apple expert then - you can appreciate that most MDMs have updated or changed over time. The ones I used at the time were setup by someone else, who's to say they had any training in how to set it up or even did it properly? Whose to say what they told me to do, was correct? Who stated there was wireless displays in every classroom? Some of us techs on here don't have the luxury of having the most up-to-date equipment and have no choice but to continue to use old equipment for real-world financial reasons. An iPad or Apple TV to cast the iPad to - versus a cheap projector, TV or god-forbid a few cheap VGA monitors and a VGA splitter - we're good to go for probably 5x years. Compared to the TCO of Apple devices that have planned obsolescence built into them? For the price of 1x room setup for an iPad user I could stretch that funding out for 3x classrooms instead of 1x. Most techs I imagine haven't had the luxury either to go on expensive paid training course for Apple MDM management solutions. We've had to figure it out all by ourselves - normally at our own expense and time - whilst doing our day jobs. After all that's what we pay specialists for - if we could afford them. I'm sure we'd sooner spend that money on the students education.

Hi All, Has anyone got any laptops without a built-in network socket? We've got a bunch of Dell Latitude 3189 laptops that are built via PXE boot using a Dell USB-ethernet adapter. This is because the devices don't have an in-built network socket. Windows 10 installs fine via UEFI and Secure boot settings, but everytime they are built, there's a load of missing drivers, but the drivers are on the RM CC4 server. The drivers can be updated via Windows update manually and via Dell's support page. But the Windows build + drivers fails every single time. Has anyone had similar sort of problems with laptops like this? Thanks

To be honest, I only started wearing watches again once I started working in a school. I have a couple of cheap Casios digital ones, that I wear in case they get scratched etc.

So the term "Pro" in "iPad Pro" you wouldn't equate to a 'professional' device then? A LOT of 3rd party management tools for iPads are essentially useless for us as they can only work around the limitations of the OS they are managing - which is an Apple limitation. I'm by no means an Apple or iPad expert, but whether it was iPhone/iPad configurator, Meraki, Lightspeed etc all had workarounds for things that should just work properly. E.g. Active Directory, GPOs etc work very well with .... Windows OS's Yep. We too have an awful lot of kit that has no in-built wireless functions. Fair enough and that's a very valid point. However where's the money coming from for these adapters? Versus about £20-30 for a VGA splitter and some VGA cables? That setup will outlive most of the kit it's connected to. I have some VGA splitters that are probably 10x years old and are still working. Schools aren't designed with servers, IT etc in mind. I know some plans for schools I've seen or heard from other IT colleagues - they didn't plan for the server room! I know one school that had Macs in the clasrooms and Apple TVs. Due to the number of complaints we replaced them with AIO units, never got another complaint again. I've replaced some software-based screen sharing systems that were setup and unreliable, with hardware-based ones and I've not had any problems with them since. Agree.

Woah aren't you won over by the dark-mode apps? That's a game-changer! No issues with Apple kit, it's just their sales tactics and blatant stuff like this "Oh we're innovative" etc. No, you are no longer innovative IMHO. E.g. if you are - where's my MDM for Apple iPads?