RChilcott

Hi guys / lasses I know this is an old thread however I read this thread with interest as we buy 95% of our toner cartridges from IJT and to date I've been entirely happy with the service and support we receive. We are I guess an average secondary school with around 1100 students and centrally manage the purchase of toner cartridges therefore we are able to achieve economies of scale. Mostly due to me discouraging colour printing via the use of printing credits (Papercut - excellent software) we mostly purchase mono cartridges, having said that I have noticed a higher failure rate with their colour cartridges. However, whenever we have experienced an issue with a cartridge a simple phone call or email to our account manager has always resolved the issue to my satisfaction with the minimum of effort on my part with a new cartridge always being despatched with no quibble! Certainly we achieve much better pricing than is listed in any of their brochures therefore you may find it useful to contact an account manager directly and have a conversation even if it's only to get a competitive quote to bring another suppliers price down. I can get very stroppy with unsolicited sales calls and junk email (ask the guys that work with me), like yourselves there's sometimes not enough time in the day to scratch your backside, I do find I get the occasional junk email from IJT which simply goes straight to my junk email therefore i don't really see it as a problem! Periodically I check pricing against other competitors and always find them to be competitive, on the rare occasion I do find a more competitive price they will always price match or better. Our account manager is Jonny Sinclair and have always found him to be amiable, quick and efficient minimising the time spent on a pretty mundane task! Just my thoughts Richard

Thank you everyone for your input I have taken a look at MLH and love the simplicity of the interface and will look forward to evaluating the new release that incorporates the asset management barcode reading functionality. In the meantime I'll explore using a barcode scanner with our own solution so thanks again to Angry Technician for your useful posts. If anyone else has any further thoughts regarding this subject I'd certainly be interested to know them. Regards Richard

Thanks for your input Web Help Desk Software I'll take a look at your product tahnks for your input ref bar code scanning. Ozan thanks for getting in contact i signed on and took a quick look at the online version of MLH earlier I liked the simplicity of the interface. Basically I’m looking to barcode all my assets (Mainly student and staff laptops) and when a student or member of staff physically brings their laptop to us we simply scan the bar code which in turn would populate the relevant fields. When looking at MLH there did not appear to be the facility for asset management is this correct or did I miss this? If so as you've stated I presume this will be in your next release. My overall aim is to accurately inventorize assets, link the asset with a barcode also to an assigned user (staff or student laptop) in turn maintaining an accurate log of service requests per asset. Any idea when your next release of MLH will be available? Thanks Richard

Thanks Angry Tech that's really useful information I was not aware that they functioned in such a manner do these scanners come with configuration software? Thanks again to Overworked and Edutech for the MLH recommendation I'll take a look at that now with interest. I've looked at Spiceworks (not so sure about the adverts spyware and so forth) and Sysaid which both look good although I want a quick clean simple interface with minimal options when logging a ticket. I'm sure i can probably customize these option within both these products have not unfortunately had much time to evaluate. We do currently have our own php and mysql solution that we have developed ourselves but unfortunately development time is the issue hence looking for an out of the box solution. We have budgeted around £500 - £600 so i'm not necessarily looking for a freebie (nice if we can find one) if anyone else has any further thoughts on the matter or do actually already use some helpdesk software utilizing a Bar code scanner I would be extremely interested to hear your thoughts. Thanks Richard

Dear All Apologies for another thread on help desk software, however I’ve been trawling through helpdesk software trials and need to implement a solution urgently. I wondered if anyone out there is using or could recommend help desk software that incorporates scanning of barcodes to log ticket requests against items that have already been added to the database. Currently all our students and teaching staff (approx 1100) are issued with laptops, as you can imagine this keeps us rather busy. Typically are busiest times are during registration, break times and after school where there is a need to log calls quickly and efficiently thus wishing to use bar codes to achieve this. Does anyone have any ideas? Many thanks Richard IT Systems Manager Valley Park Community School

To anyone that may be following this post just wanted to let you know that both the script and ADM template methods worked for me. I ended up going for the Adm template that lets me redirect the start menu. Just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone that contributed to this post.

Thanks ajbritton i thought it might be something to do with the continuous loop but did not know how to put a delay on it. Am experimenting with the 2 methods (mapped network drive or this .au3 file) to prevent users accessing network shares via the redirected start menu. I'll let everyone know what works best for me.

Uraken That's great thanks for getting back to me so quickly really appreciated will let you know how i get on

Hello Uraken I've just been trying to implement your adm file and have imported it as a template, I can see the folder under Administrative Templates called Start Folder Redirection but there are no setting listed. Do i need to edit your adm file to reflect a mapped network drive location? Also anyone else that may be following this post i downloaded altecsole StopNetBrowse.au3 file compiled to .exe. I found that it worked very well and indeed killed the explorer window as soon as i tried to browse the network share from the redirected start menu, however when i looked at the process in task manager i found that it was running at upto 45% Cpu usage. Does anyone know i might be able to reduce this? Any help would be greatly appreciated this problem is really starting to get to me!!!! Thanks

Thanks for that tip FN-Greatermanchester I'll give that a try! Cheers

Hi All I've experienced the same problem with users being able to double click on programs in the Start menu and subsequently browse some network shares. I have already tied down all the gpo's that apply to right clicking on the start menu. The post by rvdmast works very well for the current user but does anyone know how to apply that to all users? Any help would be extremely appreciated Many thanks Richard

Hi Craig Thanks for your reply i did think about that however each time logs are saved to the drive they are saved into a new folder so i end up with lots of randomly name folders. It appears that these updates are saved to the drive with most amount of free space, rather annoying!! I just need to find a way to force logs to save to C: Thanks Richard

Hi All I have WSUS installed on a win 2003 server and am pleased to report that in the main my client workstations update fine however my problem lies with our student laptops. These laptops are managed through gpo's on our domain and I have configured various settings relating to windows updates which all work fine. I have partitioned the hard disk into two drives (c: & d:) and through group policy have denied access to the C: drive, for obvious reasons leaving the d: drive unrestricted. The idea being that the d: drive can be used as a common area for work at home or when connected to the network. My problem / annoyance is this every time a windows update is performed the installation log file is saved to the root of d: drive and not on the c: drive in the appropriate folder thus confusing students and cluttering up the drive. I have removed the d: partition and the log file is then saved to the root of c: drive so I don't think I have a permissions problem. Firstly where should these log files be saved and can I force updates via WSUS to save in correct location, if not can I disable logging? I have messed around with the logging option in both computer and user setting in group policy to no avail! Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Richard