woody

Sorry, I tried to reply to your post last night, but I couldn't get enough connection out of tiscali to send it!!!! Yes, I'm still having problems. Anyway, here goes........ Another one to add to your list: http://www.dslzoneuk.net LLU=Local Loop Unbundling. It is where an ISP take control of their own equipment at the BT exchange. Of course, this means they have to have competent staff in place not just to transfer everyone, but to problem solve when things go wrong. MAC=Migration Authorisation Code. It's what you get off your current ISP and give to your new ISP when you want to change. It enables them to avoid you loosing your connection at the switchover. Currently only accepted with ADSL connections. You can get an LLU MAC code but they are supported by very few ISPs. As regards a static IP address, you only realy need one of those if you plan to have a server or something accessible from the internet which needs a constant IP address. If you don't have a static IP, your ISP will give you an IP through DHCP and this could change anytime especially if your router disconnects and reconnects again. Hope this helps.

So how much is the asking price for one of these?

Hands up who's SMT and Governors will agree to adopt a MIS that is largely untested, unsupported and 'no garantees it will work properly' as opposed to SIMS or CMIS or whatever currently paid for MIS they use. And is it worth it to take on board the support implications that any school will expect if they trial such a system?

I know about the 10 day period of speed fluctuation and I sincerely wished you were right, but you would expect to get speeds greater than 50-100k and you would expect to be able to load a web page in less than 30 secs. This problem isn't about getting the line speed right, it is performing exactly the same on 8mb as it was on 2mb (and on 1mb which they initially put me on when they changed me over to the dark side (LLU) and forgot I should be on2mg).

Quick he is possessed. Grab him and get a Priest!!!! I am still smouldering that we choose SIMS over CMIS a while back when we had the chance to change (though I understand the reasoning and that it does have it problems too) and then that we choose Lesson Monitor over Pars. As much as Lesson Monitor 'works' it just seems awkward, unintelligent and less feature rich. That is my main gripe. Sims does 'work', but it just seems never to do what expected, even Capita seem suprised when you mention what things do or should do, and is just not a great application to use (the almighty user friendly interface). Then it takes 6 months to fix it which then introduces more problems. Grrrr, now I'm going to have to sit in a dark room for a while. LOL. In Cumbria, two or three schools have gone for CMIS over the past few years. As far as I know, (In one instance I know for certain - just ask Stewart Knight. In the other instance, it's what I've heard off the grape vine) the schools have had terrible problems with CMIS. All support is telephone based - there is no Local Help desk like SIMS have which means a lot when you are in Cumbria. They have found the software to be buggy. And because CMIS adapts greatly to the individual school running it, support is difficult to keep consistent. On the other hand, my brother works for a school in Rochadale and has written his own web front end to give the staff what info they want out of the CMIS SQL DB. You can't really do that with SIMS. My point being, if you have someone with enough knowledge and time to get CMIS running and tailored to your school - Great. But what if that person then leaves? If you run into problems, Tech Support can't help because they don't know how the system has been adapted for your school. It takes them a lot longer to get to the route of a problem. I am not speaking from personal experience, so correct me if I am wrong.

You could say that about all areas of privatization that have occurred in the Government. It's less hastle to pay for someone else to do the job for you, with the added benefit that you get to blame them if it all goes horribly wrong. (Look at the shambles of the NHS IT infrastructure to name just one example.)

Just to say I ran the September upgrade with no problems. Sims may not offer the most fantastic MIS that we would all like, but none of the alternatives are perfect either. What SIMS do offer in most localities, is a first rate support service, usually local, who sort things out when they go wrong.

Just to add to that, what Tiscali are saying is that if you want all calls to be routed automatically, that's what CPS will do for you. If you don't but still want to have the service, you can dial a code manually before the phone number to route it to Tiscali.

***Warning, Long Post. But well worth the read if you are thinking of having Tiscali as your ISP. Get a cup of tea and read on....*** I am with Tiscali - but probably not for long. We have the call package at 19.99. It is great when it is working, but often times it stops working or goes very slow. Then you run into problems. Namely, Indian Call centre for Technical Support. Don't get me wrong, it's not that you can't understand them, or they can't understand you. It's just that they are reading from a script, and I have come across very few that know anything at all other than whats on paper in front of them. Yes, I have called them that many times!!! Here's my latest episode with them just to give you a taster: August 22nd. My connection stops working. I ring up TS (Tech support) They tell me some upgrades are being performed at the BT exchange. Call back if it's not working in the morning. Not working in the morning. I call back after work thinking I'll give them a little more time. When I call back, they start to ask me questions about conditions at my end ie. Have you tried the USB modem (I use a belkin router). Have you tried a different ADSL splitter? Have you tried restarting your router? Do you have any malware? Can you ping your router. Etc Etc. Of course none of this worked. Because it was their problem. Then I have a look on my BT account to see if I can spot if anything had been perfomred on my telephone line. Sure enough, two orders placed on the line on August 2nd, one for an ADSL Cease, and one to put the line on an LLU connection. In other words, Tiscali had put me on LLU without informing me. 10 days later, numerous calls, and two threats to Tiscali Cancellation line, and my router mysteriously connects itself back onto tiscali. GREAT! Not so great. The connection was ephatically slow. Slower than 256k. Slower than 56k, it seemed. A speed test showed I was actually getting on average 50-100k. My router was connecting at 2meg but I certainly wasn't browsing at 2meg. Ringing TS gave no results. Just the same old "Have you got any malware on your PC" routine. They kept telling me they could see I was connecting at 2meg so from their viewpoint everything was fine. It was certinaly not fine. Last friday I rang up the cancellations line (this is in England) and asked to cancell. They said the problem had been logged with an engineer on 2nd September so they must still be looking into it. They would get someone to ring me back within 24 hours. What had they been doing for the last 13 days??? I agreed to give them one more chance in the knowlegde that you can't get a MAC code when your connection is LLU because few ISPs support them - which means it would be a month or so before I could get a new connection with a different ISP. Saturday morning, and I fire up the laptop in Bed. Woah. The pages where loading up - FAST. I logged into router and it was connecting at 6meg!!!!! 'Yes' I thought, 'they must have sorted it out and put me on 8meg as a nice gesture!' Lunch time came, run IE again - back to same old 56k sluggish connection. Even though my router was still connecting at 6meg. So here we are, Monday morning, still a virtually unusable connection, and I'm almost ready to cancell, no chances, no excuses. I am not an only case. Look at the Tiscali forums. They are packed with different people all over the country having problems (which you expect with any ISP) but getting no support or resolution to their problems. They are reverting to a few english Tiscali engineers who pick up support requests through the forums but even this is slow. http://www.tiscali.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=215 The conclusion of the matter being, don't go with Tiscali, Talk Talk, Pipex or any of these ISPs that offer cheap deals or 'Free Broadband' with calls attached. They rack up customers offering them Everything for next to Nothing. Then theie networks can't cope with the demand and everyone suffers. It's the same old story: You get what you pay for. I will probably be going with Freedom2Surf since my PFY is with them and he says he's had no problems.

I've got it set up on MS server with AD intergration, but I've never managed an RM network so I don't know what the difference might be in setup. I did post the contents of my 'wildfire.xml' further up so don't know if you can work it out from that? (Thanks Tarquel for putting in Code tags. Didn't know I had to do this but I do now!!!)

It can't be done I'm afraid within a GPO. In fact, Microsoft don't provide anything that I know of whch allows you to set this most basic feature on a network. They do however endorse a solution called 'Limit Login' which I have tried to implement in the past and failed to do. I am sure this was failure on my part - I did try it in a bit of a rush. So it's well worth looking at. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2005/05/UtilitySpotlight/default.aspx

And your's hasn't even been built Stew!!!

Now that's COOL. 8)

You mean Steve BALMY!!! It doesn't surpise me that Microsoft use a nut case to promote their less than innovative software.

Microsoft have never done anything original full stop.

Yes, the images are old, but at least I can see my house! Still nothing on google earth for the whole of Cumbria!!! Shame, there's some stunning scenery amongst the fells and lakes.

I'm sure many of you have already played with this, but just wanted to say I was impressed with the level of detail for Carlise and most areas of the UK as opposed to what's available on Google Earth. I can see my house!!! (And the two sheds in the back yard, one of which I recently took down so the cavity wall insulators could do there stuff on the back wall, only to find out that the house has no cavities afterall even though the company inspecter said it did!!!) Anyway here is the URL for those who haven't seen it. http://local.live.com

Thanks Geoff - will look into this!

Problem is, I restrict access to users on an individual basis and I do this through Group policy. (I put in a bogus proxy as default so they can't get outside) then when a user has had parental permission, I add them to another group policy which gives them the correct proxy. Since IE intergrates with GP, can I do the same with firefox?

Thanks Geoff, but reading that, the feature in IE7 is to reset ALL user applied settings, not just Internet Explorer, and there doesn't appear to be an automated way to do it as in through a group policy. I could cope with using this feature, if it could be reset through a script of policy.

I can't find an option in Group Policies to clear the internet history or set to how many days to keep history. Does this exist? If not, are there any other solutions?

Miles, I have one question for you. HOW DO YOU FIT IT ALL IN???? Welcome to Edugeek

Any chance of having a look at that script ajbritton?

You could use ABTutor control which I admit is a little overkill but well worth the money (£150) for the rest of it's features. It lists all computers with installed client and who is logged onto them. http://www.abconsulting.com

Only two of you??? How many Macs and PCs do you have then?