mthomas08

I didn't know about SWGEmu Is it good? less grind fest?

Standard procedure, allows the new "Director" board to be more in line with management. Would I be assuming correctly? that either A: Management have fallen out with the Governing body or B: new management has arrived in some way.

I think it is too many, my guess is Eddie wont go abroad and do "things". He's the guy who will offer an opinion if you like it or not. The hard part, get rid of the two unknowns, Chris Evans and I would seriously enjoy watching Matt, Eddie and Sabine. Eddie and Sabine are certainly going to clash and Matt could be the laid back one. Such a shame they have Chris... it is looking like the show I want to watch but.. I cant put my self through Evans. I'd end up like these people who watch shows and complain about them all day..

Used to be in a RM School a long time ago, walked away due to "their way or the highway" including equipment and high costs. As others have said, Virtualisation. One of the first things I did at my current job was spend quite a bit on a virtual server. Redundancy which allows parts to fail with no downtime and Dell are good on the warranty (my experience) plus getting spares next day is easy enough. Allows us to build servers for anything instead of ordering a new box all the time. Also we scrapped some of the old crap, I don't really need to consider another one for 3-4 Years roughly.. maybe more. Not bad but I think the cost can be cut down (I would have to get quotes to really compare). I’d be tempted depending on what money you get. To virtualize one big box and have a minimal simple box as the main DC/DNS/DHCP. Also shop around and see if anyone is willing to combat that 14K quote, you can usually shave around £1-2K if you do. With that money you can get more. I would also go SAN not NAS, it’s expensive but it’s much more robust/future proofing the system. It’s our next step when space becomes an issue (either SAN or Cloud). On another note, this is a great place to ask advice if you have minimal experience in this kind of a thing. There are a lot of people who would spend a good amount of time sending you a large list of things to go for. One term I will always stand by – aim for the mountains and a lot of redundancy when it comes to servers. When it’s all setup, any issues will be your head or the next IT person. Depending on the size of your site, it’s usually best to go for it because you never know what you may do “in house”. Especially when you have more freedom away from RM and people see what other “Non RM” Schools have.

Although I agree space shouldn't be an excuse, I'm sure we all know that simply expanding a server isn't a 5 second job. Luckily enough we limit our SIMs server to pretty much SIMs.net plus the software packages that export data overnight for other products. Problem is though, you also have to consider server performance. I don't think it would be a massive issue for us but I would certainly raise my eye brow at the thought of our SIMs Server doing much more. It's not like SIMs is the fastest package at the moment either.

I know, but as I said. After about ten minutes I would change the channel and move on. If at the end of the day I find Evans too annoying on Top Gear, I will simply not watch it and change the channel. There are some people who make it obvious they don't like some one then moan all day about the fact they *had to put up with them. As if you've been tied to a chair and forced to watch some one you don't like... strange but true

Been a while since I dealt with this but the storage doesn't have to be independent. At the time (although that word, time* - was seriously limited due to current failures). I setup a cluster for our main data storage, all stored on two servers that replicated to each other and were setup as a cluster as well. Instead of \\server\ it was \\custername\ It worked but then there was issues.. as I said I suffered from time limited before I could mass test everything. There was performance issues where things would go slow to the point of freezing up. In the end we used one server as the drives and the second box as a replication in the event of a failure of number 1.

Likewise, I sort of enjoyed the show before when it was more about every day cars and the extra details but.. I prefer this format. It's also why it became a world known TV show. Still.. once they announced Matt doing it.. well perhaps if he does all the talking and not Chris Evans I could enjoy it To be fair though.. as I said before I will try it but I cant stand Chris and no matter what shows he is on I end up switching over after 10 minutes.

Yep. We all knew what this whole Academy status was about. Continue to put pressure on Teachers to get children through an education system, while removing the responsibility from the Government. When it goes right, they will claim the credit but when it goes wrong they get to blame others. Just the whole BSF mess again, I'm already aware of another trust having issues with falling grades not far from us (was in the paper).

I did see about 2 lines worth, didn't realise someone had gone this far to prove it.... Really does show what happens when you have too much time on your hands.

To be honest we are at this stage now, but only because things are settling down and working. It's where I always aim to be. Allows us to focus on more development, improvements and planning. Hell I have finally created a list of every cable job I'd like to get done.

I'm just glad they gave Maldonado the boot. He drives like I used to on F1 97.

I prefer the one you can plug in, cuts down long term costs

I'm sure the job would look very attractive if you decided to move on and the School re-applied for a replacement.. Sorry but I think in this instance I would walk unless you don't physically need the space to repair anything and all your work is on one PC. Anything else I would assume would get fixed in the classroom? I will also add, you will "Most Likely" be expected to assist in ADMIN Duties or are you able to have a sign on your desk stating "IT Technician not Admin/Office". Although I am sure you will classed as a grump etc etc for not helping............

Two solutions which seem to fix 99% of our problems. USB Power cable (can't remember the actual term it's called) but it extends a USB cable and gives a bit more power. or Plugging that cable directly to the Smart board not using the controller part (think that's what it's called). There is two boards to plug a USB cable in to, one part is the multi adapter which allows you to connect up to a few devices. The other is the actual main board. We also found that latest versions of smart/drivers don't necessarily work for older boards.

Teacher App or remote access is pretty much the only way I believe (Or SLG? I can't remember if that has it or not). Teacher App doesn't require connections because it can be used "Offline", we are holding back a little due to the Windows 8+ required so going to go W10.

I hope it's not too hefty, luckily enough everyone here understands the benefit of Office/Windows. The last time the School attempted to switch to "Open Source" they realised it was a total new ball game to setup, Support and of course the Schools needs. It was a lot of time that became wasted and could have been gone towards making IT work better... Still, I will continue to stick with M$ unless it was a feasible option. We've already tried Google Apps and Open Office, at the time of trying these were not brilliant alternatives.

Had a similar issue in our apartment building. The firm was trying to decide to allow a dish on the top for Sky or cabling for virgin. After it was all built they decided on Virgin, by this time everything was being sold/rented off and it took Virgin months to do some cable locating or things at their end. We had been living here for about 12 months before we could get anything decent, luckily enough we went to BT through the phone line and it gave us something. Virgin had dug about 3 holes all around the same 5 metre area and visited the spot about 9 times before it was all done and dusted. I don't understand why they didn't get it all sorted out before hand unless companies simply didn't want to spend the money sorting out the cabling in the event the construction was scrapped?...

We are using Windows Netbooks, which in turn allows us to do certain things e.g. Imaging, Support and put all software that's needed. There's some department software which we are legally able to install, full version of office and of course Staff/Students are used to it. Tried Android Tablets from the likes a Google Nexus/Lenovo models but even after months of Staff using/attempting and even us going out of way to find "App" alternatives they were not a success. Other than Internet Access and basic word we simply chose to revert back to Netbooks. We are currently reviewing what we are doing for next year, there is 50/50 chance we've simply had enough of all the problems and pull the plug.

We not long went to Office 2013, I'm more than happy to stay on this for at least another 18 months or close as possible till M$ pull the plug. Maybe when we consider leaving W7 and going to W10 we will have a Office 2016 but Capita/SIMs must support it completely till we do.

We have Toshiba equipment linked to Biometrics, each user has their own budget in Papercut. At the end of every month a DEPT report is sent to Finance who charge the correct budgets. Although not perfect due to some Staff being in multi depts, we charge slightly less than what they should be. We've still got some niggles to work out too but we are getting things close to perfect.

We've virtualised most things: Still got separate Exchange/SIMs.net and a DC or two. All for obvious reasons, in the event (incredibly tiny odds) of the virtual box having several failures all at once. The general system can still operate, although key ones will be down. In a dream world I would have 3 Physical Servers with some key ones Synced/Clustered. Perhaps overkill but in my eyes with the ever growing need for more more more there is no such thing.

We use School asset manager, not perfect in regards to editing multiple items like a database but it does it's job.

25 have voted for WhiteList (including me). I'm curious who says otherwise TO be honest, most people in our position call it that or Allow Only which is pretty much the simple term we would tell non IT Literate. Even Service Providers call it that and put that on all paper work/Filtering naming etc.

Correction, EduDog is not working - he's preparing to do some head banging to AC/DC Thunderstruck. You can see the head banging preparation.