mthomas08

Poor planning, quick to panic, if there are problems it wont be fixed till capita start (9am? 8am?).

I turned up normal time, around 8:20am. Not seen anyone but contractors/caretakers (as usual). With the SIMs update done and buried there won't be any issues.

I turned up around 8:45. My normal holiday start time, although we did actually have a SIMs issue which didn't update properly - ON THE EXAMS PC - sorted out quickly though.

Oh yes.. the whole "Partition for Everything". Drivers? Create a partition for that, Windows recovery? Create a partition for that, User data store? Create a partition for that, Spare partition? Create a partition for that just for hell Mary. I do not miss the days of multiple partitions. Especially in a day and age these OS's insist you create a backup/copy/save/sync everything "Online to the Cloud"..... We occasionally find old machines with multiple partitions, they get imaged...

Likewise on my iPhone. Every App that used to run smoothly AKA Twitter/Sky Sports App and a few others now it seems to seriously struggle. Always got worse with every single upgrade... and they say Apple isn't the new M$...

I don't agree, far too situational. 100 Student owned Netbooks is far more hard work vs 100 Domain PCs. Last job had around 1000 devices x3 Staff, this job has around 1500 devices x4 Staff. Last job we was able to dedicate our time to planning which was why things worked. This job though we are still fire fighting but no where near as bad as when I first started (which my techy reminded me). We are not spending so much time in the classrooms, if you don't include day to day Student damages..

Sorry for raising an old thread, but can we delete these files?

No but would certainly make me laugh

Having been in a similar situation, my advice - do not get another loan, new car, mortgage - ANYTHING that requires more monthly payments. What to do ? Pay off your credit cards, dont go out, dont eat out, cut down on everything and pay off all your credit cards.

If they got him as the host instead of Evans, I would have seriously been more interested. Get the feeling this rumour is just like the Football Transfers, one person at the BBC HQ mentioned the name Button while in the toilet and that got passed on to the press....

I completely agree. If a cyclist was following me like that I would be prepared to be very defensive and aggressive (likewise if it was a driver). I wouldn't however be prepared to attempt to assault the cyclist/driver and he did get a bit of justice by falling face first. Also the fact that the car came as close to clipping him as the cyclist was to clipping the pedestrian. It only takes one bad clip to fall head first at a bit of speed for the cyclist to be seriously injured by the car but again likewise for the cyclist clipping the pedestrian. I've said this before it doesn't matter if you drive a car, van, bus, ride a motorbike or a cycle - you can still be a "jerk". I've had plenty of cyclists totally cut me up without following the highway code. To me this cyclist is a bit of a high horse attitude - almost as bad as some BMW drivers I see. As for the camera though, I am all for people using them. I am even thinking of getting one my self.

My response straight away: You are not my mother, I am not your slave, I do not kick up a fuss if I come home to find you have not done any house work. I'm not joking that would be my response if I got "Shouted at". Don't get me wrong though: I do the dishes, clothes - have no issue with house work. As for my favourite games - FFX for the Ps2.

How about, don't upgrade? Cancel your contract and keep the current phone? I went with Virgin Media, £5 a month along with my Virgin subscription (TV etc). I was able to save my self another £35 a month just by not upgrading to a phone which in all honesty I don't need to upgrade.

Just seen their twitter feed, it's official. As I said before the real losers will be the BBC and the millions of world wide viewers. Now it will no longer be essentially free to watch. Do I want to sign up for amazon prime? Not really. Perhaps one day if it's popularity increases we will see it attached with Virgin Media/Sky (I can hope). Not really worth signing up to another service just for LikeTopGear but NotTopGear.... If amazon do it right though they can increase the episode series, give us more minutes on "The News" and bring back TheCoolWall but NotTheCoolWall. Sometimes I wish Sky had pinched them, as much as I don't like the main commentators on their Sport channels I do enjoy all the extras that we get with the F1 channel which I will add - has blown away what the BBC ever gave us. Will be interesting to see who else goes over to this new show from the previous crew, the producer who quit BBC will most likely go with them.

I much prefer a standard PC, I don't like all my eggs in the same basket. It's like having no backup but a very reliable system, even the most reliable one can still fail. We have not had much Network downtime in almost 3 Years but when we had, people can still use word etc. It's like this whole cloud based idea, great on paper but in reality it's miles behind. Our current bandwidth wouldn't be able to keep up not with the average Year 10/11 Student drives let alone Staff. Also we have had internet outages and a power issue in the local area which either cuts us off entirely or cuts our internet. Many things work on paper but don't always pan out. Likewise for Wireless, you are relying on something that isn't a constant (weather/signals can affect it). I have pushed for more and more GB networking which people have seen the huge difference. When compared to Wireless and although we are in the process of a wireless upgrade it's still miles behind a piece of copper. Let's face it, it's like relying on 3g instead of a good Wi-Fi connection - no brainer. For thin clients you are relying more on the network + servers. I don't know.. I guess like always it will be School specific, if you have the backbone for Thin clients and don't rely on IT as much as we do you can get away with Wireless/Cloud etc etc. With our current dependency on IT, it's just not realistic for us. Just as much as looking to Macs instead of PCs just simply because of the cost difference and only 30 machines on the entire network need to be powerful for Art/Movie making. Budgets are being squeezed here which is even harder.. At the end of the day you have to plan ahead, think about the whole picture and does it suit your School.

Likewise but there are other things I personally don't like: - Too ambitious - Lacking experience but showing arrogance I like confidence I really do but I absolutely hate arrogance (usually I can spot it too and accurately!). I don't want to be having to watch my back so the technician can plunge a knife in my back to get my job. The job it self (School IT Support) is my priority above their own ambition but I will endeavour to Support their own development. As for the experience, fresh out of University Students are good don't get me wrong but it is a different ball game when heading to IT Support especially in education. The ticket system is not the only way people will come find you and you can't plan the days work every day. Some one able to work on their feet is always the cherry on the cake while still being professional and being polite. Although in Business's they will tend to over look qualifications, some of them are open to experience first (at least a few did in my time).

Yep, we replaced the batteries and smell went.

We use NRS for our cashless catering system, not necessarily expensive and we don't really have a lot of issues with them since having it.

I was watching the live news when it was unfolding (strangely enough the same for 9/11 and the accident that killed Princess Diana). Absolutely saddening when things like this happen in todays world. So much vile and hatred exists. Hearts absolutely goes to the victims, their families and friends. Kind of makes me question a lot about our Country law's that allow certain things (like hate preachers and the death chair - but not necessarily together).

I've gone everything on Virgin Media including my mobile contract. As a result we pay £105 which covers everything, from high broadband, TV + Sport/Films + my mobile and the usual phone. We originally was with sky and was paying almost as much for far less. Although Sky may seem cheaper for new customers once you get past that you will find it's more expensive unless you are getting less. Usually you can phone up Virgin and say you want to cancel because you can get almost as much for far less, now help me otherwise I want to cancel now. Likewise for Sky, they tried to offer me 6 months NEW customer rates but I said what's the point when I will be back here. All Virgin/Sky can do is offer you the rates of any deals going on or cut back on what you have. I still found Virgin was cheaper than Sky but we do get almost the entire package. Considering I was paying £40 for Sky broadband, £60 Sky TV and another £40 for Orange mobile.

Arrrr Batten down the hatches Ya Skurby sea dogs, Ofsted be comin. Yes, we've had the call.

Thought about the Lenovo Yoga? There are several models available.

Having done that my self, yes............. Her and Barrett was my main setup so you can imagine how I felt when......... this was also a time when I didn't use any guide books so I assumed what happened could be undone so I went through everything possible.. in the hope of altering her fate.

Problem with the above, one of the biggest reasons why Schools are going 1:1 is to remove the cost of IT from the budget. If you start buying a lot of equipment around the School you negate that reason? Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of fitting classrooms to be more compatible with our mobile device scheme. Unfortunately the main reason why this School went down 1:1 route was to cut back the IT Budget requirement and put the cost to Parents. If you kit rooms out, you still have to maintain them.

Our School attempted this 1:1 but then realised they couldn't due to the heavy reliance on IT Suites for Year 9-11. At those ages you need productivity above anything else. Our Students still prefer the "Office/Keyboard" method although can be fixed with attached/blue tooth keyboards you also have to consider the screen size and reliance of touch screen vs mouse/keyboard. @Others talking about liability - Falls back on to the School. That's the official statement from Scheme providers, your School IS 100% liable. If Parents refuse to pay, they can all bring the devices back to the School and cancel their DDs. You will have the liability of sorting everything else out. How ever it can be classed as stolen if they cut their payments off and refuse to return the device. This will be the same regardless of who you choose for a Scheme provider or your School organises everything.