MrEprise

Did he not think to store backups of his work somewhere away from the building i.e. cloud, like many of us already do since we'd all be in the s*** if we didn't?

That seems odd & annoying given server 2019's Extended support runs to 2029 and server 2022's Mainstream support doesn't end until 2026.

We've just had a member of Staff come in to report she gets an error message anytime she logs into it, but it's apparently working fine for other Staff? EDIT: The error is a 404 not found so I'd guess they're experiencing issues again.

Like you, I also bought a Vostro a little while ago for similar reasons being lots of connectivity and the ability to upgrade RAM and Storage. I notice they've not said what they're doing with the Vostro brand though, or will they quietly discontinue it again? I have 4 different HP laptops here within arms reach. 2 of them have slightly more logical model names/numbers such as EliteBook 840 G6 and 250 G7. Then there are the 2 cheaper (and near identical) models I've had to buy in - where budget was tight, which have silly model designations such as 14s-dq0509sa & 14s-dq0518sa.

We have another recent one in our part of the UK. Matford Brook Academy in Exeter which reportedly has poorly-placed foundations and bolts missing from a large number of steel beams running throughout the school, as well as other various cut corners that I'm aware of. Construction company has also recently fallen into administration. They were deliberating a while back as to whether to attempt to repair the existing building or pull it down & rebuild. Last I heard, the latter was the likely option.

Just for reference, keyboards without a keypad are known as Tenkeyless keyboards which should help you narrow your search a bit.

Autumn

When I first started working at my last school, we had Altiris Deployment Solution (long before being swallowed up by Symantec) and it was worlds better than Ghost at the time, even going as far as having better monitoring of a deployment as it allowed you to see where in the deployment any PC was (Ghost did this but not to the same level as Altiris.) Eventually, we were forced to get rid of it as it wasn't considered "Industry Standard" by a relatively clued-up member of SLT and he wanted us to change a lot of what we used to said "Industry Standard" software. So we ended up with Ghost and I got frustrated with how clunky and limited it felt over Altiris. Over time, I grew to like Ghost and was actually sorry to see it go when we moved away from it to SCCM. When I left there and came to work at my current school back in 2020, I found them to still be using Ghost quite extensively. You never really forget how to use stuff like that so it was easy to pick up and use. Again, I had to move them away from Ghost to SCCM, which was one of the reasons I was hired as they knew it was old and limited and they wanted someone more technically minded than the outgoing technician who could move them to something somewhat better and newer. Was sorry to see it go for a second time.

Margarita

I recall watching a Youtube video from John Ward where he reviewed these sockets against MK's usual higher-quality sockets. The essentials sockets turned out to be very flimsy and very flammable.

Under PAL, we had the common lengths E-120 (2hr), E-180 (3hr) & E-240 (4hr). Americans under NTSC only had T-120 (2hr) & T-160 (2hr, 30min). Other lengths may have existed but weren't standard. Each length could be doubled using Long Play or tripled using Extended Play (also known as Super Long Play) if the Video Recorder supported it. Having recorded stuff using EP/SLP, the quality was certainly lacking.

Yeah, I wondered what it was to be honest - initially thought it was on the telly. When they sent out the test message last year, my phone did sod all as it doesn't fully support 4G. As I got one this time, I think they must have sent it over GSM as well.

We still use Design & Web Premium but as we created a serialisation EXE, this seems to work for the majority of the time. I had to install Acrobat X for one user recently and had a hell of a job getting it to activate as the serialisation EXE doesn't seem to work for Acrobat and the activation process had changed dramatically. As a side note to this, I have a 2-PC licence for Photoshop CS5 at home and the changes to activation means I cannot deactivate the licence on any PCs to then be able to reactivate on other hardware later on.

(Peter) Green

I remember earlier Astra's (much like my Mk4) had a slightly off centre wheel. I also remember the Nova had a steering wheel was considerably off centre!

That was unfortunately expected given the vandalism they had earlier on.

As is mine (well, my Mum's.) It's a 1.0 ecoflex which is similar to Ford's 1.0 ecoboost but has a timing chain not bathed in oil. Quick and comfortable. Never understood the hate to be honest.

And here's another one (borrowed while I wait for my Focus to be repaired.)

I found a Twitter... sorry, X post that suggests you can also run "C:\WINDOWS\system32\SystemSettingsAdminFlows.exe" FeaturedResetPC and this supposedly gives the same functionality.

I will remember this for next time, however EduGeek is often more convenient.

This ad makes the following spring to mind...

3 years for portable devices is one that surprised me until we had an external IT Security & Support company come in at one point (trying to help the Trust turn all our schools server-less) and the discussion of Laptop longevity came up. They pointed out that if you use a Laptop almost constantly, by year 3 the battery has degraded to the point it'd ideally need replacement and that can sometimes come in at a hefty cost (especially if replacing more than one,) and it can also be virtually impossible to source replacement batteries for some models. It's one of those where I'm reluctant to, but do agree with.

We're not, but one of the other Secondaries in the trust is. Silly decision.

Yes, we use Cunninghams & the IT Manager at one of our other schools using them found this out recently as he & we may be moving MIS ourself. He's now trying to organise moving to on-premise SIMS whereas we're moving ahead to use the MIS used by the rest of our Trust. Ho hum.

Yep, tested this morning and it's all working. Thank you.