Duranis

I just paid £899 for a 32 bay version of this trolley. Despite the price I paid I would highly recommend, build quality is great, cable storage and routing is great and it is a million times better than the standard "tin trolleys" I have here as well. Also the locks on the top is a brilliant idea. In the last 12 months I have had to replace 2 sets of keys because staff move the trolleys with the keys in the door, catch them on a doorframe and then snap them off.

I'm setting up a whole bunch of these right now, they where perfect for what we wanted (sturdy, easy to transport tablet which can also be used for standard desktop stuff). I looked at a lot of Win8.1 tablets and liked these the best (for our price range/requirements, YMMV). I have to agree with some of the statements on the linx10, I would be happy to use one at home but the one I played with at least wasn't ideal (wifi was flakey, camera was not great and it didn't quite feel "robust" enough for the kids to use). That being said however it is cheap, the spec is good for the price and if it is teaching staff that are using it then it might work quite nicely.

I live pretty close to Sandwich and slept through it. If my Mrs hadn't told me about it this morning I would never have known

Didn't see the show but I did go to check out my friends parents PC the other night as they had been scammed. Apparently they had a call from "Microsoft" who had detected a problem with their computer, etc, etc and they actually fell for it. Sadly they lost £8k of their savings and the banks view was "You gave them access, therefore we owe you nothing". They are following it up with police now to try and reclaim money but it is unlikely that will happen. I have drummed it into my family that they should never give any information out to anyone who phones or emails them but I'm sure they still probably would with the right amount of pressure put on them in the right way.

I get this all the time here and it is so annoying. I'm a pretty approachable guy and I generally get things fixed pretty quickly but people sometimes just never tell me if there is an issue. So frustrating when there is some issue that every member of staff seems to know about but not one of them thinks its a good idea to mention it to the guy that could actually resolve it. I have seriously given thought to taking over a corner of the staff room full time and working from there. If I am right there where people will see me a couple of times a day member it will remind them I'm here (or I will at least over hear them moaning about XY or Z not working).

So just noticed when checking the installation overview in CC4 for windows updates that pretty much every update on every machine is showing as "status unknown". There are some updates showing as "Not Applicable" but only 1 showing as installed. Looking on RM website the only information I could find was: "This is caused by the computer SUS ID being issued to more than one computer. The SUS ID is WSUS’s way of uniquely identifying the WSUS client. When a client checks in it will use its SUS ID. If more than one computer has the same SUS ID, even if they are reporting the same status for an update, what happens is WSUS sees two answers and is unable to determine the status.To solve this issue new client IDs need to be compiled; this is currently something Support can do for you." I know how to force a single PC to get a new SUS ID but this involves editing the registry and forcing it to update. Not 100% convinced this is the issue anyway as it is every machine that has the issues. Any ideas on how to troubleshoot/fix this? WSUS is saying it has not been able to communicate with PC's either but I don't know how CC4 and WSUS interact so reluctant to mess with it too much.

Quick slightly off topic question (but still in the same theme). Do any of you have a knowledge base for the staff with general IT info on (i.e. how do you open X file, Where do I find X folders, etc) and if you do does any of the staff use it? Having explained how to change the default program for opening images to pretty much every member of staff, and then printing out a step by step guide, with pictures, and putting it up in the staff room (which nobody seems to ever look at) I was thinking about setting up an FAQ/Knowledge base for staff that covers the computer basics. I'm fairly sure it would go completely unused though.

We are with Konica for our 2 photocopiers and they have been exceptionally good. When we have had major faults engineers have normally been out within hours to sort them. New toner supplies are delivered quickly (normally next day) and the cost is pretty good in comparison (also the kit is pretty reliable, we have konica printers throughout and have very few issues). Assuming its the same team that deal with the printers as the photocopiers I would definitely recommend them.

Does it? Sorry to go OT but anyone have a link for info as this would be very useful for me at the moment.

Assuming they don't auto bill you if you go over allowance then this is pretty good. I could see me using this with my younger boy in a year or 2 to give him the ability to phone home when he needs to and as a backup for our older lad for when he burns through his credit and needs to call us (assuming he doesn't just switch the sim cards and burn through that credit texting his mates too ). Also handy if you want an extra phone number for incoming calls that you wont be calling out from that often.

I would also highly recommend OBS (I have used for streaming and for local recording and it is a brilliant bit of software). Another one I use is DXtory as it lets you record separate audio sources (good for recording voice overs) and is very light weight and simple (but isn't free).

This really bugs me. There are two roundabouts I used to take daily (both of them I would go straight over at). The amount of people that get it wrong and almost killed me was insane. What is worse is they then have the nerve to beep at you when they where in the wrong lane, cutting you up. One question though. What do you follow when the sign for the roundabout (just the sign, ,no road markings) shows your exit as being straight on (so left lane) but the actual exit is more like 1 o'clock mark (so right lane?). I have a roundabout like this near me too and always take the right lane but have never been 100% sure I was right.

I was actually asked to help a group of year 5 pupils to edit video yesterday. I used Windows Movie Maker with them and they picked it up really quickly (I'm not a teacher either so I just showed them the basics and they figured out the rest). For general video editing it has everything you could need while still being really simple to use.

Is it? I had a very brief play with it and didn't think it anything special. Maybe I should give it another go and put a bit more time into it. Any examples of particularly useful things to check out on it?

I use the same as what most of the kids have got. RM mobile One 300 (core 2 duo 2.6ghz, 2gb ram, Win7 32bit), the teachers do have some nice i5 laptops. I actually have a couple of spare decent spec i5 laptops right next to me but as someone else mentioned above by using the same as the kids I get a better idea of how they are working for them. I like to keep the spares ready to go in case a teacher ever needs them in a hurry. Also have to say for what I do on a day to day basis it works just fine (software testing, internet, general office stuff). Not sure why I would ever need multiple monitors and really high spec kit for general IT. I do have a network monitor server setup which is running 3 screens so maybe if I was running that on here (I also use this for any testing I need to use a VM for or on the rare occasion something that has heavy memory usage). For those that have got high spec kit what are you using it for out of curiosity?

I remember reading this paper when it first came, really thought provoking stuff.

Thanks, glad I wasn't just missing something obvious . I have pretty much come to the same conclusion, the only proper way to do it will be to create individual accounts on google or pay silly money to get a password protected area set up on our website (next year I really want to bring that in house). Will run the plan past SLT and see how they feel about it.

Having been in a similar situation (new in the role at a primary school and looked to get new laptops/tablets) I can echo the advice above. A lot of your decisions will be based on your current infrastructure. In addition to the above things to look think about: What OS you want to be running, will the software you current use work on it? If you use any kind of network management software (RM CC4 for example) does your version support the OS you want (I had massive issues with this). How are you planning to install/deploy software to the laptops (not all of them will support PXE booting)? What is their working lifespan going to be? Generally a laptop is going to give you more upgrade options than a tablet or notebook which can extend their lifespan a bit. I went with the classmate 2-in-1 from Very PC (Colin at Very PC was extremely helpful all the way and was a pleasure to buy from, would highly recommend having a chat with them) as initially the school wanted me to get iPads and these ticked all the boxes that the teachers had in mind for iPad use without the drawback of being... well... iPads These work perfect for me but might not be an ideal solution for you. For example PXE booting can be done but not easy (I use CC4 so was ok with running these very smartclient instead of a full build via PXE), spec is good for price but if you go for laptops instead of tablet/hybrid you could get better with more room for upgrades (I wanted a hybrid as well as something of this form factor that is somewhat robust which these are).

So I have been asked to set up somewhere that documents for governors can be put and accessed by them via a link with a premade password. This does not seem to be quite so simple as I thought it would be though. What I'm looking for is: No need for people create an account to access the files but do need to enter a password (this is the most difficult requirement). Ideally free (its only a small amount of documents). Secure. Easy to use. Looking at the obvious (google, onedrive and dropbox) all 3 seem to either need people to create an account to access the files or you basically create an open link which means anyone with that link can access the documents. I can't find an option in any of these three that will let me create a link to the documents but require a password to access them, maybe I'm just missing it? In the past I either had complete access to the webserver so could set up my own solution or just used google/dropbox as most people in the real world have access to them anyway. If we had a halfway decent CMS for our webpage and weren't paying stupid amounts for very small amounts of bandwidth/storage I would do it on there but this is not an option. The only other thing I can think to do in order to keep it simple is create a new Gmail account and share the folder with that. Then give the governors the username and password for that account. This way they wont all have to create new accounts and it should be easier for the people using it to manage. As the files should be read only anyway it should not be an issue. Not overly keen on having multiple people using one email address and I would have it set up so it is not associated with the school but still less than ideal. Any ideas on an elegant solution?

Might work with older students but I think one of the benefits of the IWB is that all the students are looking at the teacher/IWB at the front of the room which helps keep them focused and helps the teacher be able to check they are all paying attention. If you have everyone in the room (including the teacher) looking at screens it is more difficult for the kids to focus on what they might be saying (looking at the screen in front of them and listening to someone off in the corner). Also more difficult for the teacher to see if they are paying attention (is that kid looking at the material or reading an email). IMO (again at least for younger kids) the human interaction is an important part of the learning experience and putting technology in the way of that causes problems. They are learning as much about social interaction and communications as they are the subject matter. However for college level and upwards, where people should have already learnt all the norms of social interactions and are pursuing their own learning I see this kind of set up as being pretty useful, especially in larger size groups and big areas (as the above poster said).

Think I'm being really stupid but what goes into IT processes documentation? Is it just general KB/day to day tech documentation? Rest I have put in place since I started here last year (except full software licensing which is a mess I still haven't started sorting properly yet, all the main bits are covered though). Still needs a lot of work in some areas but better than the nothing that was here when I started

Just wondering if anyone has used these and had a similar problem. In the last 2 days I have had 2 of these units develop a fault with the focusing. The focus seems to be stuck at about 2cm from the lens. If you press the focus buttons it sounds like it is doing something but the focus does not change (have tried using the focus buttons, menu option and via a PC). I'm fairly sure it is a physical fault and having looked at it the focusing parts are in a sealed unit with the lens so can't do much there. Have tried firmware upgrades as well. Fairly sure they are beyond repair but thought it was worth a shot posting here in case anyone has any bright ideas that could save me having to buy new ones

Just been using bog standard printed labels here but I wouldn't recommend it. I had a look for a nice (cheapish) label embosser but have only seen the the old school tape style ones (search for dymo embosser). Might pick one of them up soon as they are a little more durable than paper labels. Really wanted something that looked a bit nicer though. Depending on what you need to put on the label you could get some nice plastic/metal asset tags printed with sequential ID numbers on them (lots of places online and probably local to you will do this) but depends on what you need. You can get label printers that will print on plastic labels but I haven't seen one for cheaper then around £250 and I can't justify that for here.

VAMT (just tried searching for VMAT and it is something entirely different). Haven't used this before, does it work with Windows 8.1 as well as I vaguely remember there being some change to the licensing system for that?

Reading through this takes me back to the first home PC I built for myself when I was at college (around 1998/99). Was a beast of a gaming rig with a 400mHz Pentium II, 64mb (2X32mb if I remember correctly) of Ram with a 3dFx Voodoo 2 (with a massive 12mb ram and had to be linked to a 2D card as it was dedicated to 3D only), 19inch CRT monitor (the size of a small house) and a 300mb harddrive (I will never be able to fill all this space...) running the sleek new windows 98 I think I have have it in storage somewhere actually. Could be fun to pull it out and give it to my son to use the next time he moans about his computer running slow. See how he prefers spending hours messing with glide wrappers to get the perfect setup for a game