cullingsh

What size school is this for? Don't but the O/S license from Dell, get it from a supplier (we use Phoenix but there are others out there). Cost for Server 2012 is around £100 and if you wish you can use downgrade rights to Server 2008 r2 (Current installs are Server 2012 with a 2008r2 virtual machine). The Junior and Infant schools I work in have this: Intel Motherboard Dual Redundant 750W PSUs Integrated Dual Port 1Gb Ethernet Intel Xeon 6 Core Processor E5-2420 1.9Ghz 15MB 95W 3 x Kingston 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 ECC CL9 Registered Single Rank 1.5V DIMM 2x Toshiba 300Gb 6Gbps 10Krpm SAS 64MB Hard Drive 3.5 Inch 2.5 in 3.5 Caddy - for O/S mirrored drives 4x Toshiba 600Gb 6Gbps 10Krpm SAS 64MB Hard Drive 3.5 Inch 2.5 in 3.5 Caddy - for Data in RAID5 Samsung Black Sata 24 X DVD Writer Intel RAID RS2BL080 8 Port RAID Controller-6Gbps SAS/SATA 512Mb LSI2108 In-Built Remote Mgt Module 3 Years Onsite Next Business Day Warranty. Comes out at £3000 but depending on your situation can be customised, you could remove the redundant PSU, drop down the memory, reduce the hard drive capacity and have everything on the 4x600GB. The chassis is pedestal/rackmount combo. The quote was from Stone Group and is from 6 months ago, but you get the idea

Have you tried changing the igmp and/or spanning tree settings? Be the first place I would start - make sure they're using the same version of spanning tree too.

Are you crazy? It was only released Friday! No chance that will be done this week. We are looking to deploy 6th January as it's an inset day - and if there is a Autumn 2 version hopefully it will be by then too so that can get slapped on at the same time! Shaun

I have a school with some Kindles. Not sure what version. The main problem is that there isn't anywhere to put in a proxy server, so someone has to take them home to update them. I think this is resolved in the newer Kindle Fire HD though. I'm not sure what books they have as I don't get involved with that side of it.

Hi Glen, We had issues with the smart drivers not picking up the board when staff logged on, and after an age on the phone to tch support have resorted to creating a local GPO with settings in the 'Run these programs at user logon'. And then smartboardtools, smartboard service and smartink included. Still having issues with smart ink and powerpoints in presentation mode but this may be a setting somewhere. I noticed today that notbook 11.3 (and drivers) are out so are now trialling these

We stopped the desktop.ini file from being created (I think we did this by file screening - might not be available on server 2003 though?), did a search of the home directories on the server for desktop.ini and deleted them all.

The £18 per annum license is to register as a hazardous waste producer. This is relevant if you produce over 250KG of hazardous waste in a year (note - not just IT related). This could be CRT screens, Projector bulbs, fluorescent lights., paint etc. Transportation of hazardous waste is another matter and one that it's just easier not to go into and shouldn't be relevant to you. There are several companies around who will take your IT related WEEE away FOC. Those that pay for items are rarer, but then we haven't been that fussed by that aspect as anything that is in a usable condition is still in use. We have used Recycled IT (Recycled IT | Free Computer Recycling | PC Disposal | Free IT disposal for all with ZERO LANDFILL) and the guys always turn up on time and are quite accommodating and provide the relevant paperwork. However they don't take TVs, fusers not in printers and a few other bits and pieces. Our alternative company we use is Computer Recycling Technologies (Computer Recycling Technologies Ltd) who will take anything. The problem we had though was that they put everything in cages before going on the van, ad we had a lot of bulky stuff so we couldn't shift as much as we had hoped. Shaun

If the software is already msi, deploying it is usually fairly easy, I do in my infant/junior schools. If it's not an msi already, and it has to go out everywhere then I tend to call it from a log-on script, then log onto a bank of computers at a time. I have recently been playing with Acrobat reader though and have made that into msi and deploy via gpo. There are quite a few free tools around to do the job. Haven't looked into a third party doing the job for us though. Shaun

I have deployed (via GPO) Acrobat Reader 11.0.0.1. A transform file was created using the adobe customisation wizard which I've used to turn on enhanced security and protected mode as I found these generally were more of a hindrance than a help. When 11.0.0.3 was released a couple of weeks ago I remade my transform to ensure it was up to date. The updated msi is deployed via GPO again but I've found I had to tell the policy to remove the 11.0.0.1 first otherwise it wouldn't go on. I've been trialling this in a couple of schools and seems successful so far.

Unfortunate problem to have when starting out. We very definetly have auto-deploy disabled, as it takes it out of our control and will justhappen when it feels like it. We do however have auto-download ticked so it's ready to go when we are. Whilst it usually goes smoothly now, we still have problems with one or two machines not applying the upgrade, but this is due to machine setup rather that a solus/sims thing.

We had some of these (now taken them out of main school use). I can't remember if it's a seperate wireless card on these or not, if it is, try removing and re-seating the wireless card.

It's already available. We downloaded it in our Solus3 on the 16th Nov.

The sql query I used was 'select * from sims.stud_homework'

I had the same request from our data manager after he had trawled through all the reports. I ended up going through the sql server management studio, sims database and found the homework table, I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head. Ran a select all on the table and exported the result to excel, which the data manager could then play round with. If you want me to dig up the sql query i used (inc table name etc) then I can do so on Tuesday when I'm next in, let me know.

Surely less than 4 this time? When are you guys looking to deploy? We usually go for the first day of Christmas holidays, but everyone is off on holidays this time round so not too sure when to schedule it in - It definelty will not be the halft term holiday when it's just been released (first time round...if it's on time!) Shaun

Have you tried the 21-point orientation? Worked a charm for me the other day!

It's been a while since i looked at PHP, but the IF statement in the fns.inc.php doesnt have a condition with it, ie if($exec=whatever) rather than just if($exec) Should there not be more to it?

Hey there, we started using Fronter back in September - took the earliest opportunity we could. The integration with SIMS was relatively smooth and effective. One of the main problems was deciding how to structure the manually created rooms - we opted for a general room for each subject. On one of our inset days, all staff were introduced to Fronter and how to use many aspects of it. Since then there have been many requestes for rooms for this that and the other. There is also a big push from the SLT to use it - some of the ways it is being used is quite interesting - good to see the effort put into creating the rooms etc isn't being wasted! Have you moved onto it yet? I'm aware this thred is a couple of months old now!

Hi there, I work in a couple of schools who trialled it last year and one of the schools has since purchased 5 licenses for the Basic Reading. Personally, the software looks simple and the cost unjustifiable, but the SEN department think its fantastic, much better than the previous version they were using (which looked like something from the Dark Ages). If memory serves, it wasn't difficult to install or configure, the biggest problem was going orund each workstation in the suite and copying across the relevant files for it to run across the network!

I think I got my poll answer wrong, whats this about T18 and T31 / 32 where do you find that out (at the risk of suddenly sounding very thick)

Seems there's a few 'technician' titles from the poll. I find it crazy that my job is apparently the same as anoter technicians as I have yet to meet another technician that does the same job, working in several schools, more as an engineer / network manager. 2 years ago I started the job, and overall outcome - nothings changed, woopwoop