DavR

May give EnviroElectronics an email at some point as well. Our current contractor just whacked us with a load of new charges, not amused.

I use Meraki, no Mosyle, but I'm pretty sure it's Remove lock Passcode.

The second one appears to give you different options of 'From' addresses? I would guess that they've put the SEND button up top, next to the 'From' email address field, so you have visibility when you press SEND, who you're sending as.

We use a company called WasteCare to shift our old interactive whiteboards - https://www.wastecare.co.uk/contact/ They do charge for whiteboards, £15-20 each I think. A lot of companies do now though, as they're a pain to move and don't have much scrap value. We're North London, so Hemel shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

Does anyone want some old-style BeeBots? We have 9 (+1 dead for parts) older BeeBots that run off 3 x AA batteries each. They're a bit knocked about, but they work. We stopped using them because it was a pain making sure that they all had working AA batteries in, we upgraded to the USB chargeable ones on a docking station instead. Would suit a smaller school with no BeeBots that wants some, and a teacher/IT lead who doesn't mind battery management Free, just cover postage (approx £5).

We use basic Nokia 105s for our trip phones. Cheap to buy (approx £15 + VAT), great battery life, and don't cost much to run as they've got no data connection - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nokia-105-Dual-SIM-Black-unlocked/dp/B097MSDQ3L/ We did have to buy a smartphone for one teacher, as they had special permission to use WhatsApp to talk to parents and take and send photos. Android is your best bet here, not as many MDM options, but a tenth of the price of iPhone. We bought a Ulefone Note 6P 32GB for £62 + VAT. That model doesn't seem to be available any more, but similar ones from Ulefone and others are under £100 on Amazon.

Years ago we used Softcat to quote for some iPads. Eventually, I had to quite firmly tell our account rep to stop calling us, it was just relentless. Still they kept calling. That said, I've seen others speak well of them in other threads more recently.

Last year we replaced our hall projector with an Epson EB-2250U @ 5000 lumens. We stuck with a ceiling mount on a pole. It's still a traditional lamp model, not laser or LCD, but we just didn't have the budget. It's worth noting that a lot of projectors are coming at 16:9 instead of 4:3 now. We got around this by dumping our projection screen and using the whitewashed wall behind it. Some models you can adjust to run at 4:3 in the options, some you can't.

Have you considered joining your local ANME group? They have regional face-to-face meetings once a term, which are good for the sort of conversations you're considering. Disclaimer - yes, I am a member Between them and good old EduGeek, the networking and discussion opportunities have been invaluable for me.

I tried to get some pricing this week from Trustmarque, our usual licensing provider, only to get the following statement in response; Basically, they're doing very well thank you, and no longer wish to trade with small customers like us anymore. I'm not annoyed as such, just very surprised. I guess the margins are just too small. Any suggestions as to replacement licensing providers? We're looking for either a new OVS or move to M365, and also Veeam licensing.

I don't think you need Veeam B&R installed on the physical host you want to restore to. Just a vanilla machine with Hyper-V role should do it. There are a number of options you can choose on restore to prevent the test restore VM clashing with the live instance - https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/hyperv/performing_full_recovery.html?ver=110. Easiest to my mind would be to restore to the test host, but don't power on VM as part of the restore process. Then, disconnect the network card in Hyper-V settings, and you can boot up your test restored VM off the network. As for physical host, I didn't know Veeam could back them up tbh, only ever used it for VMs. My restore strategy these days is to recover the host manually, as there shouldn't be anything on there bar OS and Hyper-V.

Sounds like Software Restrictions is your core problem. This is a restriction placed on the computer by policy to stop people installing or running unauthorised software, by the sounds of it, placed there by a previous admin. Software Restrictions are a good thing, they make your network a lot more secure. But it does make installing ad hoc software very difficult. If you've got the option, look into your group policies, and designate a test machine or VM just for software testing that is not covered by the restrictions policy. Then when you've tested the software, you can roll it out with RM CC4, and if necessary, allow it in the restrictions policy. But you may want to read up on Software Restrictions first - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/software-restriction-policies/software-restriction-policies.

A Coomber amplifier? If only I'd known, you could have had one of these for price of P&P

I've not tried to buy any laptop parts recently, but last I did I was trying to buy Lenovo Chromebook parts, and hit quite a long lead time. I gave up in the end and retired the faulty devices. My supplier is Laptronics, [email protected], if you're looking for another option to try.

Now I think about it, setting the retention policy to one restore point WON'T lead you to a magical, backup chain free, existence. It will still keep the chain of incrementals going back to the last full. Eg, if you run a synthetic full every weekend, that would be one retention point, but it will still do incrementals during the week, and keep the chain for as long as that last restore point needs it to refer backwards. For reverse incremental, it's slightly different. It starts with a full backup file, does an incremental, then merges the two to create a single latest full backup. You say you're blessed with time and resources on this backup, could you run the usual incremental backup, but also tick the box to create Active full backups periodically? In here you could tick weekly, and tick the days of the week you want them. So yes, you're backing up twice, but, if you've got the time and resources, it will give you best of both approaches.

Honestly, I don't think that's a big risk. But I understand why you'd be concerned about it. If you just want a single, reliable, file to restore from, you could always set the retention to just one backup. I used to do that with some archive data I had, and didn't need a history of restore points, I think I did a reverse incremental. That way, you've always got one single file of your latest data, that won't suffer from backup chain failure.

That old chestnut huh. Yes, I've had that from a few people here too. Delegate access in M365 could be something to look at - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/allow-someone-else-to-manage-your-mail-and-calendar-41c40c04-3bd1-4d22-963a-28eafec25926. Login to the secondary accounts, and delegate access to the primary account. If that doesn't work, change the secondary accounts to shared mailboxes and give the primary access permissions. The secondary mailboxes will then show up when the primary account is configured in Outlook - that's how ours are working here. Edit - a couple of others beat me to it on shared mailboxes!

I'd definitely check the manual for the screen, all of the ones we use have a freeze button on the remote. Blue for freeze seems to be favourite.

Any reason why they have three separate accounts? I'd look at rationalising those into either three aliases into one mailbox, or delegated/shared mailboxes attached to the primary account.

Backup full/incremental options are under the Advanced button, on Storage page when you edit the job. Full backups every night sounds a bit extreme, any particular reason? Veeam is heavily geared towards incremental backups. That said, there are options to create full backups periodically ("active full" in Veeam terms). You could try just choosing weekly, and ticking every day of the week that you want a backup. You'd need to test to see whether this would replace the standard incremental, or run as well as, though.

Top tip! I'll remember that if any of ours pull the same stunt.

We have the ED A111, and I know these have quite a few security options, although we don't use them. Looking at the service manual, p34 lists the security features - https://estadoc.hitachi.eu/servlet/FileViewer?DocumentName=YK-0599E_CP-A100_ED-A100_ED-A110.pdf. If there was a security lock on power outage, you'd surely have come across it already by now, though. I'd tend towards them being fried by a power surge, but all three of that model and nothing else sounds unlikely, doesn't it.

When we replaced our phone system, we got an onsite PBX and reused all of our existing handsets. Saved us a fortune versus going for fully hosted VOIP and a monthly subscription for every handset.

Are you running full VOIP, or will you have a PBX onsite? If you've got a PBX onsite, then you only need to budget for however many external SIP lines will be using your Internet connection, as most of the calls will be internal. Voice data can be heavy, but not that heavy. Definitely preferable to get the switch work done first though. I have seen phone and data traffic coexist happily on a flat network, but then, I've also seen schools have long arguments with their telco about who's to blame when they don't.

My experience with the ProgramData folder that randomly appears is that this is a temporary file location, that is usually empty, but might be used during the backup process. I think Veeam just chooses whichever volume has the most free space available at install time and dumps that temp directory there. it's untidy, but I've ignored it, and its not given me any problems.