Chris_Cook

Same here. Very PC support is excellent and have supplied new screens for us when damaged. Would 100% buy again from them.

Same as above. I want to do something with our Cover/Supply teacher logins and youtube access though, as YT is the most frequent issue. The risk of a student getting a general guest login seems quite high, so it seems logical that its restricted. Sometimes they will be used legitimately with under 18s and visiting students etc.

What version was your previous Wifi? If you weren't using 5 or 6 Ghz bands before, then you might need to look at coverage as these don't go as far as 2.4Ghz. There's a design tool at https://design.ui.com/ that lets you guestimate coverage and ap placement. We had a problem with some Chromebooks where we had to turn off 802.11r roaming support as this caused issues. It does mean roaming isn't smooth, but at least it happens. This was on Cambium with Lenovo flex 5 Chromebooks. The radius is also worth looking at. On our test Unifi ap, having "Radius assigned VLans" turned on meant clients were on VL1 as we weren't pushing out VLans with radius.

We have a 4u ups on the rails in the first post in our rack and it seems to hold ok. They are quite thick metal. The only thing is the depth of the rack, but if that is ok then you are sorted. I did once modify a set of those with an angle grinder so the ends would slide closer together and that seemed to work ok too.

Current hosts are 128GB (x2). Most VMs on dynamic memory. Between 4 and 16 Gb depending on the application for windows servers. We don't use Sims.net anymore. Modern windows is going to use spare memory for caching data, so if you have it, its probably worth it getting used.

We install natively. Students can't install their own modules, the security incidents around the pypi website should be enough to put anyone off that. More than happy for requests to come in via teachers for projects etc. and these are evaluated as best as we can. We push both out with a script, and probably update about once a term. Teaching staff need to be on board as upgrades can break programs and scripts. I'd avoid Python 2 for anything new. There does need to be a bit of a change in mindset around Computer science - Maybe going more along the lines of the DT dept. For example, at some point you need to teach the kids how to use a hammer or a drill, so there is lots of guidance, scaffolding, risk assessment etc around that. We don't just lock the hammers in a cupboard and never let the students near them, but we do provide a safe-ish environment for them to learn in. If we don't teach risky/dangerous skills then we won't have prepared these kids with the skills we need them to have for the future. At some point everyone hits their thumb with a hammer. Another risk not mentioned about student managed devices is rogue DHCP servers. A properly segmented network is key, as well as enabling options like firewalls, STP and DHCP guarding etc. Computer science labs should have an isolated network so they can only break their own stuff. Probably not an option for most schools, but at college we had a room full of old PCs and IT kit that students could play round with. Unfortunately they didn't do anything about DHCP and apparently the year group after mine managed to bring the whole college down. This was also the last room the IT team checked. Even if you don't use RPis for T&L, then you still need to have the proper security in place as what's to stop a student plugging in their own one from home and hiding it behind a PC or plant pot? Its a similar risk with USB key loggers as well. Gone are the days of being able to say every device on the school network is managed by IT and is secure and not a risk.

Its worth checking if the laptop supports wpa3 if its old. If it doesn't support that, then I'd argue for replacing it.

Some might have a horizontal keystone correction as well as the vertical one. There is also lens shift on some higher end projectors. Lens shift is usually better than corner correction as its normally optical rather than digital scaling, but does rely on the screen being perpendicular to the projector. Keystone correction takes longer, but should get a similar result. I'd also recommend a decent bracket like the sahara ones so you don't have to keep adjusting it.

We had it done. Not sure what it cost. There was a certain amount of hand-holding and showing where things were and what was there. And giving admin credentials and installing their management agent which I wasn't best pleased about. Its a pain and not a nice feeling to have someone judge your work, but it can also be useful to have someone backup what you've probably been saying for years. Our audit gave us a RAG (Red amber green) table of where things were at each school which was good for visualising and comparing the schools in our trust. They are unlikely to get the full picture with only a few days to do it, but a conversation with them about what you know that they might miss etc. can be valuable. Its likely to be a very surface level thing - server versions, wifi version, switch models etc. They won't necessarily capture ongoing reliability issues and things like that. I'd also recommend some form of scoping meeting with the ones who want the audit done, and the auditors to iron out the issues other commenters have made above, and make sure you don't sign up for anything unexpected. Ours probably overlapped about 95% with what we were saying. And we could see green items where we had done work as well which was encouraging. I do think its something all school should have done, but maybe not externally. I'd add it with a vulnerability scan as well to show where old kit is an actual risk.

I'd echo that. I understood the sims exams process much better after reading the Arbor guide for 10 mins than 10 years of supporting Sims. Our previous office manager had a bit of a lightbulb moment a couple of years back when we first went through the end/start of year process document on arbor. It was refreshing to just be able to follow a basic obvious step-by-step wizard rather than the inch thick manual from sims. Arbor seems to spend more time explaining what you are doing in a process and how it should be done, rather than what to click on. Once you have found the area you need, I personally find it more obvious as to how to do a task. Change requests are still separate I think, but there is possibly more requests in the pipeline maybe. I don't get much grumbling any more about how sims was better. Not to put Bromcom down too much - the choice was a difficult one, and there were bits in each we preferred as a school. I'd still recommend finding the best fit for your school, rather than the prettiest or most popular one, or the 'Arbor is for primary, Bromcom for secondary' argument. Its not a move you want to do twice, and not all schools are going to work the same. There is a big benefit in having competition in this field. Arbors also moved on quite a bit from when we switched.

Depending on your ISP and web filter, I found we had to add a https decrypt exclusion for the pipi site as it got stuck on there being a self-signed cert for the filter.

We started with O365, but then moved to Google workspace. We still have O365 active. The google option took a lot less effort to get staff to use it. One thing we did set up was a set of google sites for staff and students to find links to common things like Arbor, Finance forms, email etc. Other than office licences, I don't think o365 still gets used.

Have you tried looking at the last post in this thread? /forums/hardware/218313-ricoh-im-c300-mfps-anyone-else-got-one.html On recent Ricoh machines the card reader registration (on the device rather than the web interface) is under the network settings.

Out of interest, do you know what cables you have to get this working on that monitor - I have one at home, but never managed to get the MST to work. For HDMI 10m and over, I'd recommend the AOC HDMI over fiber cables. They seem pretty reliable for us. each connection on a copper HDMI cable adds about 1m of cable effectively and 10m is about the limit.

Depends on the age of equipment, but 5 to 8 years for us on most equipment. It also depends on the grade of equipment. - IE, buy a higher spec PC and it will last a bit longer. Same with a brighter projector etc. Older laptops the batteries lasted about 2-3 years, but could be replaced. These days the batteries aren't as easily replaceable, but they last much longer because they start at a higher capacity. Newer chromebooks have longer software support than older ones. But then some of ours don't last more than a day with some users. Wifi is probably about 5 years as the expectations on the system (speed, coverage, density/number of client devices, and roaming around site) will change quite a lot in that time. You can probably skip a wifi generation each time. With the amount of mobile/laptop equipment in use in schools this is probably them main one to keep on top of. I would align this to the manufacturers updates and security support where possible. A vulnerability scan can be helpful for picking up older kit that might be forgotten about. Copiers are on a 5 year lease, but like many organisations we've extended that due to lack of use during covid. I'd also use metrics like login/boot times to make sure kit is still meeting your business needs. We don't really have the bad capacitor issues that seemed to plague kit from around the years 2000-2005, so the 5 year thing isn't as much of an issue as it once was. Modern software is also much more efficient (relative to CPU speeds) and security engineering in programming is much better than back then as well. These days we are more limited by disk and network speeds that CPU and RAM. Cabling is probably good for 20 years if installed to a good standard. We still have cat5 cabling from back then that's good enough, but will need upgrading if we go to higher speeds than 1Gb. Same for our fibre - we have fibres that are probably about 20-25 years old, but now won't support 10Gb connections. Some of our Cat cabling that wasn't done to a good standard hasn't lasted this long. We actually still have BBC Micro Econet cabling in place in some areas and I recon that would work if we tried it. I suspect much of our cabling will outlast the building its in with a few exceptions.

Would a Vesa extension mount help? Might need some extra holes drilled to mount to the screen. https://www.amazon.co.uk/SilverStone-SST-MVA01-Extension-supported-Standard/dp/B013QYXX5K?th=1

What type of lock is fitted? Is it a mag lock, door strike or a motorised door closer? I'm guessing a maglock if it has an LED on it. Door strikes can go bad mechanically, but might release with a gentle tap from a hammer or some WD40 or similar lubricant. They also don't release if there is pressure on the door. They can also be set internally as fail-secure rather than fail-safe and if there was no power getting to the lock, then it won't release. Its unlikely a maglock would be faulty, but a wiring fault could prevent the maglock from releasing. If the maglock has been wired up so that the net2 ACU disconnects the ground (0 volts) side of the maglock, then the wire could potentially be damaged and short circuited to another ground circuit. If its power-side switched, then it could also happen, but its less likely to come into contact with another source of 12/24volts. You could check the maglock by disconnecting the wires from the maglock (there is normally a removable panel at one end). I would take lots of photos before touching the wires in case things fall out, or you forget how its wired. A safer way would be to test with a multimeter/volt meter as this can be done without disconnecting wires. There should be 12v across the maglock terminals and that should disappear when the door is released. You could also disconnect the wires at the ACU end, but its harder to do this without disturbing the other connections. The power and relay connection I find are fairly easy to dislodge as they are often wired together. If in doubt, I would find someone familiar with wiring this sort of thing up so that you don't make a bad situation worse. Another possibility (although unlikely) is that the relay could be stuck closed. The door should normally release when mains and battery power is removed from the ACU, so that might point to a faulty relay if turning off the ACU doesn't release the maglock. You could also check that the relay 1 LED on the ACU changes when a card is tapped. That would also tell you if the ACU is doing what it should when the card is tapped. The LED on the maglock should also change or go off when the door is told to unlock.

This isn't just the privacy mode is it?

I've got an infiray P2, but I think you get b&w images by default in a usb camera app. The colour coding is added by the android app. You might be able to use the app on a chromebook though. Not tried that. The P2 is small though and easy to loose. No camera mount either unless you stick it to something.

VOIP ringers are a thing: https://www.ipphone-warehouse.com/blog/loud-ringers-strobes-for-voip/ or a Voip speaker: https://www.voipon.co.uk/grandstream-gsc3510-sip-intercom-speaker-and-microphone-p-8405.html Yealinks are reasonably loud, so positioning might be an issue. I'm assuming you've turned the ringer volume up? Or Maybe a different ringtone?

I'd try and get hold of a list of websites to add to your allow list. The web filter and firewall normally seems to be the problem with our Franking machines.

What's the charge light doing? A flashing charge light often indicates a battery problem. No light would suggest a fault with the internal PSU circuitry. A CB with a faulty battery will often work with the battery disconnected. I've often sorted similar problems by holding down the refresh key and pressing the power button. Refresh is the one above the number 4 key. Sometimes devices need to be left on charge for a decent amount of time before they show signs of life. Is there any damage to the USB-C connector? On most devices if one USB-c port is shorted (or the controller chip for that port) then it will prevent them all from working. You could try disconnecting the smaller IO board and see if it boots without that. Not all do anyway, but some will boot if the IO board is disconnected.

Cable Zones if its helpful to any one: Probably useful if you screw stuff into the wall at work.

Unless you have very old cable like the rubber insulated stuff, then it isn't going to just randomly break anywhere. At this stage once you've isolated the circuit, you need to start looking where the cable was most likely damaged, or where work was most recently done. It could be if the screw has gone into the neutral wire rather than the live that something touching the screw that is also touching earth could cause the trip. We've had that before with a notice board and a laptop trolley. Your only other option really is to get the whole cable re-run, but then you still have to have to remove the cupboards. I'm assuming they've tested whatever is plugged into that circuit. If it is a screw through a cable, then it might be worth looking into cable zones in walls as there are strict rules now where cables should and shouldn't be run, and where you want to be really careful drilling. Not all tradesmen are up to speed on this. The Efixx youtube channel has a training video on this somewhere.

Even if its taxable, that doesn't mean the school can't buy it for you, surely? The rules as explained by our finance director is that it needs to be something that wouldn't be worn outside of work other than (I think) commuting to and from work. So the logo needs to be reasonably big but not necessarily the huge one we had on the back of our shirts the first time round.