TwistedHelixis

Even if this is legal, surely there is no way any government body, local authority or education institution will ever recommend them in the future. This is just crazy

I believe (could be wrong) there is a legal requirement for data to be easily migrated to different platforms, or as easy as is possible. Putting up blocks does not sound like they are making it as easy as possible. Thank god all my schools have already moved.

Now that Arbor has a finance package, its almost perfect for the primary schools I work with. Migration was not as bad as I expected it was going to be.

Is it any good?

I now have 4 schools using Arbor and also Arbor Finance. Don't forget, we in IT only get to know about the issues / problem. I thought one of my schools really hated it, until I suggested going back to SIMS. Then I released how much they prefer Arbor over SIMS. On a side note, they all seem to prefer Arbor Finance over FMS.

Other way round for us. We have both types and the non touch screen ones just don't get used. We do use a lot of Android apps on them, which might make the difference.

We use a combination of Cubebackup ($2 per YEAR per user) and Wasabi storage ($7 per TB per month)

Not the same, but would these do? https://www.asus.com/laptops/for-students/chromebook/asus-chromebook-flip-cr1-cr1100/ or this https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-2-in-1-pcs/dell-chromebook-3110-for-education/spd/chromebook-11-3110-laptop if you give Colin a call at VeryPC, he will help you with the device and Workspace licences.

Same, although I am thinking about GCPW more and more.

I block all sharing from shared drives and block the creation of new shared drives.

I once had a bizarre issue I really couldn't workout, so I plugged the server, WAN and test PC into a spare switch and started there. Turned out to be a provider issue. Something had slightly damaged the cable somewhere, but for some reason the providers systems wasn't picking up any issues.

Network up and down does sound like a loop issue, could be something else but looping a network cable out of one network port and back into another is something students love to do.

We turn down the 5ghz radio, so it only has devices very close connecting through it. We leave 2.4ghz at its default. This has helped a lot

I look after a bunch of schools with different Chromebook types. I haven't come across this issue, although we are not using MS Entra SSO, so I would guess its something to do with that. Have you tested the device completely off the school network, so its not getting any filtering?

Both 365 & Google have systems that allow personal devices to be used in a walled off way. We are a Google school and you can have Work profiles deployed onto a personal phone if they log into a school account, this keeps their work apps and settings separate from the personal stuff. Might be too much for the LA to manage, so they just say NOOOO

Thanks everyone. I have got enough options now.

So far, the only one to have contacted me back, and very helpful.

I recently got a quote from Dell for a new server, but the Governors would like another quote, so I emailed HP. HP replied saying they don't sell servers directly in the UK and pointed me to a list of resellers. So far I have emailed 3 resellers and none have replied. We don't have much time as the school needs to pay for the server before March. Anyone recommend a HP server reseller? Thanks

I way prefer Battlefield to COD and the new CS version. BF is actually my 'wind down' game, as I don't have to think to play it, plus most rounds only last 20 minutes, so it suits my 'I have kids' lifestyle.

You can sign up for some kind of educational discount from MS, that covers when purchasing Windows devices or licenses from third party places. Think its called Shape the future, or something like that.

Yep, lots of staff at my schools use Google authenticator without issue, but then they are mostly using Google workspace and not ms anyway.

I pushed out 2FA to all my schools about 6 years ago. Back then I created a step by step that listed all the different options in my preferred order, starting with Yubi keys, Google authenticator etc, with the last one being text message. Now its so embedded they don't have the steps, new users are walked through by the office staff or teachers.

We had a teacher come over from New Zealand about 5 years ago, he was surprised we even had printers. The school he had come from had gone full Google even back then and had apparently removed all printers from staff areas.

Action1 is free for 100 endpoints. No idea how much it is over that amount.

From what I can see, in Action1 the feature updates are deployed from the Apps updating system, they are not part of the normal Windows patching / update system. When you are in the Apps list, type Windows into the search box and it comes up with the Windows feature updates. Just running a few tests over the next week or so.