eean

This is similar to a method that I used a while back (post seems to be missing from edugeek). I used psshutdown, because it also gives a cancel option. The advantage, as djones says, is that it allows the comptuer to wake up from standby. You can also set other options on the task, for example, only run when the computer has been idle for n minutes. This will prevent a prompt appearing when someone is using the comptuer. It should be easy to combine this with the shutdownatron idea of using an adm file. The script could read the relevant keys from the registry to get the time for shutdown.

Oh yes you're right. iLife comes with the OS. The upgrade for the site licence is what's about 300 - which I think is perfectly reasonable for even 10+ machines.

Sorry, I hate macs and really don't know what all the fuss is about BUT Their iMovie 09 is a great movie editing pacakage. And a site licence for iLife is something stuipid - like 300 quid. Are you going to fix up those PCs with Adobe Premier?

I can't remember the exact word - it may have involved a ladies' private parts. The best thing was that even after typing he didn't realise that the keys had been rearanged. He just kept deleting it and retyping until I came down.

Years ago we had a keyboard rearranged. The kids knew that the teacher would logon using this computer and was still at the hunt-and-peck method of typing. He typed his username and didn't realise the keys had been rearranged. When he looked up it said fuckhead. He thought the computer had a virus.

I understand that you need to license somehow. It's only fair that little village schools pay less than massive collages - otherwise small schools would never be able to afford your products. How about a model based on the number of pupils? Base it on the number of pupils on roll on school census day (where all the government figures for funding calculations are taken from). That figure is valid for a year and you could have fairly wide bands. Just take the figure at time of purchase, don't be fussy about small fluctuations. Schools get their funding based on the number of pupils - you are effectively taking a small percentage of that. Or, sort out this 7 day rule and make it so it's concurrent user licencing. However, that's less flexible for those one off days when you're doing some crazy event and everyone needs the internet. One of the reasons why I hate per-computer licencing is when you replace/update computers someone invariably says: oh, we could stick that old computer in a corridor and use it - it'll be fine for... Thinking it's costing the school nothing. Well actually it's costing the price of Smoothwall + the price of the AntiVirus + the price of all the other software from companies who only ever deal with business and is arrogant enough to charge per computer licences. AND THEN the art department scrapes enough cash together to buy some more comptuers but I've suddenly got to pay Microsoft and everybody and another 3quid per unit. I also hate annual licensing too. Especially the current trend of suppliers selling you the same stuff you had before but now on the web for only “5 pounds per pupil”. Well, all these 5 pounds add up! And over 5 years in a big school, that’s a lot of software we could of bought! Jeepers, there's a lot of hate inside me! I really need a holiday! Sorry about the rant. I do appreciate the fact you use Edugeek to listen to your customers. Final crazy idea: You could offer multiple licencing options: per user/per computer/perpetual/outright. People could choose the right one for their organisation!

Oh no... I was loving School Guardian up until I heard this. I really hate per computer licencing it just makes things complicated. It's site or nothing here. Even Apple and M$ manage that. So, if we want to allow children or parents/maids/drivers* to connect their laptops to our network and use the internet we have to have a licence for them? *We're an International school. Different world!

I want to find the windows+tab feature useful, but I think that nobody actually does. The updated alt+tab with pictures is far easier in practice. I've never seen anyone use it - i reckon it's just there so it looks cool on the adverts.

I have this task to come. Have you seen HowToMac.co.uk | Bringing the future of Apple into education ? I would really like a fully network integrated environment (locked down computers and redirected everything). My concern is that we have 24 Macbooks with another 36 on the way. My experience so far with the mac wireless is that it's pretty ropey. It seems to connect to the network well after the OS has loaded - which I can see causing problems with wireless authentication. Has anyone got any experience with this?

I really hate it when Windows doesn't give you enough notice before the battery runs out. Yes, 23 days ought to do it! Shouldn't complain; after all, when charged, my battery will keep going for 6 and a half months.

Check with Sahara - IIRC we had a similar problem. I think it was fixed by a man : driving to Essex - 5 hours, plugging a laptop into the projector - 1 minute, uploading a firmware update - 2 mins having a cup of tea - 15 minutes. driving home - 5 hours. I can't quite remember which of the may problems we had with Sahara projectors it fixed. Even when they were working the quality was sh:mad:t! But, to be fair, they did fix one of the problems.

That's what a 'traditional' (Cisco et. al.) managed wireless system does. It works because the APs within range of each other are on different channels. So if I have 30 laptops and they are in range of 3 APs most of the laptops will connect to the closest AP but some will also connect to the other two APs because even though they are further away and subject to more noise (i.e. lower speed) overall throughput will be higher because they are balanced. The management system figures all this out. (OP: This is a main advantage of a managed solution. If it's not managed all the clients will connect to the loudest AP even if there are other APs within range that could be used to balance the load.) maniac: What I don't understand is how this can work if all the APs are on the same channel. Remembering that channel is just radio frequency and 2 aerials within range of each other transmitting on the same frequency will cause interference. If I have 30 laptops in one room within range of 3 AP/transmitters all on the same channel even if the laptops are balanced between the transmitters surely their transmissions are going to interfere? This is a very interesting system Maniac - I'm just trying to get my head round how it works!

I dropped Talking First Word about 5 years ago. Although I liked the idea, I didn't like that it was slow and unreliable, seemed to mess up features in Word that worked perfectly well and you had to pay per computer licences. It's site licences or nothing here (except M$ of course). I found that that talking feature was never actually used - so it might be worth checking that. The nice thing about Talking First Word is the differentiated levels. I just set up customised templates for each age group, so reception had nice big icons and none of the clomplex stuff, moving gradually up to year 6. As each year group has it's own logon and roaming profile it was just a case of changing the normal.dot file. For the talking feature I got Text Help Read & Write . It's quite expensive - about 500 I think. However, it is better than Talking first word because it can read from any application (e.g. internet explorer) has a talking dictionary etc... On a similar theme, you might want to check out Oxford Dictiosaurus, which is a child friendly talking dictionary and thesaurs add-in for word. You may find that staff use Clicker anyway, which does the talking stuff far better. People initially said that they couldn't possibly do without Talking first word, but when I set it up they were fine with it and had no complaints. UPDATE: Yikes! I just checked the prices and they are looking for over a thousand for the new version. The product's not that good! For FS/Y1 there are far more creative products for writing e.g 2Create a story. Those sorts of things might be enough to keep them happy until they are ready for word!

Yes, I can't really see myself ever needing to directly plug it into a projector. Otherwise it really is just an expensive OHP. We've got loads of them filling up corridors. The beauty of it is that then you can write on it etc... I know that Smart have a button that puts it directly into a notebook - although I'm assuming that's only for their own product. I wonder if there is an equivalent that will capture from the webcam really easily and put it directly into a Promethean flipchart.

TTS are brining out a Visuliser in April - 74.99! or a 6 pack for 399. Sounds rather cheep to be honest, but then it is just a camera on a stick! Specification includes: Bendy Gooseneck 5 x optical zoom 1.3MP Digital Images Video Capture Built in Light TTS - Primary Visualiser I'd be interested to try one of these. Hopefully its not another DigiBlue.

Yes, having them all on one channel is a problem. The channel is the radio frequency the AP is broadcasting on. Having them all on the same frequency means that one AP will be interfearing with adjacent APs. Yes, it will work, but you will be slowing it down. You should use 1, 6, and 11 as these channels do not overlap frequencies. If you have more than 3 APs within range of each other you could use 1, 5, 9 and 13 because these are almost non-overlapping. There should be a setting in the wireless manager to let it sort this all out for you - this should also automatically 'turn down' other APs if they are causing interference.

Yes, the last 4 digits are random numbers. SB580-151234 should work.

I used to put a shortcut in their my docs to the shared planning drive. Eventually SMT insisted that everyone kept their planning there in a similar folder structure.

Target Tracker That's one of the reasons why I left the country!

Abacus Evolve is a maths scheme of work, that happens to have it's planning within a piece of software. However, it's quite limited, even compared Curriculum Complete. It won't, for example, let you work at home then upload back to the network. You're either home OR school. To do any transfer, you must export to word. I haven't seen anything that's like CC. Most people just use a bit of discipline with storing their plans in nested folders.

Now, unfortunately I can't quite remember what I did. It was one of these 3 things!: Either: The problem is caused by easyteach msi being made using install shield. Install Sheild needs it's own driver. You can turn of the check for this my making a transform file (MST) for your MSI. You need to change the property ISSETUPDRIVEN=1. When you install via activedirectory you need to make sure the IISScriptx.msi file is installed first. However, because Install Shield are rubbish, if you have done this with another iscript file (they are all separate) you will have problems, and you will need to repackage the iiscript file. or I found a CC3 MSI version of Easyteach. this might have been on the CD but I think I downloaded a more recent version from RM. or Above (and) To fix the licence problem: I installed it once using Setup, then had a hunt through the registry for where the licence is stored. I then made a msi that installed this licence key and ran that MSI after the easyteach msi. - This one rings a bell, I think that's what I did! If you email me at the end of december, I should be able to check on my servers. I also made some scripts that installed the Server version on staff laptops so staff could use it at home, then a little program that allowed staff to choose whether they were running the database on the local machine (when offline) or the shared network database (when at school).

I would but, unfortunately, I have left the place where I was working when I wrote it and for some reason, I didn't get a copy. I'm in another country now but I might go back at xmas and retrieve my hours of labour!

Now now, no one likes a smartarse. Location duly updated, with flags.

Sound's like a cool little app. Not shutting down from standby is a bit of a short-coming though... I made a little MSI that made a scheduled task. In this task 'wake computer up from standby' was selected, so there must be some API call that will do the same. Obviously, mine didn't respond to AD, which is pretty cool feature.

Will the changes replicate to each other?