eean

I've been thinking about getting an A3 printer, and, as you know, we've had a lot of success with Continuous Ink. Really, I need it to have 2 trays - A4 and A3 - does the k8600 have this? (I can't see that it has) I can't really justify a purely A3 printer (it would probably block up) and i can't see staff being able to faff about with swapping paper.

Do you know you can apply an MSP to an install point? This updates the files at the original install location. Then all you need to do is RH click on the application and hit redeploy. There is a guide here for office, but the same command lines should work. I think you will have originally copied the apps files using the msiexec /a switch. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/orkXP/HA011525721033.aspx Disclaimer: Like everything in 'MSI land' it only works if the company haven't put in the effort of buggering up Microsoft's perfectly good standardised install routine (*Shakes fist at InstallShield*). So, knowing Adobe's track record, I wouldn't hold up much hope. Foxit Reader anybody?

We have 10 of the c1e for several years now. Decent cameras and because they have high optical zoom you can get a decent depth of field. The flash is a little bright.

We just got some HPs at similar (slightly better- 2 ghz) spec for about £309+vat = ~360 after cashback. Don't think we got THAT much of an educational discount.

There is a equipment register in SIMS. It's not very good, but we have to use it for that financial standards thing. It does allow a print off of equipment by room and gives a proforma for pass/fail and an easy way of updating that back into the register. Oh, and, on a related note: We're also putting asset tags with an internal serial number on all our equipment, so it easier to track what's in the database. You can by these - but they are at least £150 for 300. Alternatively, you can get special heavy duty Avery labels and print your own. We got silver foil ones from Staples but you can also get those tamper resistant ones. Was about £30 for 1000! We even stuck a barcode on it to make it easier (most equipment has the serial number in a barcode too).

Not that uncommon. I'm doing some re-jigging at the with the aim of getting rid of all of our >1ghz computers, but I think we'll still have a few. 30k? How many computers have you got! TBH, photostory is pretty much the only program where we notice the slower computers. And it doesn't put people off using it, you just need to be aware that the preview won't be quite accurate and it's best to compile it on a faster computer. We do video editing on our 600mhz without too much trouble (although they had a memory boost a few years back. We're mainly upgrading because of the puney 7gb hard drives and with wireless network running apps from the server isn't always an option.

Check your manufacturer's website - OKI do a free tool (that only works with their printer) but can give very accurate costings. It looks at % coverage of each colour, how many colours are used (so how many rollers have been used) etc...

It's very good. We use it from Year 2-6 here. Doesn't use up much space, although the uncompiled photostory files can get quite large. Once you've saved them as a video file, they are obviously fine. It will highlight your slow computers (when I say slow, I mean below 1ghz). It runs fine, but the real-time preview gets slow so the sound becomes out of sync.

I suppose it's because of Microsoft's fancy thing that means it only downloads the parts of the file which has changed from the WSUS server to the client. It must have to have a slighly different patch for every possible version of the file?

Check the KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;835221 It doesn't apply to SP2, they must have fixed it in the SP.

All of HP drivers I have used do extract to an open format. Sometimes, you need to run the install program, then find the drivers in c:\program files\. TBH I've never not been able to find the driver. Type "extract all drivers from windows" into google and there are a few tools that can help. Someone mentioned a good and free one on here recently, but I've never used one so I can't recommend. I've integrated both of these updates into my RIS setup, so check your syntax. I've slipped up on trying to integrate on the server. You must run it from Windows XP (with the path on the server). Also check they're not dependent on something like SP2 - have you slip streamed this in? Check this website: http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/12/ It refers to making an unattended CD but it all works on RIS too, except where they talk about Winnt.sif, for RIS it's your template file.

I'm ICT coordinator in a similar situation. 400 pupil school, around 60 computers and me, who fixes everything with a plug. Last week I just upgraded our 5 year old server. To be fair, there was nothing wrong with the old server, it ran fine with all (and more) of the services you are describing. But the hard drive almost failed, I got away with it but I really wanted something with RAID mirroring (2 hard drives mirrored so if one fails, the other will step in straight away - Restoring from backup is time consuming and not much fun!). Putting RAID in the old server wasn't much less than a new one. I got a HP ProLiant ML310 G5 - Tower Dual-Core Xeon 3065 / 2.33 GHz - RAM 1 GB. 3yr onsite warranty - £279.64. Got double memory for free (2gb total) and an extra hard drive (£54) for raid (it had 2 in already, it turned out, so now I have 3). Windows Server licence was extra. (not alot). Don't believe the online prices. There are always discounts to be had (Ebuyer are competitive esp. if you put them against Misco). I could have spent £1000 on a server, but, TBH, it won't make things any faster or better. That money would be better spent upgrading the machines. I was thinking of using my old server for something, but then I'm giving a critical job to something that could be unreliable. Perhaps, you could use yours as a proxy server? I think I'll just mine as a workstation.

Right, so you have 3 switches in total. 2 x24for the ICT suite? (that's a big suite for a primary) and 1x24 for the classrooms. Do any of your exisiting switches have a gigabit uplink port? Do you have gigabit in your server? How much do you want to/can spend on this? I'm thinking the most cost effective solution is to get something in the smartswitch range from Netgear. OK, not a 'proper' managed switch, but I don't know about you but I wouldn't know how to set one up properly anyway! If you want some future-proofing you could get a stackable model. Have your server on this, and links to your other switches - preferably using gigabit ports. You could also stick the ICT suite computers on it. Then use your spare ICT suite switch for the classrooms. I think (you need to check) that you can make it so the ports the server is on, and the ports with the links to the other switches have higher priority than the computers.

Not sure I understand what you mean. So (I'm not sure about your networking background, so I'm not being patronsing, I'm just trying to be clear!): All of the wires come from the the classrooms and they are hard wired into a patch panel. They will go into the back of the patch panel. A patch panel doesn't do anything and has no power. It is just like having loads of sockets on one board. Then there will be network cables, going from the front of the patch panel to the switch. The switch connects the whole lot together. Here is a photo: The patch panel is on the top, and the switch is below. At the bottom is the router. http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/7122/commsrackku0.jpg Have the second (currently unused) classroom cables been terminated in a patch panel yet?

I think this might be a little overkill. I'm guessing Tom is in primary school and, as he said, his network gets very little use. Even if he joins all the machines to the domain, I'm guessing the server will be just sharing a few files and the main use of the network will be for the internet. In that situation, I doubt the end-user would notice if the switch was £1000 or £100 and the 'bottle necks' are probably in things like RAM on the computers, or general poor PC/network setup. I would suggest buying a £200 Netgear switch with some simple management features and some gigabit ports. I don't honestly believe that even gigabit is truly necessary and I wouldn't worry too much about bottlenecks, but you might as well make the best of what you have got. Tom – does your current switch/server have any gigabit ports? If so, obviously, use them to connect the server and the switch – if not don’t worry about it for now. You can always monitor the performance on the server and if you are finding the network card is peaking then whack a gb card in the server.

Hmm... looks pretty similar to mine. Although, I've just noticed that my network address is wrong, so that won't help! When I use the original script, it is noticeably slower - like it could take several seconds after clicking on the link to go to the page, and then, each graphic etc.. takes a few seconds longer. When the proxy is hard coded it is instant. Really, I want it to say "If address is one word, like server, or suiteprinter then go direct, else go to proxy" - that should be less effort for it to work out? In answer to your question, I think this function may help: myIpAddress() - If you google it along with proxy auto config you get lots of threads of people struggling to get it to work!

It's not on that forum but I can post it if you like. It's rather crude and badly edited, with file names etc.. hard coded in, but you're welcome to it if you want.

I've just re-set up my auto proxy file on a new server after I migrated from a win 2k server to win 2003. I noticed it was really slow when it was using the auto proxy file. I'm not sure if it was this slow before. This is my old wpad.dat and proxy.pac file: function FindProxyForURL(url,host) { if(isPlainHostName(host)|| isInNet(host,"10.39.0.0","255.255.254.0")) return "DIRECT"; else return "PROXY 10.39.208.69:8080; DIRECT"; } This should work out if the destination has a local IP address and, if not, send it to the proxy. After some fiddling, I took out the bit that works out if it is local and now it runs fine: function FindProxyForURL(url,host) { return "PROXY proxy:8080; DIRECT"; } But now, of course, if I try to access a local resource it can't find it. Is there a more efficient way of writing my original file? (I need to use automatically detect settings, so other GP or reg based methods are no good).

Shutsdown the computer? It doesn't do this on our system. (I made it, by the way) it might restart the computer (I don't think it does) but I don't even know how to make shutdown! Is there any chance it was a fluke, eg. caused by WSUS applying some updates?

The logon script doesn't have admin rights to the local machine? You can't have non-admins able to create scheduled tasks that run with system rights - that'd be a huge security hole! Try creating an MSI that will execute your batch file. You can do this easily through Windows Installer Wrapper Wizard You can then pop this into active directory and it will run with elevated rights.

Oh, what a pain - we've got dc5750. They don't seem to have one for them. I've found some under desk mounts, that might do. We've got Junior Librarian.

We just bought 1 of these: http://www.protouch.co.uk/touch/items.asp?Cc=ProtouchTS from protouch. We got it for a primary school library, so children can check-out books but we didn't have space for a traditional pc setup as it is in a corridor. I haven't child-tested it yet, but I had a go. It's really accurate and I was a bit worried it may be hard to press small icons - but it seems to be fine. Protouch were helpful and recommended the above, cheeper, model over the NEC (which I was tempted to use because I'd heard of them). It's certainly hard and heavy. They also give a good educational discount (the 17" cost us £365) Are you going to have a keyboard, if so how are you going to mount it. Likewise, have you found any computer mounts that will let you fix the computer to the wall? (That's my next job to find!)

How long? Isn't there a command that forces the sync of the servers (last time I did this was about 7 years ago but I have to do it next week too!) Oh, and: I want to copy all the files (along with the permissions) from the old server to the new one, 'as is'. All the locations etc.. will be the same. I could use something like xcopy that is run from the local system account, because it'll have full access to all the files. (The Domain Admin doesn't, by default) BUT: Presumably, local\system won't have access to the new server, so won't be able to place the files there?? Is there any way around this? Or will I have to add a domain admin to all the files and run it from there. (I dont' want to f up the permissions!) Also: Moving the shares: Is there an easy way of taking all the old shares from the old server to the new one. Shares are held in the registry, so presumably I can just export that key and reimport it on the new server? Will that work?

£400 before or after cashback? I paid £407 before £100 cb in the end (but that was delivered) - I really doubt you'll get a better spec for £307 (if you can, don't tell me!) Why should a schools agreement make a difference? Windows Vista Business automatically has downgrade rights to XP pro. We got the VB version because they were cheaper and gave some future proofing. The only downside, is they are quite wide. We got a Lapsafe mini-mentor trolley and they will only fit in the smartline version, and it has to be a wider one. The wide one is fine, but won't have room for an external wireless network card should you ever want to use one (for n). The internal ABG card may be upgradeable, I don't know. The laptops themselves look pretty robust and chunky. My only concern is the wireless ON/OFF is an attractive-to-touch light that looks unobvous when disabled. The old 'blob of gluegun glue' trick won't work. Anyone know a way of disabling this through software?

Does anyone know if the ABG version can load-balance between A and G? So, say, you had 15 computers with AG cards, and they were within suitable range for A, half of them would be told to go on the A band whilst the other half went on G? Any sign of a Pre-N version?