eean

What sort of 'real life' throughput are you getting? (IIRC there's a tester within that utility). And what's the deal with "the software". Do we need that? Is that to be purchased in addtion to the AP controller? I saw somewhere selling it for us$5000! And read somewhere that it came with the support contract. Does that then include software updates?

Thanks guys - I'm starting to love Ruckus, especially the price. By the looks of things they have a buy-one-get-one-free offer on access points (if you buy 10). Hopefully that will be available out here in Malaysia. A few questions. How does n cope when there are g clients? Does it get crippled? Will it switch up to full speed when there are no g on that AP? Load-balancing. I assume it does this! If I've got a class load of laptops within range of, say, 3 APs, will it put some of the clients onto an AP that's further away (but on a different channel)? I've read up on their website. They mention this directional antenna thing but don't seem to make too many boasts about how well it can handle multiple clients!

WHAT! No legacy mode in 2008? We're supposed to be upgrading over the summer and I've just finished sorting out the legacy mode setup! I don't care if the new one is better... legacy is what I know, and it works!

Anyone actually installed a managed 802.11n system? We've got wireless network consisting of consumer-grade Belkin n APs and would like proper managed wireless solution. The Network manager wants to install .11g -it seems a bit silly to be installing something we will grow out of in a few years and, in places, could be slower than our exisiting system. We have macbooks, so can start taking advantage of the technology straight away. Does anyone have experience of n, and/or any idea about the costs (NM claims it's 2-3x more expensive, but I'd like some figures). If any advertisers/others would like to PM me some indicative figures for comparision for, say, a 8AP system, it would be appreciated. Cheers,

I did a test to a cheepo Belkin router from a macbook (running windows). Was through cardboard wall but within 4m of the router. Throughput was 30MBit. Still 2-3x faster than g.

Cluttered. No. Wait. I mean uncluttered. I've always implemented a logical start menu that's differentiated for different groups but follows the same structure for everyone. Staff can then 'customise' their own desktop. If redirect the start menu but make sure it's on a different share to the desktop e.g \\server\sharedstart and desktops on \\server\userprofiles then when you drag icons to the desktop they copy by default. If they were on the same share then they move by default, and they only have write access to the start menu so that fails.

We're going for a managed wirless solution. I know that there are plenty of threads on this. Our NM is keen on an Alcatel solution - has anyone heard of this? I think it's actually Aruba stuff (obviously has a very good reputation) but I'd be interested to know if it's based on the old or new Aruba technologies. (Like Netgear is actually Aruba 2.5 but if you buy Aruba stuff now you get 3.x). Thanks.

Looks really good. When is version 2 out?!

In the spirit of trying to keep startup as lean as possible - has anyone tried calling simsload from a MSI then just redeploying the msi whenever an update is available? Or is so quick whenever there's no update it's not worth it?

Have you seen the 'attempt to be funky' promotional videos on the website? Now that's desperate!

Didn't know that @edu was scriptable. What does that allow you to do? Both offer some spam filtering and their own virus scanning. I mean, with the online tools, you don't seem to have that fine tuning/control that you have with a local system. e.g if you wanted to stop/allow certain people emailing other people, or prevent certain users seeing the global address list. That kind of thing.

I think you also need to look further than email. Both are offering some really cool educational tools. e.g. MS - Sky drive with 25gb online storage with document sharing, plus online versions of word etc... Google - Allow 10 users to edit the same document at the same time. What you don't get with either provider is things like message filtering or the ability to control (i.e. look at) user's mail boxes that you would with a locally hosted solution. Google lets you do some of this with an add on but then you're looking at a fiver per person per year.

Just found this thread searching for something else. Try learning essentials toolkit from microsoft. Free product - contains a lot of rubbish but also allows you to export to SCORN from powerpoint.

Is this only webbased or can you use it with Microsoft Outlook? (not just throuigh IMAP, but like an exchange server?)

Perhaps because he's his form tutor, who should be taking an overall view of the child's education. Perhaps because he's a ICT teacher, who should be monitoring work done in other curriculum areas to assess cross-curricular standards of ICT. Perhaps because the Science teacher has noticed a child's written ability is poor and wants to check their English to see if there is a general problem or more to do with his expectations of what a child can do. Secondary teachers should be taking more of an overview of the whole child, not just focusing on their subject. It's moving more this way. Technology can help with this - and if it's easy, it's more likely to happen. When children work on one project in a team, but the child who's saved the work is off. The teacher needs to go into that child's folder to retrieve it. Take it back to the other example - this is like the exercise books. We don't say "teachers can't have write access to the exercise books"; we absolutely expect them to write in the books when they mark them. Good example. Didn't think of that one. We call complain about how much printing goes on - office contains useful tools annotations and feedback. Yes, this can be achieved with departmental folders, but really work should be attached to the child. Also, a teacher might want to quickly see what a child has achieved in a lesson before it's formally submitted for assessment. They may want to check up on a child who was pissing about all lesson or they may want to gaugue the level of achievement so they can plan their next steps in learning. (I do this with my kids' ICT work, sometimes!) With written work they can have a quick flick through the pile of text books but when work is locked in private folders this isn't possible. Well, perhaps that's because we treat the My Docs folder like a teenager's bedroom - something rarely to be opened or looked at, rather than a place for storing work, a record of day-to-day achievement, a tool for formative assessment. In primary, we spend hours teaching children how to write their date, underline the title, stick their work in their book straight. We ought to treat the work children save in their my docs folder with the same respect - As of tomorrow, I'm going to start yelling at kids who don't save their work properly! How's about, as a compromise: * Pupils have a folder for personal/out of school work that has restricted access (that covers people's privacy fears.) * Staff have read access to folders (except their private folder). * A basic directory structure is created for the child (e.g. subject headings) with read only access to the root of the my docs. Children are taught and expected to save their work correctly. * Staff can create new files in a folder and edit these - however they can not modify/delete work that the child has created. This would prevent accidential deletion/adjusting coursework fears but would allow the teacher to create a duplicate copy of the work which could be annotated for marking/feedback. * Staff have folders with shortcuts to pupils work whom they teach. This could be created fairly easily with a script and a exported file from SIMS. This would allow them to more easily access the work of the chidren they teach.

Ok, so I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate here. I personally can't think of a good reason why a teacher should need to edit pupils files, so therefore they shouldn't have access to them. Back to the (rather poor - fair enough) doctor analogy: I'm sure there are a plenty of incompetent doctors out there but to suggest that they would intentionally go about killing people, isn't going to make you many friends (nor is suggesting that teachers are akin to receptionists!) The privacy argument isn't going to help much - if kids want privacy there are plenty ways they can achieve that. A pen drive would be a good start. There are plenty of techs on here who purchase key.

Sorry, but the words that come out of an Ofsted inspector's mouth isn't worth the paper it's not written on. If the OP wants to deal with potential fallout from staff then he's going to have to have something written down. Like the many "health and safety" rules, usually bounded about by LEA advisors, most of them have come from nowhere. (See: Health & Saftey Exec - H&S Myths, and TUC - H&S Looking at the truth behind the headlines) I'm not sure that this is something you should get too upset over. Certainly, if you cut of access and say it's because you think that staff may interfere with coursework is going to give you massive headaches and, quite frankly, you're probably not paid enough to have to put up with that. You're basically insulting their professionalism. It's like saying to a doctor he can't have access to drugs incase he maliciously kills someone - yes, we all know it has happened, but it doesn't mean that all doctors are murderers. I'd email someone in the SMT and explain the situation, outlining the risks. You could stick some more techie reasons in there too e.g. Having lots of read access directories means that any virus that gets into the network can spread itself extremely quickly. Do it in a very rounded 'just explaining the situation' kind of a way. If they say yes, then you do it, citing that they've asked you to. Any teacher got a problem with that say "yes, I see your point. Ask the head - just followin' orders gov'ner" If they say no, then you're not to blame when it all goes pear shaped.

For Documents, Google Apps will only support 10 simultanious users. Spreadsheets is higher though. Collaborating : Simultaneous editing and viewing - Google Docs Help We're just starting to use Google Apps. We tried it once in a staff meeting - we wanted everyone to contribute their ideas to a shared document. It kinda worked - but after a while it stopped saving citing an error with google. We had 20 simultanious users I think, spread accross 3 docs. It might have been because the net connection here is rubbish or just a one-off problem with google. We're going to try it again on Monday with 10 simultanious users.

Is it possible to have sims run and install the updates, but really execute the UI and in a silent operation? I'm thinking that you could have a wrapper MSI would run this exe. This could then be deployed (and redeployed when there's an update) via group policy. Alternatively, you could make a autoit script, or similar, to run this update silently with enhanced permissions - perhaps via a logon script or via a scheduled task (so then you have it run when the computer is idle). Just a few ideas. Don't do this yet myself but need to takle this problem soon!

I've had a similar problem with other install sheild setups. It doesn't seem to be be able to find the setup.iss file. Fistly make sure the setup.iss is in the same directory as the setup.exe. Then run setup.exe /s /f1"\\server\fullpath\setup.iss" /f2"c:\windows\temp\setup.log" /f1 is the full path to the install sheild file. /f2 is a location to save the log file - sometimes install sheild wants this. I've used this recently - I made autoit script to put the full path and the temp dir in as variables. Then made used a MSI wrapper to run the compiled script. Some help with install sheild installs here: AppDeploy > Tips > InstallShield Setup Silent Installation Switches (I might have thrown in /SMS for good measure). In this article they use -s and -f1. Not sure if it makes any difference. It worked for Power DVD but your mileage may vary!

Sits in the corner and cries, gently rocking back and fourth, having remembered the pain felt when attempting to deploy DigiBlue I lost days of my life on that pile of s:censored:! Anyway, once you've made it silent you can use WIWW (Windows Installer Wrapper Wizard) to make a dummy msi that will call the native setup program. I've tried this, but can't actually remember if it works. I have a feeling it pops up one dialog box, even when it's supposed to be silent - but that may have been an older version. Let me know because I've got to do it again soon!

Primary school - 700 pupils - 18,000 per year. Some colour lazers but the main problem is the HP deskjets in all the classrooms. I think we'd have a fight if we tried to get rid of them though. My last place: primary school, 400 pupils - about 2500/year (colour lasers). Swapped over to inkjets with a continuious ink system. (search on here for contink - got it from him). Basically, you have dummy cartridges that are linked with tubes to big ink tanks, that you can then just fill up from a bigger tank. It's not without it's problems - can be messy at times and the ink heads are more prone to blocking. Did reduce our ink bill to about 200/year though! I thought our bills were high, but by the looks of things we're pretty average.

I haven't done this myself for this particular package but usually it's something along the lines of: With your original MSI make an administrative image by running: MSIEXEC /A "c:\path\setup.msi" TARGETDIR="C:\Temp\converters" This will extract the msi to c:\temp\converters. You will see the MSI and it's files in that folder. Then do MSIEXEC /p "c:\path\patchfile.msp" /A "c:\temp\converters\setup.msi"

When you run the download, select Network install. This will extract all of the MSIs to a folder. In the ActivInspire folder (the msi for the main software) in the folder with the MSI run asserialnumbervalidator.exe and enter your details. This creates ".inspire_license.xml" in the same folder. ASTransGen.exe will make a MST file for you to customize your install path and shared resources directory. (not sure why they didn't use that tool for the serial number, but hey). Once I had figured that it was 'as easy as that' it took about 10 minutes!

ActivStudio is soooo 2008. It's all about Inspire Editon these days, which personally, I think is a good upgrade. It takes a lot of the annoyances out of the software - the handwriting recognition is almost as good as smart. It's free for existing users this year. It comes in an MSI that works, a little MST generator to sort out the transform and a little tool that will stick in the serial number for you. Lovely. Well done Promethean.