klawd

Doing your own filtering is a nightmare, liability wise - does your LA provide a service you could buy into? Its one of those things that its nice to blame the LA for, if the kids start browsing porn, having your own box might get messy if you are filtering to a different standard than other schools in your LA. If you still want ISA to use as a proxy, its pretty idiot proof to setup and configure, all wizard based. ISA is an application that installs as a service on Windows server.

I just installed SIMS.net on our new 64bit Windows 2003 server [running windows 2003 x64 r2 standard] , and one of the installers bitched about having to contact the provider to get a 64bit version, but other than that it seemed to install okay. Due to the error, there maybe something like System Manager or one of the ancient looking apps that dont work - havent tried yet, but the main SIMS.net front end seems to work without any problems.

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Strange I always got official MS cds with the holograph on from Ramesys when ever I have ordered media from them (for Microsoft software only tho). Maybe it depends on your region/agreement.

edit: post messed up!

This works fine for us.... http://dansguardian.org/downloads/michaelpike/DGID.zip

Doh.. sorry would have helped, wouldnt it We are down in sunny somerset.

This is kind of off topic, so please excuse, I couldnt find a suitable place to post this. We are building a new computer suite and disposing of our old laptops. This leaves us with a laptop trolley which can hold 16 laptops vertically, and has a cable and sockets so the chargers can be plugged in. We no longer need the unit, but do need the space it takes up. It is this unit, but in red. http://www.redstore.com/OEMNOT054 It is about 2 years old now and has been used, but otherwise works fine. I would like to request offers from those who would like to purchase, but please bear in mind, we will not be able to deliver or send. Buyer would have to collect. You can send me offers via PM if interested. Please note this is not a private sale, it is inviting offers for a piece of IT equipment that is currently owned by the school. Any offers will be subject to acceptance by the school.

One thing you learn after working in the public sector for a while, is that saving money gets you nowhere. There are no bonuses for good performance or financial benefits of a job well done. "value for money" is a myth. Expenditure ALWAYS expands to the size of the budget, no matter how big it is. There is simply no gain in saving money as it will mean the "saving" is cut from the budget allowance next year. I have found this to be true of IT equipment as well, a budget is set aside for a project, so the final price just happens to work out to be your project budget! In my experience I have found most people who have always worked in the public sector to be very blaise about spending public money, there seems to be little to no recognition to where that money really comes from.

becktonboys analysis seems accurate to me. So far, the courses I have been on shows "personalised learning" to be some government driven idea of a utopia where teachers are not really required and students can sit at a PC anywhere (not even at school) and basically run through online courses. Students can choose the courses and direction themselves, moving as quickly or as slowly as comfortable. I can see why the government loves the idea, it will mean that they can save costs on teachers, and no student will be able to fail, because they will ever have to learn a subject they dont like or find difficult. Yet another buzzword and crappy initiative, seemingly ignoring the fact that not every student likes or gets on using a PC, and that if you cannot read in the first place, having the work on a screen is not going to help you either. You have to wonder how much of these initiatives like ICTAC really do make a positive difference or if it just means the students get to mess around on the internet doing "research" where as before they would have to use a book and actually learn to draft work instead of just nicking it off wikipedia. Maybe I am just too cynical?

No more expensive than it has always been.... You are probably thinking of the switchover to SQL 2005 due to happen in September. Whether you need to upgrade to full SQL2005 is dependant on your requirements, but you will have to upgrade from MSDE to SQL Express (the updated, but still free version of MSDE)

We have an in house web based solution that we use for lesson registration & behaviou rmanagement. If you are interested, send me a message and we can discuss further.

Good luck with this - we have had nightmares trying to get VPN working for staff at home. Get ready for a world of hurt when you start to run across all the crap people have on their home machines that interferes or flat out stops VPN working. (Norton...hiss!) We are phasing out VPN for general use, and moving towards a Terminal Server, which I think will be more secure. With the amount of crap on peoples home machines I think VPN is probably less rather than more secure.

We use EMCO MSI Package Builder Install XP into virtual pc, install EMCO package builder, run the application installer, EMCO will then output a MSI for you Then just copy back your "pure" XP image, ready to go again Its quick and so far everything has worked without problems. EMCO do a 20% discount for education. works out at £203 for a site license.

NetworkGeezer has it right. You will need to work out what parts of SIMS you will need to move, some like FMS can be a bit fussy. Make sure you have logins so you can check each migration stage as you do it, so that you know it works. You can always migrate all the apps etc, and then just move the database nearer the time. Plenty of info on Capita forums how to do this.

Allied Telesyn 8000S are good little switches. Available from 8 ports up to 48 ports. Has GBIC ports if you want to upgrade it. They have web management, and all the standard features (VLANS, port trunking etc) We just bought a few of the 24 port models for £164 each.

We have the AB Tutor Control software here. What you can do with the software is create a group and then "lock" those pcs using the teacher control. When the student books out the PC, the librarian can select to unlock the machine so the student can log on to it. Its not automatic fancy keycard type stuff, but the AB Tutor control software is not particularly expensive last time I checked. This is how I would probably do it....

Maybe force a restart of the recipient update service (RUS) This is responsible for building the GAL.

We have had great success using OKIs colour 5250n, colour 5600n and mono b6300n. The mono is amazingly fast and all are working out well on toners, no problems so far using cheapo generic toners either.

Don't want to thread hijack, but has anyone tried the open source filtering/antivirus software ASSP for doing this kind of thing? I was going to try GRYNX but some of the issues reported put me off.

Sounds right - thats how we were advised and how we do it. Unless your server is dual processor, then you need 2 processor licenses, natch.

Remember that Exchange 2007 requires Windows 2003 64bit, which requires 64 bit hardware (obviously!), so those are costs you need to consider if you are not already running on that setup. Last quotation I had for just Exchange 2007 was 2 weeks ago and worked out at £70 for Exchange 2007, and £1.70 for a CAL.

...or Exchange 2007 which requires 64bit Windows

Sounds like your permissions are not configured correctly and students have some read access still in place.

Hi I have a vbs script I made for this. I created it because I needed to synchronise two GALS on different domains. PM if you would like the script