AngryTechnician

UKIP = UK Intolerance Party. Pretty sure that being a nut in some way is a requirement for membership.

That's par for the course with Adobe, the .msi version is always the last to be updated. Sometimes they forget altogether until they get enough complaints.

Are you logged in as an admin on the server or on a workstation? I think for at least some of the new policies you need to configure Group Policy using RSAT while logged in on a Windows 8.1 machine.

You're allowed to do that with DVDs for curriculum purposes because of because of specific exceptions in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998. These are exceptions to copyright law, not to contractual terms, which is what the Spotify restrictions are. Basically, if you use Spotify in schools it is not a copyright violation (due to the exceptions above) but IS a violation of contract law.

That annoyed me too. Eventually I set my Chrome homepage to Bing out of spite.

You must be too young to remember when we all referred to the default XP theme (Luna) as the Fisher Price theme. Windows 8 has NOTHING on that garishness.

Windows Live Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird would be my sugestions.

Apparently there is an unofficial method that is supposed to work on non-Enterprise editions too: Customizing the Windows 8.1 Start Screen? Don’t follow Microsoft’s guidance | Aaron Parker Scroll down to the paragraph that begins "Fortunately, there’s a far easier way..." I haven't actually tried it yet, and we're on Enterprise here anyway, but looks worth a shot (and simpler than the official method).

That's what I've done in the past.

You;re quite right, how I had forgotten about this is beyond me. If the iPad is put into Supervised mode using Apple Configurator, you can reclaim the code. (We don't use Configurator so apparently I had blotted this from my mind!)

That's what I use, but not in the same way you describe. Our machines all use individual computer certificates from our AD's certificate authority. I believe this is how most people do it. That said, who you've described sounds like it can be made to work. In my experience this tends to be more difficult to set up on the clients than on the server. If the certificate is in the user certificate store rather than computer store and the config is set to use computer configuration, it will fail. Or vice-versa. Can you describe how you've set the clients up and which store the cert is in?

Hold on to your hat. First off: 1 licence does not cover all your iPads on one Apple ID. This is allowed for consumer use but is specifically not permitted for everyone else (schools included). So you've done the right thing by buying 30 licences. There are two ways of buying and deploying app licences with VPP. First method The first is the original method (which I think is what you've done) where you buy 30 licences and get 30 claim codes in return. You paste those codes into your MDM and instruct your iPads to claim them. As you've spotted, when the iPad claims the code, it assigns the app to the Apple ID in use on the device, not the device itself. This means if you have the same ID on 30 devices, it will usually only claim 1 code the first time, but install on all the other iPads anyway because the App store is set to auto-download any apps on that Apple ID. On the other hand, if you have a different Apple ID on each device, all 30 codes will be claimed. In both cases, once the codes are claimed by the Apple ID they are permanently associated with that ID and cannot be transferred to another Apple ID in future. Legally it also doesn't really matter whether all the codes are claimed or not, just that you have purchased the right number of codes to fulfil your device numbers. Second method The second, much newer method is what's called Managed Distribution. In this scenario you link your MDM directly to VPP, so you never see any claim codes. You buy app licences in VPP and they show up automatically in your MDM, where you assign them directly to specific named Apple IDs. The device that has this Apple ID associated with it then receives the app automatically. I'm 99% sure you have to use one user per device for this (someone please correct me if this isn't the case). The advantage to this system is that you can reclaim the licence from the Apple ID and use it on a different Apple ID in future. In most cases you also won't have to confirm the app install on the device like you do with the first method: it just installs via push (so long as you have automatic install turned on in the App Store settings). Lastly, it's worth noting that the type of licence you buy is an either/or deal: you either get a claim code OR a managed distribution licence. You pick which you want when you buy, and you can't swap from one to the other after purchase.

What AV are you using? There have been instances in the past (AVG springs to mind) where a bad definition update caused false positives on a bunch of system files and quarantined them, rendering the system unusable. Not aware that a large number of different files have been affected before though.

All our machines go to sleep on a timer set via GP. They wake up again to install Windows Update during the night and then sleep again on the same timer afterwards. No issues with any of our workstations (mostly Dell running Windows 7, with a small number of Lenovo). Don't use Impero so can't speak to that.

As a current customer of both (one business account with each) I can say they have given comparable good levels of service to us at the school. If the extras you've described with Zen are worth the extra cost to you then by all means, but personally I would go with PlusNet for residential.

Not working here. The docs refer to this feature in Office 2010: I wonder if it was 'replaced' by the "SharePoint @ Your Organisation" link in Save As for Office 2013 (which doesn't seem to be customisable).

Samsung TVs are known for not sending HMDI audio to the optical output if the original input has HDCP (which it will from the blu-ray). That said, the Sky box would have specified HDCP too so not sure why that worked and not the blu-ray.

Not a clue. Turns out none of my DVDs that were awkward are post-2007!

I've been doing the same thing and am using DVD Decrypter for the extraction (along with RipIt4Me for the discs with protected sectors). Handbrake 0.9.9.5530 is working great for me for compression to M4V.

I personally try to avoid configuring even a guest network without a PSK. Our guest network has a simple PSK key (along with the login portal) that is posted on signs through the the buildings, so anyone who needs it can find it, but it does cut down on the chancers.

Having used this a lot in the past I'm glad to see it updated to get VHDX support. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415 Also worth mentioning that on Windows 8/2012 machines and later, you can achieve roughly the same thing with New-VHD Powershell command (which has options for using a physical source disk for creating the VHDX), but on older machines with a lot of storage, this is useful to have.

AFAIK you can update them independently. Personally I'd still be minded to get them both up to SP3 first and then apply the update rollups. Best advice I can give you about applying update rollups (since it sounds like you haven't done them before) is to apply them via WSUS where possible, and where you can't (newer rollups that aren't in WU yet) make sure you run the .exe from an elevated command prompt. The update rollups are notorious for not requesting elevation when they need it and will balls up your OWA if they don't run elevated.

Yes, and I'm not thrilled, but to my knowledge I'm not sending any passwords via GET requests for images, so I'm not as concerned as I would be if my ISP was MITMing me while I logged into my online banking.

The most amusing pats are after the present day, when the future predictions are a mix of actual predictions, elements from popular sci-fi, and comedy gold.

Right, and if they aren't doing it via DNS then they are MITMing customers, and I definitely do not want my ISP doing that.