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This is going to be the layout of our new ICT Suite which I am really looking forward to: http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/7159/layoutdn5.jpg Here are some artist impressions of what the front of the room will look like. Bear in mind it is a primary school. http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/9316/artist1oi6.jpg http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/4541/artist2gl4.jpg

Well i've had some good news today. We were leasing 16 acer laptops and decided to stop paying for them and send them back. Because they are about three/four years old, they didn't really want them back as they couldn't do anything with them. So they said give us £900 and we can keep the lot . £900... thats 16 laptops for the price of about two. Even taking into account the amount we leased them for, we still have had several laptops for free .

Yeah we have an audit, courtesy of myself last Summer. The machines in that room are not in numberical order though (as the caretaker installed them in the room before I started at the school) and as I couldn't turn the machine on, I didn't know which one it was. It's not nice working under the desk... I have already ruined two and (I might add) expensive shirts.

Meh, I'm not so annoyed about him being rude, he did have to wait a little bit, even though it wasn't really my fault - I'd have quite happily used phonetic alphabet had I been at my computer. It's the fact that I now have no idea what I am supposed to do. I'm going to e-mail them and find out what I need to do.

I know Acer aren't a good company from past experience with their products, but I have had two of their machines HDD's die on me recently. The machines are still under warranty so I phoned up Acer Technicial Support to get them fixed. The guy on the phone sounded very annoyed when he first answered but I ignored it and explained the problem and where I was calling from. Like normal, he didn't believe what I was telling him that the HDD was broken, but thats normal for technical support so I went through all the usual questions with him. He asked if I had tried using the restore CDs that come with the machine. I explained that as we are a school we don't work quite like that, but yes, I had tried to re-image the machine and it won't even detect the HDD. He didn't understand what I was saying and kept mentioning the restore CDs, but eventually he sighed and bypassed that question totally. Then it comes to the serial numbers - now the acer serial numbers are 22 characters long and the machines are locked under the desk in a dark area. I haven't got the keys to remove the machines yet so I had to crawl under in the dark and attempt to write down the serial numbers before I phoned them. I started reading it out to him but he stopped me almost immediately saying that it was wrong and I could tell he was getting annoyed. I tried starting again but again he stopped me. So I walked all the way to the other end of the school to the machines in question and got underneath the desk so I could read directly from the back of the computer, which was very difficult I was in a very awkward position and he was sighing all the time I was walking there. Then he started getting annoyed that I wasn't using phonetic alphabet - well i'm sorry, I don't work with the phonetic alphabet often. He is sitting in an office with his phone and computer directly in front of him, most likely with the phonetic alphabet nearby. I'm lying on the floor with my mobile in one hand under a dark desk with a computer that is broken (not to mention attached to the desk with a very short cable so it is difficult to turn) and a trying to read a serial number that is in about font size 5, at completely the other end of the school to where my own computer is. Eventually we got the correct serial number after several repetitions, which incidently was exactly the same one I had written down. Then he asked for the post code. I don't know the school post code, I usually check the school address on my computer when this question is asked, but now of course I am at the other end of the school! Asking people nearby was no help, so I had to walk all the way back to my own computer and google the school name to find out the post code. By now I could tell he was positively fuming and he was raising his voice. It was probably a good job because a load of kids had just come into the ICT Suite and I could hardly hear what he was saying. Then it comes to my e-mail address... now trying to read an e-mail address that ends with @theoval.bham.sch.uk over the phone is not an easy task when the person on the other end of the line has never seen the address before. Out of habit I pronounced 'sch' as 'school', but immediately corrected myself and he positively exploded saying "Okay, so please tell me, is it "school" or is it S-C-H". By this time I was getting annoyed myself, the kids were getting extremely loud and he was speaking so fast that I couldn't understand what he was saying. He asked if the machine has any windows passwords - why? I have no idea, the HDD is dead. I explained that the computer was part of a domain, besides, it doesn't even matter! Eventually he explained what I needed to do to get the machines back to them, but I couldn't understand him because he was talking so fast and the kids were so loud. He said at the end "now would you like me to e-mail you that information?" I said yes, because I hadn't heard it anyway. He told me it had been sent. I hung up and checked my e-mail. Have I got it? No! He must have typed it in wrong. Now i'm not sure whether I am supposed arrange to have it sent to them or whether they arrange to have it picked up.

Thanks for the help, i'll make sure I do that first thing tomorrow along with my other pile of work that I'm always "getting around" to.

My gosh... I wish my grandad was still alive, he'd be able to tell me exactly how it was done (he was the head lorry driver of a large firm and had to have a police escort half the time because the ones he drove were huge).

Can you give me any more information on this and/or point me towards to network install guide? What Geoff said made me nervous

We do have digital cameras, but that would involve editing the photos for anything else that gets in the picture also which would end up more time consuming. I didn't refuse to do it because I see the website as purely my responsibility and if I'm capable of doing it, then I will do. There are obviously some things that I cannot do, such as writing out the heads introduction (which the head has to do) but other then that i'll do everything that it involves lol. The only issue I had with it was the speed of the scanner (it took about 60-70 seconds per A4 page) and the speed of the computer (I had to do it on a celeron 300MHZ with 128MB RAM and windows 2000)

Thats what I call thinking -Ta Haha, I thought that was a well thought out way of doing it as well. If the computers/scanners you have there are anything like mine here, you'd die for an easier way of rotating them then re-scanning them. I had to scan about 50 pictures for our website and it took me the best part of two days.

Lol mine was scary for me because up until then I had only had one person interview me and on one occasion, two people. For this job though there was four people, it scared me to death (even though that is probably trivial compared to what a lot of people here went through).

This is probably the reason, i'll look into that. Thanks. Thanks for the file location as well. Just one more question now regarding security... I'm assuming it would be considered insecure to use the domain admin account as the account sophos uses to update? I don't know how this could be exploited, but something tells me it's not good. If so, should I have created a separate account for sophos updates and what permissions does that account need? Thanks.

G'morning, We run sophos enterprise manager which obviously allows us to remotely install the client A/V program remotely across the network to all the client machines. The issue I have at the moment is that some machines end up in the section of "computers that need manual installation" even though there is no reason they should. I had a laptop yesterday that ended up in there because the firewall was enabled, but after disabling it, it still remained in there almost as if sophos had cached it. All computers run windows 2000 pro SP4 or WinXP pro SP2 so there really should be no reason. Does anyone know why it would do this and if not, where is the location of the file to manually install sophos? I wasn't left with any documentation about this. Thanks James

I didn't do any practical tests at my interview... in fact they didn't even tell me I was going to have a written test. I don't know how normal that is, but they took me completely by surprise (shock) as I had never been for an interview for a technical job before. I can't remember most of the questions, but I remember one was "what is DHCP?", another was "what command would you type to see the full IP details of the computer" (ipconfig /all) and another was "Is the connector on a monitor male or female and how many pins/holes does it have" I earn £14,300

What is the pay like? My written test was fairly basic, even though I am ashamed to admit I only got 9/15. I did better then the other guy they were interested in though apparently, he got only 6/15 which is why I ended up getting the job.

oh and not to mention clearing the cache and cookies..

I am not really aware of any programs that will do this for you... i've always believed it to be a bit of a manual job along with the common programs such as ewido anti spyware and a good defrag etc. When teachers come to me with a slow laptop at school, I tend to go through the process list to check for obvious spyware, remove all unnecessary programs from the add/remove programs list, clear up the desktop and start menu, clear up the startup list in msconfig and defrag the machine at least twice.

Meh, I tried to get it done on time, but these things have quite a learning curve to them and the meeting with the governors was at 4pm. It just had to do without lol. They didn't notice anything so it's all well with me.

*Bump* Does no-one know of any alternatives? I am supposed to be running a meeting with the governors tonight showing them the website, I'd ideally like some kind of interactive map, but i'm stuck for ideas. I'm pretty sure MSN does not offer the same service, at least I can't find anything that says they do.

I dunno what is causing it... maybe it is the merger or whatever happened with virgin? I am a member of http://www.by-users.co.uk (i.e. blueyonder users) and there have been a number of complains there about speed recently. No-one appears to be aware of what the problem is and support teams from blueyonder/virgin will always deny it is them. I thought it was my brothers bittorrent at first, but nope.

I have a network, but its not client/server as such, more peer to peer. I have a "server" which is a custom built box with an AMD processor and 1GB RAM. I call this a server because it acts as a file server, printer server and internet gateway/firewall. It runs Ubuntu and has no monitor, keyboard or mouse connected as all administration on it is done via VNC, SSH and XDMCP. This is on 24/7 and is actually located downstairs hidden in the corner of my grans desk. As user machines I have my own custom PC, my brothers laptop, my mums laptop, my grans laptop and the xbox 360. All of these machines run windows XP aside from my brothers laptop which runs Ubuntu (and not forgetting the xbox, dunno what that runs). Our internet connection is 4mbp/s from Blueyonder, though it appears to be running like a dog for the last month or so, even my gran has noticed a speed decrease.

Woohoo, I made it to the fourth page in google so far

Looks useful - shame it takes so long, I hate waiting around, I like to do stuff quickly lol.

Did you include the fixing computers part in the one hour a week or just getting down the corridor through the of teachers.

A maggot isn't too surprising (the average human is supposed to swallow eight spiders during their life time), a drill bit... well lets not go there, but a tree branch 8O. Did anyone happen to see the explanation?