Katy

I think the only way it would work is with a list of what to delete on restore, otherwise you've got the same problem not just with tape backups but also shadow copy. There's also no way I'd only keep the latest backup - what if there's a ransomware that slips through unnoticed and we've erased the last clean backup because it wasn't the latest?

Why do I get the feeling this will be one of those "It's on display... in the locked filing cabinet, in the basement of the building marked "DANGER ASBESTOS KEEP OUT" with the leopard guarding it" situations...

Ew. I just went on there and hit F12, expanded a few of the hidden divs and saw this: Obviously it gets replaced with real text when unhidden but still... just cringeworthy.

I'd probably say iSAMS - although I've only ever used Phoenix Gold, Phoenix e1 and iSAMS. And all I can remember about Gold is that the interface felt like it was out of the early 90s, and e1 everything seemed to take about a million clicks.

If anyone's bothered to try it... is it as slow to load and a horrible interface like the library stuff?

No, but we're with Virgin and they have things like imaginary account managers and a complete failure to be contactable in any way (including not letting us have online billing, so we have to wait for the "overdue demand" letter, reply direct with "send us the invoice then", then pay it).

We have VRRP on our current connection, it "just works", however... I'd stay away from ADSL as the backup as we've found it's almost unusable, on our new connection we've gone with FTTC as the backup and it's worked out cheaper than the ADSL was as we've changed supplier.

This, we just got the standard 3 year next day onsite service with our servers, and when it ran out 3 years ago we didn't extend it. We can run our VM load on 2 of the 3 hosts which should in theory give us time to source a replacement and throw ESXi on it. The main SAN however we pay for remote monitoring, costs us about £800 + VAT a year. First 4 years they only came out for firmware updates as the thing "just worked" with 0 drive failures but the last couple of years we've had our money's worth in "free" failed drive replacements.

I would guess that there's a "concurrent librarians" limit so we'd probably struggle to get on (although queueing up behind 499 other librarians for their turn would still be quicker than MLS)

The export I did before leaving wasn't worth bothering with, Author was a single field rather than split first/last etc, there were no ISBNs and a few other things were totally missing.

Odd, works for me and ours were originally migrated from exchange on premise to 365. New accounts were created on 365 but via whatever AD sync is called these days.

If you mean the 365 logon ID rather than email address, it will match the on premise UPN of the user, so double check this (on the same tab as the pre-win2000 logon name in AD User Properties). If they don't match you need to run the following in powershell: Connect-Msolservice (then put in admin creds for 365) Set-MSolUserPrincipalName -NewUserPrincipalName [email protected] -UserPrincipalName [email protected]

+1 for the pre-term fibre. I got 150m 4 core armoured fibre for about £350, only "problem" is you need to do an inch diameter hole wherever you pass through something as the tails are in a protective tube. Took us a day and a half to install ours but it was a fiddly route and permanent install rather than temporary (through a building then through ducts and into another building). I get mine from Comms Express.

This, a million times. We got rid of all desktops and put some follow me MFDs in, then all of SMT wanted their desktops back because "we print confidential stuff", we dumbed it down enough when explaining the fact that's complete crap so they can only be using that as an excuse instead of "I don't want to walk to it and don't care about saving money". The bursar was the only member of SMT who didn't want a printer back (because she understood it was loads cheaper to use the MFDs). Once SMT had theirs back, the next layer of management down wanted theirs back too, our plan to save money by adding the MFDs probably actually increased costs once we put most of the desktops back in place. I can't wait for most of these desktop printers to break, as when they do they will be told "find the money out of your own budget to buy the replacement", at which point they realise they have to pick between a printer and buying text books. Not only that, but the amount that gets printed and abandoned there (abandoned despite them having to put a code in to release jobs) - or dumped in the bin because "i did it wrong" - is insane.

Actually I think one of the only two honest ones I've had was the wine teacher. The other one had his laptop in the middle of a stack of markbook/worksheets etc, didn't realise it was there and picked the lot up and slammed it on a desk when his class wouldn't shut up. Needed a new screen and new hard drive. Suppose it could have been worse - D&T teacher so it could have gone through the bandsaw or something!

Don't know, I don't have any old style pens to test it with! It updated OK and powered up fine so I would guess "no it didn't damage it". These boards have USB and that weird flat power connector that falls apart if you breathe whilst stood next to it.

Hmmm good idea. "No you can't have a staff laptop. Didn't you know? They just stop working. Usually after you've spilt a glass of wine over the keyboard then lied about it."

Before anyone wastes their time trying this firmware upgrade - doesn't work, at least not with my "light grey not-too-heavy" boards. Was hoping to get the ACTIVPEN4T3 (dark grey bendy pen from the new boards) to work on them but nope. Edit: Maybe my boards aren't 2nd gen.. it looks like the photo and it's USB rather than Serial so I'd have thought it'd be 2nd gen.

If you think the 1920 was bad, the current model that replaced it is 1920S - a million times worse! We're a mix of some new 2530 with mostly 1910/1920, made the mistake of getting a 1920S when we needed an additional switch - completely different UI to the 1910/1920 and things like setting VLANs takes about a trillion mouse clicks as you can't do multiples at once.

Someone tried (it's on another thread somewhere) and they got told it was their fault that it's rubbish, kinda backfired. Edit: Here it is http://www.edugeek.net/forums/enterprise-software/191081-mls-eclipse-replacement-accessitlibrary.html#post1645392

I've found with scripts that work in command line but not when clicked/ran - it still thinks the drive is mapped (but errors when you try to change to it, and doesn't show in explorer), so you have to do a "net use z: /del" before mapping it again in the script.

I'd agree with everyone else that it's a training issue - we have some motherboards where HDMI is classed as primary, others where it's VGA, others it's DVI - with no way to set which one is primary - so that'd make a software solution difficult without having a local "which does this PC think primary is - projector or monitor?" setting. Then to throw more spanners in the works we have a couple of old rooms where there's an external VGA splitter.

Not as far as I'm aware, the one that struck me as the most insane was the "photos on the website" one a few posts back - what's it matter where the server is when anybody in the world can access them? (that being the point of a website)

The only "in-the-case" finds I've made are more of a "what have you NOT found in the case", one room we kept losing sticks of RAM and HDDs, ended up sticking a padlock on each case (they were Dell Optiplex towers so had the loop on the "open door" catch to put a padlock). For things such as the general rubbish it's been stuffed in the gaps behind the fixed desks where cabling/airflow is meant to be. Once found a 3 year old sandwich with what I suspect may have once been a slice of tomato on it (after three years it was shrivelled and black).

I was gonna say... if they were 16 year old laptops then definitely "the window treatment" is the only way to speed them up... I'd probably go with either turning them into RDP clients (as we already have RDS servers set up) or some sort of lightweight linux launching straight to a browser.