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Many thanks, I'll try these today and contact support if it doesn't work!

Hi, I have a maths teacher who uses his Promethean Activboard all the time, but finds he often needs to recalibrate during the day, particularly after a reboot. Although the accuracy will drift off during normal use as well. Also, even after calibration the mouse pointer matches up with the pen-tip when he uses the left-side of the board, but is about a centimetre off at the right-hand-side of the board. I have never debugged one of these boards before so any advice or ideas would be welcome. He's using Win XP. -- Simon

Hi, our Head of English has purchased the Collins "Macbeth" interactive whiteboard resource and keeps asking me to "get the sound working". Problem is, afaict there is no sound included with this resource - it's all text-based. The sound on her PC works perfectly, but Macbeth is stubbornly mute. Can anyone confirm or deny? -- Simon

Thanks again to everyone who contributed, really appreciate the responses.

Thanks for the info everyone. (I asked about Android because I have a T-Mobile G2 and the other IT tech has an Android as well; no problems so far. We use a transparent proxy so there's nothing to set up in that respect, and I must say I've never noticed any problems with other settings.) Thanks again.

Hi, I'm looking to get about 5 smart-phones (probably Android) for our SMT but don't know which provider to go to. Has anyone done anything like this - i.e. phone rental + data plan + talk plan on a "corporate" basis rather than personal? Would appreciate some pointers on how to go about this, if possible. Thanks! -- Simon

Indeed, I agree it will be (and is) a waste of time and money, but I'm just a foot-soldier here. I will eventually re-purpose the whole thing to show the school calendar (which is what we had before before the screen was removed) with maybe a panel in the web-page with live video showing, probably the BBC news and weather. This is all just PR to impress visitors at the end of the day, and we're all missing the coffee-and-gossip atmosphere of the old staff-room. With thanks to all who have taken the trouble to reply. -- Simon

I completely agree, although we are an independent school so any implied linkage to "waste of tax-payers' money" should be avoided. It seems he just wants this because he wants the cricket, the actual benefits are marginal at best. The staff-room refit cost many thousands and here I am trying to argue that (since we now have about 400 PCs to maintain) maybe we could have more than just the two staff. But don't get me started ... -- Simon

Thanks Is that direct from Sky, or another supplier? -- Simon

Morning everyone, Our new headmaster has totally rebuilt our cozy old staff-room into something more like a hotel lobby. Gone are the comfy chairs and work-table, now it's all sofas and flowers. (And nobody uses it anymore ...) He also had us install a 42" TV screen, and would like Sky Sports (we're currently doing Freeview only). Problem is, Sky want £450 per month because it's a semi-public space rather than someone's home. BT Vision initially said they could do it for less but then changed their minds and won't install. The HM seemed to be suggesting a "covert installation" to a classroom, and then we link it to the staff-room TV and nobody is any the wiser. I pointed out that we could end up with a £6,000 fine each, plus a criminal record, and he back-peddled on that one. But he still wants Sky. So, has anyone else solved this one, preferably in a legal, honest and decent fashion? I'm not convinced anyone but the HM wants Sky, since they have other things like, you know, teaching to get on with. But if you have any experience, please let me know. -- Simon

Hi, I have a user who is testing our new Windows 7 setup, and the only problem is the printers on our Win 2003 server keep disappearing. He can re-install them but it happens *a lot* and I can't find the reason. Anyone have any ideas? -- Simon

In the short run, download KKiller (a Kaspersky tool) to kill off conficker on each workstation. Funnily enough, it's much better than Kaspersky AV itself. I run it as a scheduled task on my Windows servers and use it to disinfect workstations. Another thing you can do is block conficker's command-and-control by looking in your server logs for URLs like this one: http://221.7.91.31/search?q=227 and blocking them. I use a rule in my squid config to do this: I'm sure other proxies will do the same. It looks a bit like a Google search URL with the ?q= part but it only ever uses IP addresses, so the rule blocks those with search?q=nnn appended. HTH, good luck. (Another thing I meant to say: download Microsoft Security Essentials and schedule updates with this tool if you're not using WSUS: http://lifehacker.com/5406683/mse-update-utility-keeps-security-up-to-date-without-windows-update Long-winded but works better than the commercial AV imo.) -- Simon

I was pondering the Summer projects and one thing I've had it in mind to do for a while is set up shared folders which are accessible via WebDAV or FTP so students could access files from home. Another thought is to "outsource" the whole thing and use Dropbox to do it. Has anyone implemented this in bulk, i.e. for about 300 users? If so, how is it going? Any alternative ideas (esp. those which are light on technical messing about, long on ease-of-use) would be welcome. -- Simon

Unfortunately I inherited these things from a predecessor. We have four NEC Accusync LCD 92XM monitors around the school, the idea being they will be used for kids to check homework, match fixtures, etc as they move about the place. I'm not sure they *do* get used for these but I'm just the techie ... To make things more awkward, they are wired into the walls, so any maintenance has to be done in-place (the PCs are mounted in the ceiling, almost impossible to remove without cutting wires). The problem is, although I can eventually get Windows XP to recognise the screens, the touch-sensor seems messed up. "Clicking" top-right moves the pointer to bottom-left and vice-versa; anything along the top-left to bottom-right diagonal axis works fine. I spent two days on these things over the Summer holiday, failed miserably and now I'm being hassled to get them going. Can I fix them or should I recommend replacement? I've never set up anything like this before and it seems a major PITA from start to finish, but maybe I'm missing something. Failing that, is there a better, more efficient way to run multiple information points around a school without a PC mounted in the ceiling? It always seemed a bit "old skool" to me and it's a nightmare to maintain them. TIA, -- Simon

Thanks for the responses, gives me something to think about for a while. There's wild talk of a budget "squeeze" where I am too so I'm not sure if I'll get too many toys this year. What was so good about the Casio projector, and which model was it? We have the usual pain and frustration with these things -- usually replacing one every couple of months or so. -- Simon