gszech

I've had a look in Google Admin and can't find an option to force sync. It would be nice to get rid of the prompts.

With this logic your microwave is also a server.

Your router can run DHCP / DNS.

They just work.

I completely agree. First update your resources so they are cloud based if this is the way the school is going, this might take a couple of years and then migrate. Here are some suggestions: 2D Design - https://www.onshape.com/en/why-onshape Photoshop - https://www.adobe.com/apps/all/web (subscription required) Smart Notebook - Google Slides or Prowise (but this is another topic) SolidWorks, Crocodile Clips, Flowol - we don't use this so I guess it's not mandatory?

Depends on the school. We just migrated two primary schools fully to Chromebooks only. They adjusted fine, we had staff onsite for two weeks to iron out all the small problems. Our secondary school is using Google and a mixture of Windows / Chromebook devices.

Is it ever worth switching though? Yes. Not as if one solution is 10x better, not even 2x. It's cheaper, faster, easy to manage and secure. The years of helping people move to a new system are not going to be outweighed by any advantages Staff will adjust in less than a month.

I've created a support ticket with Arbor two days ago and they solved my problem next working day 8AM. Can't complain.

Sadly schools can't use GoGuardian. It's not on the list: https://www.iwf.org.uk/membership/our-members/ https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/filtering-and-monitoring-standards-for-schools-and-colleges [h=3]Technical requirements to meet the standard  [/h]The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) provide lists of illegal websites that filtering providers can block as part of their service, known as blocklists. Schools and colleges must make sure these blocklists are included with their filtering solutions. Your school or college should not be able to disable these blocklists or remove items from them.

Could you please recommend an exam platform that is JCQ approved and will work on Chromebooks ?

What's the issue with Securly. Is it just slow support times or anything specific ?

How can I access advanced printing options like stapling, tray selection, and other finishing features when printing from a Chromebook? We're currently testing PaperCut Hive, and while I see a stapling option, the other options like tray select are not there. I know PaperCut Hive supports driver deployment, but those appear to be for Windows and Apple devices only. Is there a way to manually enable these advanced printing features on a Chromebook using Google Admin or third party printing solution?

278 x UniFi devices in total across the trust. Apart from UniFI Access, we got it all: switches, APs, phones, gateways, CCTV, RPS and cast devices. Everything works fine. Never had a problem with switches, but we always keep one unit spare as they are so cheap. My advice is to go with the Enterprise version of everything where financially possible.

It's important to mention if your school is a primary, secondary or special school. I've talked with a lot of schools fully utilising Chromebooks just to find out that it was a special school with only 30 pupils. Secondary school is harder to convert, ICT teachers will say that they require Windows / Office to deliver the curriculum (which is not true). The primary hurdle lies in converting existing teaching resources to Google Docs format. This requires dedicated time and planning for teachers, necessitating the involvement of school leadership to allocate resources for this transition.

They had to install another Windows Update that broke something

Two years ago, an external penetration test on our hybrid Chromebook/Windows network revealed several critical vulnerabilities: - Legacy protocols: Fallback protocols like LLMNR, mDNS, WPAD, and NETBIOS were enabled. - IPv6 preference: IPv6 was enabled and preferred over IPv4 by DHCP.- Weak SSL certificates: Domain Controller certificates used weak hashing algorithms. - Outdated Apache servers: Older Axis CCTV and a Dymo print server running Apache 2.4.x versions below 2.4.59 had multiple vulnerabilities. - Weak cipher suites: The 4Matrix server supported SSL cipher suites vulnerable to the SWEET32 attack. We patched up what we could straight away and we decided to migrate our entire environment to Chromebooks. Our rationale was straightforward: If students could effectively learn and work on Chromebooks for the past 12 years, there was no reason why other users couldn't do the same. This transition involved moving many services to the cloud and presented some challenges for staff members still adapting to the new environment. However, a subsequent penetration test on the Chromebook-based environment revealed zero vulnerabilities. I'm not looking back. The best part is that I won't see this message anymore "Working on updates 17% complete, Don't turn off your PC. This will take a while."

Google - Main reason - security of the Google Admin and Chromebooks.

We recently upgraded two small school's domain controllers to Windows Server 2025. While one school is functioning normally, the other is experiencing persistent trust relationship errors. Both schools utilize the same Windows 11 image and configuration. To resolve the issue, we temporarily rejoined the affected PCs to the domain, which provided a temporary fix for approximately one month. However, the trust relationship errors have resurfaced. Most likely this is not a Windows Server 2025 bug. This is evident as one school with the same server 2025 version is operating without problems, and both domain controllers were upgraded identically. My guess would be a GPO config or some change done years ago that affects one server, but not another. We're transitioning the affected school to a 100% Chromebook environment, but I wanted to share my findings to help solve this problem.

LOL each time there is an issue with Bromcom, the reply always sounds like this: "Your issue is a beautiful, complex piece of digital art. We're currently contemplating its deeper meaning. We've sent a technician back in time to fix this issue. Please allow a few millennia for a response."

LOL our approach is the same. If something doesn't work we first disable Securly on a test computer to see if it's causing the problem. Saying that the product worked fine for us in the last few years, just the last few months are not great.

Securly is good when it works. We are using all Aware, Filter and classroom platforms. We had some problems with it, recently email checking stopped working, previously staff could not login to the system for a few days. There are neverending problems with YouTube filtering and the workaround provided by Securly is just sad: https://securly.status.io/ - Open your network’s DNS settings and add a CNAME... We also had problems with the Think Twice feature where if this was on you could not type emails on Chromebooks, typing in Gmail would just lag. This was a year ago but I'm afraid to turn on this feature again. Apart from that this is a set and forget type of product especially if you are a Google School using Chromebooks. I've never used Lightspeed but we had Smoothwall before and Securly is just way better.

I would love to be able to update my OLD BenQ TVs to this version, like I can with Prowise TVs. Is this possible ?

Laptop: 4 years PC: 5 Years with optional extension if they are still running fine. Servers: 5 years with optional 2 years extended warranty. Pupils Chromebooks: Until they destroy them or OS is no longer Supported by Chrome Updates.

Grab a laptop and download / install the latest Windows 11 Version 23H2 Windows Update. By the time it's done updating (and updating, and updating...), you'll have plenty of time to decide whether you'd rather switch a Chromebook or stick with the ol' reliable Windows machine."

+1 for PAxton 10 opinion. We used their cameras for a while. The system is very basic, missing a lot of functionality. The cameras record to a built in SD card (there is an option to store the data on NAS, but why if you want serverless You can't replace the card with a higher capacity one due to camera limitations. We replaced the few Paxton 10 cameras and installed Unifi UNVR. Paxton 10 is good for ID cards if you manage multiple schools although their readers are slower in picking up ID cards compared to Net2.