dancingdruid

I've been on 1/2 price for the last 18months+. Just phone up, speak to retentions and mention sky broadband......

I upgraded (well if that's the right word) my pc at home for Vista ultimate x64. The audigy drivers are a joke so I disabled the soundcard and used the onboard sound which is much better. Drivers are a pain in the arse!! - made sure when I got a new lappie it had the 32bit version on instead.

Worked fine on my own vanilla Vista home premium laptop - not tried it on any other version of vista though.

I once had emails redirected to me from a member of staff ordering s?x toys from an adult site. At that point I changed the filtering so any offending emails were deleted and sender/recipient notified! I have no wish to have any knowledge of these emails.

Mine authenticated ok first time. It suddenly asked to be reauthenticated one day and the automated system failed (key in use). Had to speak to the call centre rep to sort it out. Hope it doesn't happen again....

I use my own broadband connection at home - easier than constantly fiddling with the filter etc (handy for viewing the blocked sites and for anything that can use a socks proxy - I can even stream my itunes collection down the tunnel from home). Of course it means having a box running openssh on at home - I've had my router doing this running dd-wrt firmware and I've also used a linux box like the NSLU2. Of course you could use a windows machine as well. As well as proxying web browsing etc using putty, it's also handy for accessing my vista box if the need arises (wake on lan, remote desktop) without leaving the vista machine exposed to the net.

btw if you are out of the minimum contract period on Virgin media broadband (cable) phone up and speak to retentions with details of a cheaper rival (eg sky). I've had half price broadband for nearly a year now and I've just renewed the half price deal for a further 6 months. As Tesco say - every little helps :-)

Unfortunately E-Science is more than just a piece of software. If only they had a more logical file storage system so that you aren't restricted to the rather slow and clunky front end. If schools have bought into the Nelson Thornes scheme (text books etc) then they _need_ the e-science software for the supporting materials and schemes of work. I suspect this is the reason the ICT department wasn't "consulted". Basically the front end lets the software down but with a captive market and the software created I don't see anything changing quickly.

In our (small) school, staff treat the laptops pretty much as they would their own with the small stipulation that they must use it on the school network from time to time for updates. I have been into other schools where the laptops are totally locked down. This made me wonder - do staff in this type of schools take the laptops home or do you have secure storage on site for them. One of the schools I visited had each teacher with their own data projector - some stored in the only space available in their room like a dodgy wooden cupboard with flimsy locks. I know that if I had restrictions on the use of my laptop I wouldn't give it space in my car or at home. Is it better to have laptops on-site or off-site? A different school that I visited this year have lost 11+ laptops over a matter of months - where staff have left them in school in poorly secured areas. I would be interested to hear the opinions from others, especially those who lock down their school laptops.

For the last poster http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/25/uk_war_driver_fined/

I've read through various topics on here but have yet to find an answer to my specific problem. I've been asked by the powers that be to find out what would be the best (and cheapest) solution to 2 different requests. As a small special school we currently have just a basic website. The latest idea would be to have a website that parents could log into to see forthcoming events (and the next bit could be pie in the sky) to see examples of their own child's work in a sort of e-portfolio (we have a very large catchment area which prevents some parents from coming into the school). Pupils are unlikely to be using it for any curriculum purposes. The other idea is for an intranet site that is easy for non-specialists to manage (thinking along the lines of a CMS system I guess). Anyone have any comments, suggestions or software pointers that I can pass on. (I did check out moodle but it didn't seem to fit the bill but I didn't spend too long seeing how far it could be customised). Thanks in anticipation.

I've got an NSLU2 as well. At the moment it is (only) functioning as : net storage ssh server (great for tunnelling) mt-daapd server for streaming to itunes (all over house or down SSH tunnel) web server with php and perl mysql server dyndns updating script The only catch is when something goes wrong and you have no keyboard or screen. I've also got one at school running a small website with our RBC pointing an external ip address at it. Well worth a punt.

I've seen reference to an academic upgrade to Vista (home premium) following the spirit of the XP Pro upgrade they used to sell (for students, teachers, pupils etc). Suppliers with stock seem few and far between - the phrase rarer than hen's teeth springs to mind. Anyone know a supplier that has the academic upgrade in stock? Ebuyer has listed it but never seems to have any stock in. Dabs deleted it from their stock list before it was released.