gcheeseman

It's a system "feature" - it means they don't have any visibility of delivery dates, but the Purchasing chap has to enter something ...so they always use 5/5/15.

Alibaba Manufacturer Directory - Suppliers, Manufacturers, Exporters & Importers is a useful place to start if you need to find suppliers in China. Ths site itself is sound/legit/very widely used...but make your own commercial decisions on the suppliers you engage with.

Delta fans are good enough, and if they are all spinning at full pelt it's because they need to. It's unlikely that you'll be able to swap for something else as rack chassis and their parts tend to be proprietary (due to the challenges of pushing large quantities of air through small number of small holes. I'd check for an updated BIOS that might give greater control over temp and fan speed.

I'd be interested to know what server RM offer - and the price. I looked at their website a couple of weeks ago and the spec. was old and the price was high. We went elsewhere - although we're not tied to CC3.

I wish you the best of luck withthe Samsung drives in your server - you're going to need it!! No Samsung drives are certified for server use - or guaranteed to work properly hanging off a RAID controller. Personally, I like Samsung kit - but no way would their drives go near our servers. I'd be interested to know how many of the problems listed in this topic are caused by desktop drives being installed in a server - it's false economy. WD for Enterprise SATA (server drives, not desktop drives), Fujitsu for SCSI & SAS. We had some problems with WD, but their tech. support was spot on and a firmware fix had the problem solved.

Most drive manufacturers run a seperate product line for "Enterprise" drives. These go into servers and are generally rated with a much hight MTBF (mean time between failure). Which in practical terms means that if you take a bog-standard IDE drive and run it in a server that's taking a greater work load than a stand-alone PC, then the drive WILL fail quicker than the more expensive "Enterprise" drive. The upside is that if you RAID it, when it fails the recovery will just be another cheapo drive. If the server is V.low usage - take the savings.

The latest (soon to be available) server chipsets/CPU's from Intel outperform AMD by an unhealthy margin. So switching to AMD for anything under a 4 way system is not going to make good sense - either for performance or for price. Google for term "Woodcrest +review" to get a handful of reliable third party reviews.

Indiegirl, This should be all you need (and unfortunatly a whole lot more). Report supplied by Seagate which shows the effects on temperature on a drives reliability (about half way down the report). http://www.digit-life.com/articles/storagereliability/ Regards Gareth

We use Everest - I agree with the above, it is good. Interesting fact, normal server drive is rated at 800k hours MTBF. This assumes a max. operating temp of 52deg. For every hour spent at 1deg over this limit, MTBF reduces by 20k hours. So a bit of money spent on air con/air flow can save you money on new drives and support time!!

As per above MS are incredibly anal about where the stickers are placed ... although it's highly unlikely that anyone would ever report you They introduced the new style stickers because enterprising oriental gentlemen were knocking out counterfeit versions by the bucketful. Aside from which, every school,college, academic establishment should be using a volume licence - it's cheaper.

RDC is owned by giant reseller Computacenter. OK for pallet loads..not for small quantities.

I am told that Becta are likely to insist on SCORM 2004 'standards based' content for VLE's. And that Moodle does not meet these standards. I'm not aware of what SCORM 2004 is. Will this blow Moodle out of the water?

This thread has given me some really good insight into the options available, but has anyone got some indicative pricing to compare CC3 / Ranger / Classlink? Free is great, but I'm interested to know what the paid for solutions actually cost. Many Thanks.

Try the Epson EMP-835. It runs with 802.11g. I've not used this model, but have had excellent reliability from other Epson's in the past. It's going to set you back the best part of £2000.

It'll cost the buyer more for delivery than for the kit (especially those 17" monitors) ... some people argue that RM can't give away their new kit.

Thin Clients are perfect for web browsing and basic 'Office' type stuff. Back where I come from in the commercial world, they're typically used for 'single application' clients. EG Call Centres where the user only ever has one/two programs running at anyone time. They are not suitable for the likes of us (techno geeks who absolutely must have XX applications running at full speed, like, now!).

Fair Point .... about Nforce chipset and ATI (I'm bit too enthusiastic about nVidia) But .... He's got a NVidia SLI based motherboard, so it makes sense to buy a NVidia SLI certified graphics card. Future upgrade path to buy a second graphics card, link them together and WOW!!! Check it out here ... http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_faq.html#g1

As above - your graphics card will not fit, let alone work. You'll need to order a PCI Express graphics card (NVidia based, not ATI - because the motherboard is NVidia chipset based, should be more stable). Get the best you can afford and your system will fly...

Go to the drive manufacturers website and download their (probably floppy based) drive repair and testing software. BUT ... With new drives so cheap, and with the potential for persistent drive failures in the future, isn't it cheaper to just junk the old ones?

Brand X from Japan ??? You should be so lucky. More likely to be from Vietnam, China or Taiwan. Japan is way too high cost for PC manufacturers these days. Most HP for the European market is made in Czech Republic. IBM is brand name of (Chinese) Lenovo. Dell are assembled in Ireland but are looking to move out to eastern Europe soon. Good ol' British vendors, well ... just heard that Elonex went into administration today... I guess that just leaves RM and Viglen.

Moving 'standard' components to a 'standard' case should be easy. (!). Assuming your existing PC is not using proprietary components. Once you get into the swing, it'll be less than 20mins per PC. The vast majority of PC's are standards based - look for ATX or MicroATX (uATX) on your existing kits's spec. sheets. If it's a desktop or minitower then 90% certain you'll be microATX. Most new cases are microATX these days (exceptions are a few newer BTX and SFF (small form factor) - again check the spec's. Then check out the PSU - look for the wattage. It'll probably be in the 250 - 350w range. Make sure that the new case has a power supply at least as large as the current one, preferably larger. This will give you room for future growth (more memory, better graphics card, etc). Then check out some case vendors and choose the prettiest/most functional for your budget. If you have budget to spare, spend it on the PSU rather than the case. A better PSU will be quieter and last longer. Typically, you can find a cheapy cheap case with PSU for under £20.00. I buy componets from the likes of ebuyer.com, scan.co.uk, or microdirect.co.uk - all have a large selection to choose from. Online ordering will give you a hefty delivery charge. Speak to an Account Manager before you order. It may be that in the quantities you're looking at they can quote you for a pallet load.