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Many thanks to everyone so far for their useful comments. Peter - can you give me an idea of the likely costs for ParentPay please? (if you don't mind) It looks like ParentPay may be the front runner at the moment. It seems quite good if not too expensive. The alternative might be PayPal, but not sure how easy that would be to integrate with other things. Cheers - Andrew

We have been asked to look at the possibility of accepting on-line payments from parents via our school web site. These would be for things such as Dinner money, payments for school trips, after-school activities etc..... Does anyone have any experience of these? If so, how do you do them, are there any drawbacks or problems? We have been informed of a service called ParentPay - ParentPay ? the UK?s leading online provider | cashless payment collection | income management | for schools and catering providers Anyone used that service or can recommend any others? All help appreciated. Andrew

Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, Darlington, County Durham IT Technician to provide technical and administrative assistance to the Network Manager in the smooth running of the ICT facilities of the College. A high proportion of the job role is concerned with the development of the Mac network. It is essential, therefore, that the successful candidate has a good technical knowledge of the MacOSX and Windows together with an IT qualification at level 3 or above. Full-time (37 hours/week), whole year Salary range: £15,684 pa - £17,090 pa (pay award pending) More info: Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College » IT Technician

We have the network version and it works ok. The only problem I have encountered is when installing the essential sounds (an extra). They utilise something called the Kontac player (I think that's right) and it needs access to 'Universally writeable' folders on each of the client PCs. Change of permissions etc. It's a bit of a chew on to install, but I recall getting good instructions from the Sibelius web site last time I had to do it. Andrew

I think that is the version we were running when we had the problems. We now have version 11.0.5002.333 and all is well. Andrew

We had this problem and despite trying numerous fixes, the only way we could get it to work was to uninstall the client from all (400!) PCs and then push it out again via the Management console. If you find an easier way I would love to know how! Good luck. Andrew

We have tried it and ditched it as it is soooo slow and cumbersome. It also caused a few other issues on the server. Handy for changing BIOS settings, but not much else. Have you stuck with it or found something else? Andrew

Having a bit of a strange problem with our Smoothwall SmoothWall SWG-708 box. It is randomly blocking connections to https web sites. When I say randomly I mean some staff/PCs can connect to various https (secure) sites and others cannot. I cannot see any pattern in this and am at a loss to what is causing it. Has anyone else experienced this issue? ...or know of a solution? All help welcomed. Thanks. Andrew

You need to unblock .flv files as well. What type of web filter are you using? Andrew

Try Dynamic Drive. You may be able to use/adapt this one: Dynamic Drive DHTML Scripts- JavaScript Sound effect Andrew

Employer - Gateshead Council Job title - ICT Technician Reference number - LCSC2018 Sector - Public - local government Department - Learning and Children Location - Ryton Comprehensive School Salary - Grade c - Grade D | £14,587 - £16,663 per annum (depending on experience) Hours - Full time Closing date - Thursday, 09 July 2009 12:00 Job description Permanent Contract For further information visit Ryton Comprehensive School If Successful, You will have to apply for an enhanced Disclosure ICT Technician | jobs | vacancy | Sector1.net

Employer - Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council Job title - ICT Technical and Curriculum Support Assistant Reference number - ACS2586 Sector - Public - local government Department - Adult and Childrens Services Location - Pathways School, Middlesbrough Salary - Grade D | £17,626 - £18,937 per annum Hours - Full time | 37 Hours per week, term time only Closing date - Wednesday, 15 July 2009 ICT Technical and Curriculum Support Assistant | jobs | vacancy | Sector1.net

Have you tried doing a reboot of the Exchange server? If it was working then just stopped often a restart can fix the issue. Just a thought. A

We have a CD duplicator which has one master drive (reader) to 3 copiers. It uses a Wytron controller and works very well. Wytron also produce DVD duplicators Wytron DVD Duplicator Range We use ours on a regular basis for copying CDs containing software and other school-produed files and work. Andrew

I recently saw a 'Trainee Technician' job advertised which included Microsoft (MCSA/MCSE) training as part of the job on a better salary! Needless to say, not in the Education sector. Andrew

Our cat's 'Official' name is SID (he came from a cat rescue and they nicknamed him 'Hissing Sid' and it stuck...) and he gets: Sir Siddy Siddy Widdy Siddy Widson His Gingerness Mr Siddy ..and various others! He answers to most of them.... Andrew http://www.ezysite.co.uk/temp/DSCF0038.JPG http://www.ezysite.co.uk/temp/DSCF2028.JPG

Has the laptop got a unique SID? If not, that may be the problem. Andrew

Call it 'Pussy'...then you can drop lots of doube-entendres about 'pussy' into conversations with people......

I used to be a self-employed PC Field Engineer and I gave it up 'cos there wasn't enough work around...at the time. So, the best of luck to you:) A few tips I picked up which I found helped a lot: Don't bother with full accounting software unless your business grows. Spreadsheets are fine for a Sole Trader. Quickbooks is good, but quite expensive. Find yourself a good Bookkeeper or Accountant (the ones who advertise in the local paper are often best as they do a good job and don't charge a fortune). If You need a dedicated business landline number get a BT Call Sign number which only costs a few quid a month and gives you a separate (business only) number and keeps your home calls on your original phone number. It works very well (assuming you are trading from home). Have some basic stickers made with your name and contact details on them (you can print them yourself on a laser printer if you want to) and stick one onto every PC/Server you fix. You will be amazed at how much repeat work they generate. Sign-up with a few of the 'Agency' sites as they can provide you with work on a fairly regular basis and they pay quite well. Try to establish yourself as a the 'ICT guy' for as many small companies as you can and encourage them to call you with their problems. In my experience many small companies have no ICT strategy or maintenance provision and are delighted when someone offers to take on that role (for the appropriate fee, of course). Avoid payment on 'Terms' as some companies/Government bodies seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to take up to 90 days to pay you. That can be a nightmare for you as a small business, believe me! Where possible get paid on the day in cash or cheque or within 7 days. Hope this helps? Andrew

Hi - We upgraded about 7 or 8 months ago and can answer some of your questions. Sims and Office 2007 work together OK. We haven't noticed any major issues. Most files from 2003 work OK with 2007 in our experience. There are a few minor exceptions, in particular with Word documents containing embedded pictures/charts. Sometimes they don't/won't print correctly and have to be re-created as a 2007 document and text/images pasted in. However, that problem thankfully doesn't happen too often. The teaching staff have accepted 2007 quite easily. More easily than we expected to be truthful:D There are quite a lot of free training materials on the MS web site. The student conversion issue seems to better since we went to 2007. We do still get a few with MS Works documents which they have created at home, but not too bad. Hope this helps? Andrew

The Internet Explorer (7) search bar and the auto search now automatically re-direct to Bing. We managed to find porn videos (pulled in from You Tube, which we do already block!) in seconds, so make sure you have Bing blocked double-quick chaps! Andrew

Try on EBUYER (Cheap Laptops, Hard Drives, LCD Monitors, TVs and more at Ebuyer). We got one from them quite recently. I think this is it: Startech 4 Port PCI Serial ATA (SATA) Storage controller Raid 0 1 - Card - Ebuyer It works well. Andrew

Yes please, we need and MSI version as manual SIMS updates are a real PITA! Andrew

We use NETOP. It is pretty good. Keep Students Safe in Cyberspace Andrew

I presume you mean Systems Management Server? (SMS) If so, no we don't. Looking to try and find a scripted solution if possible - unless you know of a better way, of course. Thanks - Andrew