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X4 doesn't work with Windows 10.. I need a vector tool for free that will allow us to create product packages (think flatpack cubes with pictures) and send 2d vectors to our laser cutter (you print to the laser cutter as long as it sees true vectors it will plot). The new version is just too expensive, serif is out of date and abandoned (we have the serif draw x4 and I can't get the laser printer to play well with it anyway) I was looking at Inkscape but it looks more arty than design and technology. ideas? cheers

Hi, I work in an International School and I am commencing negotiations with our ISP to try to reduce our internet costs. I am trying to research what other schools are paying for their internet but ISP do not seem to publish this data on their websites. I would be interested in getting any feed back that I could use, such as the cost of the internet and what speed you have signed up for. I appreciate that sometimes the actual speed may vary. Cheers James

Hi folks, We're upgrading our server and just wanted to know if you thought this price and spec was ok? Never really bought a server before. The only issue we have is this is coming from our local authority so we're a little tied into it...let me know what you think. x SERVER SPECS: HP ProLiant ML330 G6 E5606 2.13GHz/4-Core/8MB/80W Processor, 4GB RAM, DVD, Dual NIC, 4 x Hot Plug HDD's, 460W PS Server 300GB 15k SAS Hard Drive x 3 P410 RAID 5 Controller x 1 Server Config & Diagnostics 10+ items x 1 Support: HP ML330 5yr x 1 Backup Exec Windows Server x 1 SAS HBA for tape backup x 1 SAS Cable x 1 Ultrium 2/3/4 Cleaning Cartridge x 1 Internal Ultrium 4 SAS Tape Drive x 1 Ultrium 4 Data Cartridge x 8 TOTAL: £3941

We need to replace some heavy use printers (Brother 7050, HP 4050) I am after suggestions based on cost per page for a good quality machine. In the past I have brought some HP2015s but we have already lost a couple and have recently got a couple of Kyocera FS11-20DNs but the cost per page is still around 0.15p. Or anyone know of review sites that will list the cost per page?

Schools face axe in spending cuts. Whoopee! It carries on to say that it will 'anger' parents who have been promised new or refurbished schools. In the town where I work, this is not necessarily so - many parents are considering trying to to send their primary school children to the local catholic secondary which is immune to BSF; simply so their child's education isn't disrupted half-way through their school life. A major concern is because we are 4th top in the county for results, whereas our planned merger is with a school that is, well... 'not' 4th in the county.

We provide various members of staff with laptops to do work from home, and for use in school at times. Currently, some laptops are outdated and wonder what other people use for staff laptops to upgrade these as a cost-effective solution. The plan soon is to move to using laptops as the primary device, so they need to be good enough to be day to day devices. We're currently using an on-prem AD solution, but will be moving to a cloud Azure AD solution within the next 1-2 years. I've looked at the Microsoft Surface SE built for education (and the cloud), but feel the specs of these are a bit lacklustre, and will end up needing replacement more often - does anyone have experience in using these for staff? Any thoughts or ideas are welcome, as I am fairly new to the IT profession in education.

I'm in a school with 100+ staff and 840+ pupils running sims with lesson monitor, FMS and Discover. I'm running all this on a 2008 server with 2008 express. Now on the face of it looks bad limited to 1 cpu and a gig of RAM but looking at the performance counter the server is hardly doing anything. I'm looking in resource manager, I've filtered the sql services and looking at the 25 current clients they're pulling bytes of data. Even when I run a heavy report in SIMS the disk activity on the server is under 3% the network traffic is still in the Kilobytes. And all that for a few seconds then nothing. People tell me SIMS is slow and I have to buy full SQL if I want it faster... but (AND this is unfounded speculation) is it just bull? is this something capita say about sims to frighten people in to putting up with how slow sims is? spend £xxxx and it'll run faster (knowing schools are cheap and won't do it) anyhow has anyone upgraded to full SQL and noticed night and day differences in performance? As I can't back my claims up.. And is there a better way to assess the SQL work load?

Hey everyone, first post here My school is looking at going for NetSupport or Impero. Cost is not an issue. Which is the best option?