NZ Tekonverse
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Rolling out Vista to the student desktop
We’re about to deploy the first Vista desktop for pupil use at our site. The hardware itself is nearly a year old, but has been in storage for most of the year. With 1 GB of RAM, I expect it should give satisfactory performance with this OS. When it comes to cloning this box, there…
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Epson Perfection V200 Photo Scanner
Last year I posted a brief review of the Epson V100 photo scanner. The V200 succeeds the V100 at the low cost end of the photo scanner market and has similar features and pricing to its predecessor. Setting it up is very easy to use, with a USB connection that created none of the hassles…
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Canon Powershot S5 IS & Speedlite 430EX II: First Impressions
Well, I have had these two and so far I have taken about 66 pictures. That isn’t going to set the world on fire, but next week I’ll have a big event at work and be able to take a couple of hundred in my official role as recorder. One of the cameras I’m comparing…
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Windows Vista and Microsoft Access
When I got my work PC with Windows Vista on it, I installed it alongside my existing XP PC and kept both running. In fact I still use the XP PC occasionally, but obviously as time went on I switched as many things as possible to Vista. At the time I had one major MS…
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Powershot S5 / Speedlite 430
I have now received these and had a play with them. The main changes in the S5 that I noticed immediately over the S1 are the larger LCD screen, of course the hot shoe on top, and small incremental differences. In features and functionality it is very much like the S1 I have grown to…
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Ghost vs RIS/WDS/Software Install Policy
Today I installed Ghost Console on my PC for the first time in years, and it brought back a lot of memories. We bought a suite of new PCs back three years ago, and got Ghost licenses with them all, which entitled me to receive the Ghost Solution Suite 1.0 CDs and manuals. At that…
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TELA Laptops: HP vs Toshiba
Many schools in NZ are taking advantage of the Ministry of Education’s TELA laptop leasing program which pays about two thirds of the costs of the lease and also provides mobility insurance and pickup or onsite service. Our school has been using these laptops for several years since the program was extended to include primary…
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More on Automating Windows Installations with Ghost and Sysprep
Overnight from Friday and during Saturday I multicasted two groups of PCs in our computer suite. This can be quite a tedious process getting all 8 or 11 (in this case) clients up and running and then the multicast itself can take up to several hours depending on how fast the slowest client is going.…
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Canon Powershot S5 IS and Speedlite 430EXII
After three years of using my trusty Powershot S1 IS, I will be upgrading very shortly to a Powershot S5 and accessory Canon Speedlite 430EXII flash. The S1 was almost end of line when I purchased it, and the S5 is also end of line and has been discounted in some parts of the world…
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Pushing printer settings to client PCs
When I first started working with a network, we just set up each staff PC with locally installed printers, even though all the printers were TCP/IP devices. Pupils PCs got their printers mapped as shared network printers using login scripts. We just figured it was easier to set staff up that way in case there…