NZ Tekonverse

As this blog has detailed, I have gone through a process of various automation systems for imaging PCs using Windows XP.  When I started working at the school, We had few XP workstations at that time, as most of our PCs were too old to do XP and Windows 98 using Ghost was the thing.…

The HP Compaq 6710b and 8510p laptops supplied under the NZ Ministry of Education TELA and Leadspace programmes have a very strange hardware configuration of an onboard Broadcom Gigabit Network Card that is configured as a removable device, and will appear as such in the “Safely Remove Hardware” list of removable devices that is accessed…

If you install software for an alternate input device, such as a slate or electronic whiteboard, Vista may helpfully decide that you are using a Tablet PC, and enable certain features that are irrelevant to the fact that you may just be using a normal desktop or laptop that doesn’t have the alternate device connected…

Back here I dissed WLM quite badly. Since then, WLM has had another update and is not quite so bad at handling Gmail IMAP accounts. In fact, it works better although there are still some minor issues. The big improvement over Thunderbird is that TB keeps prompting me to re-enter my password for each of…

A few articles back I talked a little about the Promethean Activboard and our chosen method of hanging it. Promethean supplies these with a kit of parts that include brackets designed to hang the board directly on the wall. Because most of our classrooms already had whiteboard tracks installed, we decided to make a custom…

Consumer’s Institute in NZ reviews digital cameras regularly and have just issued their latest report. Basically from their POV the competition for the top P&S spot is down to Panasonic and Canon, and I agree. I’ve compared the Canon and Panasonic offerings for some time and I would continue to choose Canon first time every…

In April 2005 the NZ Ministry of Education issued an advisory notice to schools encouraging them to carry out electrical testing of portable appliances. The suggested means for doing this is a Portable Appliance Tester (PAT). This work can be carried out by a competent person – who could be a suitably trained staff member…

Numbers for all digital cameras I have owned so far: Powershot S1 IS: 239 (8871 / 37 months) Powershot A400: 285 (6000 / 21 months) Powershot A450: 362 (3260 / 9 months) Powershot A460: 280 (1400 / 5 months) Currently I still use the venerable S1. Due to it being heavier and less convenient I…

I have been too busy to write much for a while, but life/work continues with a lot of interesting things happening. I’m going back to Polytech to finish my CertSA qualification which involves four papers, including Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft ISA Server. We may yet get a server running the latter. Both of our existing…

The original edition of this article made reference to solutions that we have decided not to implement at our site. Hence, the revised posting makes only passing commentary on those options, focusing instead on our preferred choices. In Article 1 I referred to faceplates and connectors for VGA and USB connections. Today it’s time to…