On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Alan Harris wrote:
Schools need decent techies, after all are Fen systems going to travel 250 miles to fix a malfunctioning computer system? Yes, if the school has purchased the £100 per month support policy that includes up to three site visits per annum to fix problems that cannot be resolved in any other way. Alternatively, schools can spend only £50 per month on support and pay for site visits only if they become necessary. Point taken. But if the school had no technician would you be willing to come and clear a paper jam in a printer? If you're offering a full service then that, to me, includes such things as clearing paper jams, pushing cables back into sockets etc.
If a school doesn't have a technician then they can either: a) invest a minimal amount of time learning how to clear a paper jam (with the aid of the manual if necessary) and how to plug cables into the correct sockets (with the aid of our on-screen diagnostics that say helpful things like "My mouse appears not to be plugged in. Can you check that it is properly connected. The mouse lead ends in a connector that looks like... etc."), or b) scrape together an extra c.£15k to pay for a technician, or c) pay upwards of £200 to call out a consultant for a day. I expect most schools would opt for (a). That said, if one of our schools had purchased the £100 per month, includes-three-site-visits-per-annum support policy, then we would go and clear the paper jam if the problem could not otherwise be resolved.
How many schools were represented last Monday?, three of the delegates were from one LEA. Businesses can't take the lead in this Why not? Why should I be disqualified from taking an active role just because I choose to provide my services to several schools instead of one? I think I gave the wrong impression - we're in the mess we're in at the moment because we listened to what businesses wanted and, because nobody, outside of open source, ever asks the people on the ground floor what they think - we get told what to do by business via the government etc and it's not working! Scott Adams is my hero on this! I don't think you should be disqualified - I happen to think you've got it just right and have a bright future, but no person/organisation can point the way forward alone, no person/organisation can be valued more highly than any other and every opinion is important. That's what we're about after all.
Totally agree with you there.
I just think it's an interesting point and was really asking for information. After all, if my head asks me how many schools were represented and then how many businesses, and I reply more businesses than schools she's going to think that opensource is just another buck earner off the backs of the education system. If it's driven by education than they will take more notice.
I think the balance was heavily in favour of schools, but I don't have exact numbers.
Multiple servers? We advise that 30 clients per server is a sensible upper limit, mainly on the basis of avoiding a single point of failure. With the money you save by using low-spec, thin-client hardware you can easily afford a couple of servers and the problem is solved. I already run multiple servers - somethings run better on high powered equipment, some run better on low powered equipment. I don't trust thin clients - maybe it's a personal thing but I still want to work when the servers (plural) are down,
How often do all your servers go down at once? :-) We have never had a server failure on our office system (thin-client, Linux, two servers) - they happily run 24x7 and only get switched off for hardware upgrades or transportation to BETT, Salisbury etc. Oh, and sometimes they get a reboot when we need to test the installation procedure.
or when the hub/switch/etc is down and so will teachers. It's a lot more work to use fat clients (but that's mainly the fault of the current widely used OS) than thin but the end result is, I think, better.
It will cost you a LOT more to get similar levels of both performance and reliability out of a fat client system, even using Linux.
Databases, for example, have a wider application than school management issues.
Yes - apologies for the somewhat sparse page on StarBase in the Resource Library. If you picked up one of our brochures on Monday, you'll see that the text was basically extracted straight from the brochure, and that the brochure contained a fairly large screenshot illustrating a complex relational query, which took up most of the page!
Again Michael - if any company deserves to succeed in this area then Fen systems does and I wish you all the best. But if it comes down to a decision between me keeping my job interesting, challenging and varied, (or for that matter keeping it at all) and your company installing a remotely managed system then I'm afraid your company is going to lose out. Note - this applies to any managed NGFL system. As I said, if I wanted to work like that then I'd get a job with EDS.
I don't regard it as "losing out". If what you fear is true, and you would be out of a job if we were to put in a managed service, then it is far better from our point of view for you to be happily employed and hence able to contribute to OSIE. After all, everything that you contribute to OSIE is likely to help us produce a better product (and, similarly, everything we contribute to OSIE is likely to help you improve your school's system). Michael Brown Fen Systems Ltd.