turn it off and on again

[kendypls]

That definitely sounds nightmarish. I'm betting they don't even consult corporate for machines.

90 sites sounds like a bit of a nightmare in its own right. We've got 4 sites and 3 of us in our department (granted, 3 of the sites are 24/7 sites and the 4th site is corporate, and we cover far more than just our ~200 PCs), and even with all our infrastructure in place, that can be crazy. If you had any clout, you could probably force those sites to comply to corporate's rules, but I doubt IT has any teeth in your organization.

Absolutely it's a nightmare, we have a 'minimum spec' that the stores have to buy, but they are the only restrictions, and, up until recently, the policy wasn't enforced! Many of the machines are still using XP, thankfully next month; we are getting over 200 i3's in to replace the outdated machines. Which will make my life easier in the long run, but it's going to be tough going setting them all up :)

 

[Lucario]

Wordpress is nice, however, literally everybody is using it. If you're wanting a professional-looking website, Wordpress is almost too cheap to use. As for blogging software, I use Grav. It's free and really easy to set up providing you have all the software it needs (Which I think it only needs PHP and some extras from it).

I've started to use anchor. I like it for per-post custom css, and it runs well on an raspberry pi.

 

[KetsuekiR]

As for blogging software, I use Grav. It's free and really easy to set up providing you have all the software it needs (Which I think it only needs PHP and some extras from it).

I definitely agree with you here. Grav is extraordinary as a CMS, and really is super easy to set up. It's fast and open source too. I haven't really done much with it but I did once test it out, out of boredom, really, and I loved it. If I ever need a CMS for any reason, Grav is definitely at the top of my list.

 

[donavannj]

Absolutely it's a nightmare, we have a 'minimum spec' that the stores have to buy, but they are the only restrictions, and, up until recently, the policy wasn't enforced! Many of the machines are still using XP, thankfully next month; we are getting over 200 i3's in to replace the outdated machines. Which will make my life easier in the long run, but it's going to be tough going setting them all up :)

Nice. What i3 PCs are you bringing in? A hodgepodge? Or all one specific unit?

Also, if you've got the opportunity to mass-image, that'll be your best friend for prepping. Configuring for each site's needs or each PC's individual needs would definitely be a huge pain, though.

 

[kendypls]

Nice. What i3 PCs are you bringing in? A hodgepodge? Or all one specific unit?

Also, if you've got the opportunity to mass-image, that'll be your best friend for prepping. Configuring for each site's needs or each PC's individual needs would definitely be a huge pain, though.

Hopefully our imaging server will be able to take it, although with 200+ PC's i can expect some things to go wrong :P

These are what we are looking at:

Spoiler:

i3's 4gb ram

 

[Xertified]

Last question, is Jailbreaking/Rooting actually bad? I actually see people getting their Phones/Tablets broken after they jailbroke/rooted it. But mine actually works so yeah.

 

[Tsutarja]

I currently have my Moto G (under warranty) rooted with Cyanogenmod. If anything goes wrong with the phone, just as long as you know how to revert it back to stock and lock the bootloader, you should be fine with the warranty.

 

[kendypls]

I currently have my Moto G (under warranty) rooted with Cyanogenmod. If anything goes wrong with the phone, just as long as you know how to revert it back to stock and lock the bootloader, you should be fine with the warranty.

This! but remember that they can sometimes tell by the fact that Knox has been tripped (Samsung)
Which is irreversible and does void warranty (although the 2 phones I have taken back I had no problems with :))

You always run a risk when you hack devices, in many cases it makes them better ofcourse (or nobody would do it) but on rare occasions it's going to cost you a phone.

 

[Meganium]

That's why I refuse to root my phone. I have insurance on my phone, and if I ever decide to root my android phone, the insurance will be voided and I'm pretty much screwed.

There is always a risk when you do that. You have to know what you're exactly doing to your phone for the operation to run correctly and accurately.

 

[donavannj]

Hopefully our imaging server will be able to take it, although with 200+ PC's i can expect some things to go wrong :P

These are what we are looking at:

Spoiler:

i3's 4gb ram

Solid choice there. We're just opting to upgrade on an as-needed basis, giving our users who push the limits of our standard PCs our new mini i5 HP PCs while upgrading our standard PCs with more RAM and SSDs (our standard machines are refurbed Core 2 Duo HP PCs with 4 GB of RAM stock, so it's not like they're ancient).

 

[kendypls]

Solid choice there. We're just opting to upgrade on an as-needed basis, giving our users who push the limits of our standard PCs our new mini i5 HP PCs while upgrading our standard PCs with more RAM and SSDs (our standard machines are refurbed Core 2 Duo HP PCs with 4 GB of RAM stock, so it's not like they're ancient).

Yeah, not bad at all, do you install office on the core duos? We've found that running it on anything below an I3 made them grind to a halt?

 

[donavannj]

Office 2010 on the Core 2 Duos. 2016 on the i5s and on any newly setup laptops. Basically using 2010 on our older refreshes until our license keys run out as well as to keep from being deluged with interface issues people have on 2016, especially since we in IT only started using 2016 ourselves back in January/February.

 

[kendypls]

Office 2010 on the Core 2 Duos. 2016 on the i5s and on any newly setup laptops. Basically using 2010 on our older refreshes until our license keys run out as well as to keep from being deluged with interface issues people have on 2016, especially since we in IT only started using 2016 ourselves back in January/February.

We are on 2016 now, came free with office 365, and our company wanted to upgrade pretty much straight away, but on the few lower spec pc's we have it on, I've noticed a massive performance decrease :(

 

[donavannj]

We are on 2016 now, came free with office 365, and our company wanted to upgrade pretty much straight away, but on the few lower spec pc's we have it on, I've noticed a massive performance decrease :(

How long have you been on Office 365?

 

[kendypls]

How long have you been on Office 365?

Round about a year and a half to 2 years now if I was to hazard a guess!

 

[donavannj]

Round about a year and a half to 2 years now if I was to hazard a guess!

Is it frustrating or tolerable?

We've generally been averse to moving to it, ourselves, with us already having all this internal infrastructure for our email and file shares.

 

[kendypls]

Is it frustrating or tolerable?

We've generally been averse to moving to it, ourselves, with us already having all this internal infrastructure for our email and file shares.

Actually. It's really good, basically automated everything, 3 installs per user, and the storage monitoring and status updates they send us for being admins is really useful, wouldnt go back now, that's for sure :D

 

[donavannj]

Actually. It's really good, basically automated everything, 3 installs per user, and the storage monitoring and status updates they send us for being admins is really useful, wouldnt go back now, that's for sure :D

One of our issues is that we have several users with 12 GB inboxes. That would cause issues.

Also, while 100/100 is fast, sending 70+ users out to Microsoft's servers for their information versus just using the internal gigabit infrastructure (hell, one of our sites has a 10 gigabit fiber trunk from the main office building to the plant) to local email and DFS file share severs just doesn't make sense.

 

[kendypls]

One of our issues is that we have several users with 12 GB inboxes. That would cause issues.

Also, while 100/100 is fast, sending 70+ users out to Microsoft's servers for their information versus just using the internal gigabit infrastructure (hell, one of our sites has a 10 gigabit fiber trunk from the main office building to the plant) to local email and DFS file share severs just doesn't make sense.

Definitely, if you have an awesome infrastructure already that's probably better! It's definitely minimised the in house stuff, plus we were using Thunderbird a couple of years ago! Man this company grew quick! And 365 was a solution to a lot of our problems at the time, we had a complete overhaul of our email system. switched to a new hosting platform. started bulk imaging machines (thank God!) Now we're also doing support for over 90 stores from 2 main sites, :D

 

[killer-curry]

Speaking of monitor colour type, can you actually tune the laptop monitor colour to warmer? Because sometimes when looking at the white screen for long time quite stressing my eyes.