-tictech message:
"It really is surprising what will work in desperate times."
OK, hold on a second. What does it say about our system if have been driven
to using old A/B cables to connect two computers to a printer? There is a
fundamental flaw here which everyone seems to be taking a hack at. CWS is
all about streamlining support, but it seems to me that it is making life
HARDER on the teachers. Why wasn't time spent figuring out how to solve
these problems BEFORE they were put on our desks? I administer a network
just like you all, and I make sure that when I roll out a system that it is
going to work, that's what testing is all about. These hacks and the
extents to which staff are having to go seems antithetical to the whole
point of the CWS system.
I think that we need the people running this to give us real answers. Not
FUD about virii and such. You talk about freezing when printing and such?
There's a whole lot going on here with security that could interfere. It
should be possible to sit down and do some good old fashioned
troubleshooting to figure out the problem. Is it too much to ask for the
documentation on the CWS system so that we in the field can know what we're
dealing with? How about a list of the group policies that are set and the
contents of the login scripts?
This whole discussion makes me inclined to step back and look at the root of
the printer issue and try to solve it there. I understand that the whole
point was for schools to use networked printers. Yet this is evidently a
bad policy. Moreover, it can be fixed. The configuration done in the
active directory isn't set in stone and the clients can be easily be
re-imaged. Thus, there are no technical reasons preventing improvement to
this system, whether it has to do with printing or some other issue.
Graham Ford
Network Administrator
Highland Park Elementary
gjford@seattleschools.org
> From: "Mark Ahlness" <mlahlness@seattleschools.org>
> Reply-To: tictech@learningspace.org
> Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 18:05:31 -0800
> To: <tictech@learningspace.org>
> Subject: RE: tictech: the truth about printers
>
> -tictech message:
>
> Peggy Newton wrote:
>> Printers have been a major problem for us at BF Day. Sharing the levy
>> machines with the CWS has caused freezing problems on the teacher
>> workstations (CWS), so we tried connecting the CWS with a USB cable to
>> the printer. Then, using the parallel cable from the same printer, a
>> levy computer is hooked up (but not shared with the CWS). Then, if there
>
> Peggy, this is just amazing (I'm gonna try and hook my digital camera up
to
> my phone line and see what happens - ha!). It really is surprising what
> will work in desperate times. Another way to make the cws share a printer
> with a shared out win9X machine: use one of those old parallel printer A/B
> switch boxes - the kind that was pretty popular before networking came
> along. The teacher and/or students would have to manually flip the switch
> to the proper machine before printing. These things used to cost about
> $25 - places like Radio Shack had them. One obvious consideration is the
> printer - it must accept a parallel connection. But the biggest
obstacle -
> and it is a BIG one - is placement of the computers. In both Peggy's
> suggestion and mine, the cws machine, the printer, and the 9X machine
> connected to the shared printer must be right next to each other. In a
> classroom, it would be very lucky if all those pieces fell into place
> without major disruptions to the classroom layout, confidentiality, and
> teaching style. For most, it won't work. But I'm thinking about trying
it.
> Problem is, I'll have to get my box back from our speech therapist - who
has
> her nifty cws laptop hooked up to a shared printer via a switch box just
the
> way I described above :) Good luck, everybody - Mark
>
> Mark Ahlness
> mlahlness@seattleschools.org
> http://www.earthdaybags.org/mahlness.htm
> Arbor Heights Elementary
> www.arborheights.com
>
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