Hey all you Microsofties out there.
Next week, I’ll be moving to my village, Iva, and two weeks later school will start at my college, Mata ‘Ae Vave. Besides heading the computer program at the school I’ll also be helping the Ministry of Education to develop the “School Net” program. They are creating an intranet between the schools to allow the students and teachers use e-mail and share information through a Sharepoint portal.
To do this they have come up with a standardized lab configuration for Ministry schools (Mission schools are on their own for now). The current lab configuration calls for each school to have two servers (outdated but new-old-stock P4s running at about 1Ghz) and twelve thin-clients (running Windows CE). One server is a terminal server and the other does license and application serving. The clients use Remote Desktop to term-serve into the servers and away they go. The whole lab, minus the cost of software, runs about the same price as one brand-new, top-of-the-line computer.
It’s a good plan although there are several problems still to be be ironed out. For starters, twelve computers is not enough to accommodate my three hundred students. Unfortunately that is all the budget allows. Twenty five schools need to be covered and evenly distributed, that allows for only twelve computers at each school.
The other big problem in my opinion is the legality of the software. The four pilot schools are using standard business licenses but this isn’t economically scaleable. Apparently someone in New Zealand who is selling the software says that the only way to get legal licenses for the program is to buy an enterprise license for the whole Government of Samoa. I haven’t had the chance to look at the RFP response yet but it sounds like a reseller maximizing profits at the expense of my students. In actuality, we are talking about 25 locations with 12 clients each for strictly educational and non-profit purposes. That should fit well into the educational licensing.
Comments, information, thoughts about this topic are welcome. You can post a reply here or e-mail me directly.
…I am posting a some very happy birthday wishes on behalf of his entire family that miss him very much. We hope you have a wonderful birthday and wish that we all could be there to share it with you. Many good vibes sent to you across the waters. We love you! XOX, Sister and the gang
…I am posting a some very happy birthday wishes on behalf of his entire family that miss him very much. We hope you have a wonderful birthday and wish that we all could be there to share it with you. Many good vibes sent to you across the waters. We love you! XOX, Sister and the gang
I’ve moved this information here.
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