I am thinking I am going to change the purpose of this blog to sharing information with the other feeder schools about the deals that Al and myself are finding, with the other feeder schools in the diocese. I am also hoping that putting this out there others might say, hey, I have a better deal on this that you might want to try out.
Our first goal is to set up G-mail for the schools. This is free and right now it looks like archival will be $11 per account (this is a little expensive, but it is done right).
The second primary goal is to build TTC servers. Now I have tried less expensive firewalls (FreeGuard 100 with fortigate 3.0 firmware and waterloo for reporting). This is a great system, but I really miss the security agent that blocks spyware, programs, viruses on the local machine. In combination with Microsoft's Steady state (free) there really is no need for anti-virus on all of the machines. Al has also found he can purchase SQL for much less ($175) then we originally thought.
Third, Windows servers ($105 license, $500 for server w/3 yr warranty) for user, file, print management. This is a no brainer when you get educational pricing. The only thing that is bad is the cost of the CAL's (approx. $9) for each computer that connects to the server. I am working on getting a better price on these also.
We are going to be buying our computers from insight investments. We are looking at trying to get Dell GX280 with 3ghz procs, 1gb ram, 3 yr warranty for $130 a machine. Al thinks we may want to buy even better computers with at least hyper threaded procs. I am not sure that these are not, but he may be right as all the software is becoming more demanding.
Well, it is about time for bed, but I will be writing more here about the technology project in the future.
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