Poynter Professional Services

Students at Beeston Primary are now able to utilise the School’s high-speed broadband connection after Poynter installed a brand new ICT Suite.

The School is the only place in the village with broadband; Poynter installed 10 desktops, 20 netbooks, a large-format screen and a new server.

Headteacher Chris Perry said “the facilities helped to put the village on the map and ensure the school can maintain enough pupils to run three different class age groups”.

There are pictures of the suite on Beeston’s website more information on our service to Schools can be found here.

As part of our dedication to offering ICT support to Schools, Poynter has become an Authorised Education Reseller (AER) for Microsoft.

This allows us to offer Schools the best licensing option for their situation, including:

• School Agreement – licences to cover the Schools desktops and servers. This also includes Home Use options for Teachers and Students.
• Academic Open – purchase of a minimum of 5 licences to start an agreement, which can be added to within 2 years.
• Full Packaged Products – one-off licences to be purchased when required.

Click here if you would like to talk to us about licencing or support options.

Microsoft has announced that from the 13th July 2010, Service Pack 2 will no longer be the supported service pack level for Windows XP. All computers will need to be updated to Service Pack 3.

All new desktops and laptops that we supply come with Windows XP Service Pack 3 or Windows 7 pre-installed.

We will be ensuring that any remaining customers still using Service Pack 2 will be updated to ensure continued support from Microsoft.

Users of Vista will need to update to Service Pack 2 by the 13th April 2010.

Support for Windows 2000 Server will finish on the 13th July 2010,  please contact the helpdesk for assistance with planning your migration to Server 2003/2008.

UPDATED 21/01/10: Microsoft will issue an emergency patch today by 6pm

The exploit used against Google in China that affects Internet Explorer has now been made public.

IE 6, 7 & 8 are affected, however IE8 does offer limited protection.

We are advising all our customers to ensure they are running IE8 or better still, an alternative browser such as firefox until a fix is released.

More about the story can be found on this BBC News article.

With Adam successfully completing his first Microsoft exam in Small Business Server 2008, we have gained the Small Business Specialist competency.

This enhances our current offerings to small businesses, with additional training, resources and support from Microsoft; allowing us to continue advising, planning, installing and supporting the latest and most appropriate technology for your small business.

The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) has launched the first Online Safety Strategy for children. The basis of the campaign will encourage children to:

Zip: not share personal, intimate details with strangers they have met online, while at the same time closing off some parts of the web to children by using security PINs or other parental controls.

Block: Block emails or any other contact from people or companies they do not know and block children from accessing certain sites.

Flag: Highlight any suspicious individuals, activities or websites to the relevant authority, including site admins, teachers or even police.

44 million people in the UK have access to the Internet, including 99% of 8–17 year olds

School’s already have sophisticated firewalls and filters in place to protect children. So even with online safety becoming a compulsory lesson for PSHE, it will still be down to parents to ensure their children are safe online at home.

I’m eleven years old and I am the one who updates the anti‑virus at home!

You can read the full report here and visit thinkuknow.co.uk for information on online safety.

On Monday 9 November, Microsoft Exchange 2010 became the first product launch in the Microsoft Office 2010 system.
The first half of 2010 will see this launch wave continue with the release of Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010.

Microsoft Office 2010 provides rich and powerful new ways to deliver work. New features include enhanced tools, customisable templates, photo editing and the ability to work with multiple people from different locations at the exact same time using new co-authoring capabilities. By offering more ways to access files from virtually anywhere, Office 2010 gives users greater control.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 enables organisations to connect and empower people through an integrated set of rich features. SharePoint 2010 facilitates business collaboration in its broadest sense and helps colleagues, partners and customers to work together in new and effective ways.

Microsoft Project 2010 provides teams and organisations of all sizes with the right project collaboration tools and a pathway to step up to more advanced Project and Portfolio Management capabilities as their needs evolve.

The advanced diagramming tools of Microsoft Visio 2010 help you simplify complexity with intuitive and professional-looking diagrams, dynamic and data-driven visuals and new ways to share these on the Web in real-time.

Microsoft has now launched Windows 7, the replacement for Windows XP.

As a Microsoft partner, we have been evaluating Windows 7 for several months before it was launched and we have all been impressed by the speed, user experience and stability.

Along side the launch of Windows 7, was Microsoft’s latest server operating system – Release 2 of Server 2008. This provides a massive speed increase over its predecessor as well as other enhancements, including backend support for Windows 7.

What this means for you

For customers who have Software Assurance, we will be in touch shortly to install the free upgrade to Server 2008 R2.

We have already began testing applications within Windows 7. As usual all our engineers working with Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 will have taken Microsoft Examinations in these subjects.

Our general advise is to continue with Windows XP until the 1st/2nd quarter of next year before buyinig Windows 7 on new Desktops and Laptops. For home users we will advise on a case-by-case basis, but will mostly advise the move to Windows 7.

All our new Microsoft-based Server installations will use Server 2008 R2 unless there is a specific reason not too.

If you would like more information on Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2, or want to upgrade from Windows Vista, please contact us

Poynter has increased its School support in the Litcham high Cluster.

After working with Litcham High for 10 years, we have used this knoweldge and our experience of the commerical sector to expand into two of the nine primary schools feeding Litcham High.

We have installed a brand new ICT Suite at Beeston Primary, complete with 40″ Screen, 10 desktops and 20 netbooks.