School computers (A Rant)

voyagerfan99

voyagerfan99

Master of Turning Things Off and Back On Again
Staff member
I kinda hate looking at the computers at school. Almost none of the teachers know jack squat about computer care and whatnot, or how to do some pretty basic stuff. We mostly have Dell desktops (And the occasional Gateway (same as the Dell's pretty much) here and there, but the writing lab has all old Compaq's that are lousy POS') with P4's and anywhere from 256MB - 512MB of RAM. Most of the teachers keep the towers on the floor. I look down at the vents and fans and just see clumps of dust. it makes me want to gag. I swear if I collected all the dust out of every friggin computer in the school, I'd have like 20 lbs. of dust and dirt.

All the computers are networked using Windows 2000. I admit, it's a very stable OS for servers and networks, but I just don't care for it. It's so old these days. Another thing that annoys me is that every student has a profile - it's only got about 128 MB of storage space. Granted there are 1200 kids in the school, but still. I use my U3 drive so i can use Firefox. It eats up all my profile space. I have to be sure to eject my U3 drive and allow it to slowly empty by itself so I have profile space, otherwise I can't log off.

The other thing that annoys me is the fact that the IT (I wish I knew who it was so I could possibly get some higher admin privileges like the teachers do) guy/girl disabled the right click (for the Windows shell). So, it's not possible to right click an icon and choose delete. You must hover over the unwanted icon until it turns blue and then press the delete key. You also can't close applications with right click, or sort your start menu items.

The final thing I hate, but understand why, is the inability to access the task manager. Sometimes programs don't like to close and you have to wither log off or manually power off the computer. then it takes forever to start back up and log in. Grr!

Okay. My rant is concluded.
 
yea my school comp's are similiar. i never been to my comp lab but we have IBMs in our library. windows xp pro on them and it=s cool. I had to pay $5 for my computer account card but my account won't even log on WTFFFFF but it's cool i just use a buddies.
 
What i hate worse is the insane internet security my school has gone through. Originally nothing was blocked, then they blocked all games and adult sites (who looks at porn in school, seriously!?!?!?) so then we used proxies to play games, then slowly they just started blocking more and more proxies and making a log of what every student was looking at. Now we can't even go to school related sights. Its pretty much google the school site and about 1/2 of the educational sites. Now i'm stuck playing reversi in homeroom. My senior year i'll just start taking the laptop to school.
 
Wow..I thought my school was bad...128MB or storage!!?? Wow. We can have however much we want (although the "tech guys" get pissy if you take up to much)Just today I had around 6-7GB in my "profile".

All of our computers run XP...and they all have P4's (3.0Ghz, 512-1GB ram). The thing that absolutely pisses me off beyond belief is the fact that they block EVERYTHING. We use some company in a different state to "filter" our internet. We can use task manager, but not run.

For computers class, I needed to look up pictures, so I searched on yahoo...and the majority of the pictures were at flickr, which was blocked. My teacher and I BOTH emailed this retarded company asking them to unblock the website...and we got nothing. I guess this company gets to make all of the rules...despite what their CUSTOMERS (the school) want. It's absolutely ridiculous. I'm getting pissed off just thinking about it.
 
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Don't worry vonfeldt7 we are getting computers with c2d's next year... good bye old p4 hello future. ( running a 45nm quad at home then going to a p4 at school just doesn't fly with me and vonfeldt7) and the IT people don't even have say at our school anymore, they have to call some company in Iowa or some crap hole ( sorry for anyone how lives there) state so it takes all day to fix a simple thing that I could fix in my sleep.
 
voyagerfan99 said:
I kinda hate looking at the computers at school. Almost none of the teachers know jack squat about computer care and whatnot, or how to do some pretty basic stuff. We mostly have Dell desktops (And the occasional Gateway (same as the Dell's pretty much) here and there, but the writing lab has all old Compaq's that are lousy POS') with P4's and anywhere from 256MB - 512MB of RAM. Most of the teachers keep the towers on the floor. I look down at the vents and fans and just see clumps of dust. it makes me want to gag. I swear if I collected all the dust out of every friggin computer in the school, I'd have like 20 lbs. of dust and dirt.

All the computers are networked using Windows 2000. I admit, it's a very stable OS for servers and networks, but I just don't care for it. It's so old these days. Another thing that annoys me is that every student has a profile - it's only got about 128 MB of storage space. Granted there are 1200 kids in the school, but still. I use my U3 drive so i can use Firefox. It eats up all my profile space. I have to be sure to eject my U3 drive and allow it to slowly empty by itself so I have profile space, otherwise I can't log off.

The other thing that annoys me is the fact that the IT (I wish I knew who it was so I could possibly get some higher admin privileges like the teachers do) guy/girl disabled the right click (for the Windows shell). So, it's not possible to right click an icon and choose delete. You must hover over the unwanted icon until it turns blue and then press the delete key. You also can't close applications with right click, or sort your start menu items.

The final thing I hate, but understand why, is the inability to access the task manager. Sometimes programs don't like to close and you have to wither log off or manually power off the computer. then it takes forever to start back up and log in. Grr!

Okay. My rant is concluded.
Click to expand...

I hate that right click thing also. I am in a html class right now and it would be nice to close extra folders and notepad things out without opening them up.

Another annoying thing is when you browse through the network, every time you click a folder it opens up a new window, extremely annoying.

Most have p4's which run fine actually. Some of the older pc's have ancient stuff though. (in the library). Everything is extremely restricted on terms of internet browsing and every time you hit a restricted site it sends it to the IT administrator under your account. Space is unlimited, or close to it and we have about 2000 people in our school.

Yeah, I don't know it can be frustrating.
 
We have Celerons and P3's with 256 Megabytes of RAM, Pentium D's with 1 Gig of RAM, and even Core2Duo's with 1 - 2 Gigs of RAM at our school. We get 300MB of storage and 200 MB of downloads a term.

I don't find the Pentium D's to be fast enough but when your using a pentium 3 to use photoshop and you are fairly certain it has a virus, it sucks. Especially when Norton the resource hogger is constantly running and not even doing it's job.
 
LOL, well i'm actually a techy at a school in the UK. These restrictions are very incoveinent, but as most user have no clue about computers, So for the few that do it must be frustrating.
 
Lol. School computers really do suck. My school has just gotten some pretty good computers recently though. E6550's (some have Pentium D's) with 1GB of DDR-667 isn't so bad. Site filters are bloody annoying though. The head of the It department looks at every site people access, and if its a bit dodgy he blocks it. But he left last year and unblocked all the sites and nobody else in the IT department knows the admin password.:p
 
vonfeldt7 said:
Wow..I thought my school was bad...128MB or storage!!??
Click to expand...

im at Uni and we only get that amount of storage... trust me...its enough... (though they will expand it if needed)... as you arent saving Games, Music, Videos etc.. you dont really need much storage... a word doc takes up several KB? of space... nothing... i dont see what you need 6 -7 GB of storage... thats a LOT of word docs... sure, if you course includes video and audio stuff you may need more...

when i was at college we had really strict network security / no right click etc.. but you have to remember Its there for a reason, even if it does annoy you. you dont need to be able to access all sites on the net while you are at school, you need to be working... Duh... the no right click thing can be annoying, i know, and you have to do things the "manual" way... but right click can be used to change settings that the school might not want changing.
 
Totally agree

At my school we have 3 to 4 IT guys that come to school and are there from 8 till 5 monday to friday. If you can't log on or something is wrong with a computer - you go to them straight away.

The school has a domain system using Windows XP Pro. We have all the latest office and music & video editting software and all the high tech stuff :P - that's what you get when you pay to go to a private school :P. Right now i'm on a school laptop at home. I do light + sound at school and doing a PowerPoint for a upcoming production. We had made ourselves admin to the computer / laptop.

At school the teachers have like moderator rights... admin rights to the computer and no webmarshel. (Webmarshel - it's like our school proxy) At school i can get onto the forum and most computer websites. No myspace or ebuddy... or hotmail or youtube :mad: but that is the way it is.

Also in the Light + Sound team - there are two guys with Macs... good friends of mine and i got their macs onto the school's wireless network. Some of the teachers don't care if they are..... IT don't really know. On the macs we can get myspace, youtube and ebuddy... but not hotmail :mad:

Most of the school computers were dell... but now they are HP with AMD Dual core inside.... we have a few dells and the dell laptops... The teachers have Fujisu lifebook tablets - nice they are.

Starting from next year students can get a tablet through the school - i'm going to get one until i have enough $$$ for a mac :P

I do agree some of the teachers don't know how to do anything on their tablets!!! i'm always called if something goes wrong in my class... cause i'm the tech guy.

As for storage i use my 160GB hard drive (no external power) and we also have a H drive. As you go up each year you get more space on your H drive. at the moment it is about 500MB.

There is also the X drive where work goes... or anything school related goes. But only teachers can put it there. We as students have access to it but not able to delete or put anything on there.

I'm in year 9.... :D:D:D:D:D:D:D
 
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Right now, Im in shop (IT) class. All day. Nothing to do. 80% of websites blocked. We have to edit the registry and use proxy's to get the information we need. Basicly, its hell in here. Using a peice of crap 3.2ghz p4 ht, 512mb of ram, and 64mb integrated graphics is not a good way to start your day. It runs even slower halfway though the day, since people like to deplo malicous VB scripts on eachother's PC's.
 
It depends on what type of school you go to - private for me :D:D:D

this year for me it costs $13,000AU for year 9... most expensive year at my school...
 
darn, all those computers you use for free suck huh? Hmm, well maybe you should start petitioning your state government for more technology funding then?

Anyway, at the school system I work IT for, every high school kid has their very own macbook.
 
I Know!! it's crazy!!! we have slim dells in the classrooms with e2140 pentium dc's, dell dimension buisness pc in the labs with 2.4ghz p4's, the teachers have home dell dimensions with 2.4 p4s, and some how the 6th grade teachers have 3-year old gateway tablets. all the dells have 512mb of ram, and the gateway tablets have 1 gig, all have norton and adaware se personal. we all have our own accounts, and it is xp buisness sp2, but it is set to wiundows 98 theme, and it is driving me crazy!!! we have unlimited storage, and most students haev flash drives. no right click, and same as youll, when you go through teh file explorer, each new place opens up in a new window, so i have to exit 4 windows just to get my documents. no control panel, no paint, no nothing!! but from what i know, the only site that is blocked is addictinggames.com, but we don't care to much about that. there is wifi, but it is 802.11b, and only the terachers are alloud to have anything that can use the network. and everyone except me and 3 other kids don;t no knothing about pc's. and all the rich kids say pc stands for piece of you-know-what, and of course, they all have macs! they can barely open ie, and the teachers w/ their fancy-shmansy tablets don't know how to exit out of windows journal, so thay always have 10 windows journals opne, 5 ies open, and 10 file explores open all at once, and on the gateway website, it saya that those particular tablets have 1.8ghz celerons or something like that, and they expect them to multitaskers!!! the only thing they really know how to uswe are the 5 year old dell projectors in every room. my school advertises ont heir site that they are completely immersed with technological studies, but thay can't even use ie!!! SO MADDDDDD!!! And the "IT Experts" are stupider than i am and don't even know where there routers/switches are located!
 
The school I go to is a public but I'm allowed to bring in my laptop (the principal confirmed) So lets hope that the privite secondary allows the same

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Ouch 128mb HDD. Our school HDD had like 1gb free until the army took them and theres like 5 or 6 in each some of the class rooms. The ones in the classrooms seem to have like a 8gb HDD though so ouch to the 128mb but when your doing word97 documents you seem to reliase that an essay takes 0.5kb = 240 essays
 
Kill Bill said:
Ouch 128mb HDD. Our school HDD had like 1gb free until the army took them and theres like 5 or 6 in each some of the class rooms. The ones in the classrooms seem to have like a 8gb HDD though so ouch to the 128mb but when your doing word97 documents you seem to reliase that an essay takes 0.5kb = 240 essays
Click to expand...

Well, the computers themselves have about anywhere from 20GB to 40GB, but each student has a storage profile on the network that is only 30MB's, not 128 like I thought.

The web blocker is a joke. It's BESS, so it doesn't have to be installed on a machine to work. I bring my iPod Touch to school, but I can only read my e-mail and the news because the blocker is operated over the network.

Whats stupid is I went to play Lemonade Stand during study hall. It needed shockwave. I tried to install it, but the restriction came up saying I couldn't. the stupid thing is that I can install Java without a problem.
 
Kill Bill said:
The school I go to is a public but I'm allowed to bring in my laptop (the principal confirmed) So lets hope that the privite secondary allows the same
Click to expand...

I don't see why you can't take it... at my school as long as you don't use it in class when your not allowed it is ok...
 
It is probably because they deep freeze the HDs and allow you 128 megs of read/write space for data.

All users at my work only get 200 megabytes for their home directory. We aren't going to back up your music and movies, that is on you, we just want the actual work data.
 
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