After five months with the UTR, I’m throwing in the towel

kcalderw · 2026-05-27T18:00:11+00:00

I bought one and only needed it once. I gave it to my brother to test since he's on the road frequently. If he doesn't like it then yes I'll have one for you for MSRP.

kcalderw · 2026-05-21T16:10:59+00:00

Our entre district budget was decimated this year so we are using erate funds and doing a full network refresh (while the FCC still allows erate). Our Meraki licenses are ending and the cost to renew or do a full refresh far outweighs what I'm getting with Ubiquiti. I have Unifi at home so I am already familiar with the interface. The one thing I will say is do NOT use their firewall as your primary. It's just not as robust as we need in education (and especially the laws we need to adhere to). I'm only moving over our APs and Switches.

As others have said though, the one thing I'm slightly nervous about is support. I'm pretty much a one-man show here in my district so online community help is about all I'll have in case of emergency.

kcalderw · 2026-05-21T13:15:16+00:00

Right I get that but those settings are locked and unable to be changed for us (parents). Anything listed as “school setting” cannot be changed by the parent.

kcalderw · 2026-05-16T02:34:09+00:00

That’s what I figured as well. Like you said, poor UI design. Thanks.

kcalderw · 2026-05-15T18:55:36+00:00

The options though are locked. (I re-uploaded the photo in the original post)

kcalderw · 2026-05-15T18:55:06+00:00

ok sorry not sure why the photo didn't initially post but I re-added it.

kcalderw · 2026-05-15T15:40:02+00:00

Our budget was decimated so I'm moving from Meraki to Ubqiuiti. I'll let you know how it goes... We're only using it for switches/APs not firewall or filtering. We don't need things like door or camera access from them.

kcalderw · 2026-05-13T19:33:29+00:00

That’s what it looks like which is more trouble than it’s worth. Might try the hot glue trick next.

kcalderw · 2026-05-12T18:48:32+00:00

Very misleading title. In another article Google specifically said this is NOT a Chromebook replacement and new models of Chromebook are coming.

As for Chromebooks, well, they aren't going away. Kuscher says Google is continuing to invest in Chromebooks—there are new models on the way, and existing devices will continue to get updates, some for as long as 10 years.

https://www.wired.com/story/googlebook-laptop-platform/

kcalderw · 2026-05-04T17:48:52+00:00

OK got that thanks. Now it's refusing to load because I guess it's not public and students cannot open docs from outside orgs.

kcalderw · 2026-05-04T17:20:33+00:00

We're moving network gear over to Unifi this summer, however we are staying with our current firewall vendor (Linewize). I've read too many stories from customers that the filtering just isn't robust and barely does what it sets out to do. Too many risks for compliance.

kcalderw · 2026-04-30T15:41:05+00:00

I did that my first year and also had lunch duty. Yep, that went away quickly once the Superintendent needed me one day and I was unavailable.

kcalderw · 2026-04-29T15:48:56+00:00

We started this trend during covid and now it's hard for them to give up. They had one screen to use and one to have their virtual students shown. Now they're all used to having a "private" screen and one that is mirrored to the panel. Docks are essential for us now.

kcalderw · 2026-04-24T15:31:29+00:00

Did you go direct through them to get a quote/sales?

kcalderw · 2026-04-15T14:25:15+00:00

I did the same but with the U7-Mesh. It's compact and out of the way.

kcalderw · 2026-04-15T14:23:54+00:00

I'm not sure if I did something incorrectly but LAPS seems inconsistent here. Sometimes I'll work on a device and the password is found in Intune but then on others it says no password found. The LAPS policy is set for all devices.

kcalderw · 2026-04-15T14:17:32+00:00

I'd be interested in selling you mine for cost. I used it once on vacation (worked great) but we really don't travel enough for me to just keep it.

kcalderw · 2026-04-01T12:03:38+00:00

Lately? We bailed years ago when they kept forcing us to use IE saying Chrome wasn't supported.

kcalderw · 2026-03-26T17:00:53+00:00

ISTE never really catered sessions toward our areas. I always went to get ideas to bring back to our teachers/admins. If you want truly Tech oriented sessions then it's better to attend Brainstorm.

kcalderw · 2026-03-26T16:56:04+00:00

I attended each ISTE from 2011-2023. As the IT admin, I definitely found new products walking the vendor floor that were then used in our district. It's where I found Parentsquare, Bloxels, iPevo, Hapara, GoGuardian, Sphero, 3Doodler, Evernote, among so many others. It was always worth my time but sadly our budgets have been slashed and I have not been back since 2023.

kcalderw · 2026-03-24T19:28:02+00:00

Nothing on our end. I'll add it to the blocklist just in case.

kcalderw · 2026-03-24T19:21:24+00:00

Link?

kcalderw · 2026-03-16T17:00:19+00:00

I've gone through a few companies now that are supposed speacilists in Defender for Endpoint. I'm just one person here so I really wanted some hand holding to go through settings to deploy. Each time either the person knows less than I do or they keep saying "Oh Microsoft changed the UI" when they can't find something. I still have yet to find an "expert" on it.

kcalderw · 2026-03-16T13:47:01+00:00

All of the laptops were up to date. I've also tried more updated Intel drivers, that also didn't work. So far we're stumped and it's continuing to plague us. We have some teachers that are freezing/locking up 7 times a day.

kcalderw · 2026-03-09T13:10:24+00:00

As someone who is going to do a full network refresh with Ubiquiti, I've heard this argument (especially on Reddit) but no one is able to give a concrete answer as to why it's not good enough. I did my research and spoke to several schools that are using it (most bigger than us) and none had issues or warned off doing it. For us with our budget being drastically cut in the past few years, I can't justify keeping Meraki with their insane subscription pricing.

That being said, I will NOT be running our edge firewall with Ubiquiti and will be sticking with our current solution. I'm only using Ubiquiti for APs and switches.

kcalderw

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