Hi I am the owner of the newly formed organization, Dorsey ~ Gray Literacy foundation Inc, a non-profit organ. We give $500 scholarships annually to students throughout.  But not only children, we don't want to leave parents behind in this new technology world. I am  middle age, and if it wasn't for my teenagers I would be left behind in this new tech. world.  I am seeking grants to open up shops throughout the world for people that are computer illiterate and needs to learn today's technology. I have the perfect building, but no funds to get my business off the ground.

I've created my personal account, tried to register our church. Plug in the EIN number and my church comes up as being registered. Great! There are no agents associated with my church. Tried to associate with my church and it requires an association code. I've tried twice to contact Techsoup through the web online form but have not received any response. How do you obtain an association code? Thanks for any help you could provide.

I keep getting the message Adobe Photoshop CS5 has stopped working

I just installed it does anyone know what the problem might be.

hello my name is Tom Madrigal-Hamilton and new to the fund raising effort. Still try to figure out how to get the word out there in a reasonable way. Any ideas you would like to share would be great. Thanks

Citrix, VMware and Microsoft releases their hypervisor for free while some features requires commercial license. As a fan of open source and a current vmware user, I would like to try out other alternatives.

My requirement will be under 25 hosts and I want to able to manage all the hosts with a dedicated client. I am a VMware user and aware that a VIC requires a commercial license. And of course, spending is extremely limited.

While Hyper-V is available to purchase for a small fee in techsoup, I would like to stay away from Microsoft unless it offer superior advantage over the others. XenServer seems to be a excellent fit to start. Whats the most used platform in the non-profit world?



 

I am a computer volunteer at a mid-sized non-profit child care center: I'm not very familiar with networking.  We have been having network problems lately, and I could use some suggestions for what to look at next.

We have about 18 PCs (3 are laptops) and 10 Macs (4 are laptops.)  Most PCs have XP Pro SP3, with ~3 Win7 machines; most Macs are 10.4 or greater.  Most users run typical office applications: email, web browser, MS Office, and QuickBooks.  A few users use special web-based applications (using https, often with a Citrix login.)  We have 3 high-volume printer/copiers and 3 other workgroup printers, all attached via Ethernet.  Desktops are all connected via Ethernet; laptops mostly connect wirelessly.

Our network has a LinkSys WRT54G2 router (wireless is off at the router.)  Each of the 4 ports is connected to an 8-port switch which are then connected to the patch panel.  A few of the rooms have an additional switch.  There are 5 Wireless Access Points distributed through the 2 buildings.

Our setup has been as described for almost 2 years, and has been very stable.  Over the past month, we have been losing our connectivity to the Internet.  The connection will be gone for 1 - 5 minutes, then comes back.  Usually, the period of instability will last for about an hour, when the Internet will be out 4 or so times.  Typically, not all users are affected by any one particular outage; but outages do eventually hit everyone.  If I look at our network as 4 segments, where a segment corresponds to one of the ports on the router, 2 - 3 segments are affected each outage, but the affected segments change from one outage to the next.  No segment is ALWAYS affected; no segment is NEVER affected.  It seems to be random.

When an outage occurs, I try to use ping to probe what's happening.  A ping of 8.8.8.8 (a Google public DNS server) always fails.  A ping of 192.168.1.1 (the router) might work or might fail.  A ping of another internal IP address (e.g. a printer) will generally work, but not always.  (I assume it would always work if the address is on the same switch as the computer sending the ping.)

If I pull the power plug on the router and then plug it back in, the Internet connection is restored immediately.  But it may fail again in 2 minutes or 20 minutes or an hour.  Another power reset brings it back online.  Then things will be stable for 18 - 36 hours, when it will happen again.

Outages often occur during peak use times, but they have also happened on a Sunday morning with 1 user on, and have happened several times at 7:30 AM with only a few users on.

These outages started happening with use of a new web-based application that requires a login to Citrix to start.  Although 1 user can use the web app without problems, the outages often occur when ~4 users are trying to use the app.

I made a call to our ISP during a particularly bad period this week.  Their traces showed no outages nor errors during the whole previous 24 hours.  So it seems the problem is on our side.

I have been focused on the router, since a reset clears the problem.  I swapped out the WRT54G2 for a WRT54G, but the outages continued to occur. 

1) Does anyone have suggestions for how I can identify what is going on and what the problem is?

2) I have been looking at the router reviews at www.smallnetbuilder.com to understand the router's capabilities.  It says that the WRT54G2 supports only 8 simultaneous connections.  If we are exceeding that count, I would assume that things slow down.  If we FAR exceed that count, would the router go wacko and drop connections, thus causing our problems?  Do we need a router that can support many more simultaneous connections?

3) Our service speed is listed on the bill as 1.040 Gbps.  (I still have to call them to find out more specifics about our service.)  But at that speed, would we be better off with a small-business-class router rather than the "home" equipment we currently use?  If so, any suggestions, especially from the products offered by Cisco through TechSoup?

Thanks for any suggestions.
Charlie

Hello is there any free recovery software out there that will let me recover data from an external drive?

Does anyone have any experience with this? I am wondering whether we could cut costs by using Skype as our main way of communicating (especially internationally). But I am not sure about the quality of the calls, downtime of the service, etc. Has anyone used Skype to run their telecommunications? Thanks!!

Hi everyone! We do not have a website yet. I am wondering what the best way to go about with this. I am not very technical myself and neither is my business partner. Should we outsource the building of the website or should we hire someone to build it for us? What would you recommend? I am scared to outsource it and then to loose some of the "control" over it.

Hi everyone! My friend is starting up his own charity in India and I am going to be supporting him with it. We are really still at the start of our journey but I wanted to join this forum to perhaps get some ideas about different software packages we could use (free ones if possible), which could help us. I'm not quite sure what we will need yet, but definitely an accounting package of some sort.

We've got a webinar coming up to help you win that grant!

Grants can support the changing needs in your community while your budget is flat or shrinking and provide many benefits (in addition to funding!). Wish you knew more about applying for grants? Does it seem overwhelming and you wonder how to get started? This webinar will be easy to understand, motivating, and full of valuable tips.

Discover the confidence and knowledge to win grants, find out the best method for writing grant proposals, and learn all the steps to successful grant work. Stephanie will share practical advice, easy grants for beginners, and valuable worksheets and resource lists. We’ll also learn about free resources for finding funding opportunities and valuable discounted software products to aid your grant work, including GrantStation. You’ll be excited, motivated, and ready with the knowledge needed to apply the basic process of grant work.

You can discuss this webinar on Twitter with the hashtag #techsoup or join us for a live-stream of the event in Second Life.

Do you have a question  you’d like our hosts to cover? Post it here and we’ll make sure your question gets addressed!

Hi all,

The organization that I direct has a website however the webmaster has taken on another job elsewhere.  I haven't found a new webmaster yet but in the meantime, the website needs to be updated.  I do not have any experience with website design, management, or development. 

Does this group think I can self-teach myself enough to make some changes, update photos and add new text?

Hello,

  I am new to techsoup and I am having trouble registering my organization.  I am probably making a really silly mistake, but I cannot figure out how to obtain an association code.  It wont let me register without one but I can't get one until I register.  Can anyone guide me in the right direction?

Thanks a million!

Kara

I received my order from TechSoup for Adobe CS5 but there was no documentation with serial numbers/keys for installation. I didn't receive an email either. The only email I got from TechSoup was an order confirmation when I first placed the order. I normally get TechSoup emails no problem. I found another issue like this in the forum and the person said to check the spam/junk folder, which I did. Please help.

stephanie

I'm torn on the best forum to post this as it encompasses hardware software and networking.

I'm looking for resources to get started to evaluate going to a Virtual PC environment from the traditional desktop PC.

What I've found so far is 50,000 foot white papers that all seem to end with "hire our consulting services to get started"

For a shop of 7 remote physical branches and less than 100 workstations, if we were to migrate to a virtual PC what would be a bill of materials including hardware software, licenses and network needs.

I see allot of advantage having one or seven PC images to maintain and keep current with flash, java, MS, Adobe, Firefox updates, than to have 100 individual desktops to try to update, when most updates require admin privileges to install.

I'd like to get my arms around the scope of a project like this, before engaging any consulting.   But I also don't want to order some toys to start either.

Has anyone found a "starter package" to explore a virtual PC?  Or other nuts and bolts resources to use before downloading trial ware and Open source ware?

Thanks

Dave

Can anyone from customer service reply to my email regarding our ministry.I sent an email today needing assistance and advise. my email adress is: nightwatcher200031@yahoo.com.   Thank you

How in the world do I find out if my registration papers have been received, processed and approved?

I've been looking high and low for an easy to use room reservation software, preferable web-based, that would allow staff and customers to reserve different rooms at multiple library branches. We would like something that will allow for intuitive use and is easy to set up. Suggestions? What is your library using? TIA for your thoughts, ideas and suggestions.

My organization's online membership form is supposed to submit the results to my email address and redirect the user to a payment page, but neither the submission or redirect are working correctly. Does anyone know of any website or book that covers html codes for this subject? I used Web Design All-in-One for Dummies for the original code. I would paste the code here, but techsoup does not allow that for some reason.

I'm looking into an anti-virus for our SBS 2008 server that's running Exchange 2007.  I've come across ESET Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange.  We have fewer than 10 computers on site so we're able to take advantage of Microsoft's Security Essentials for our desktops - I really just need something for Exchange.  We were using the Forefront install that came with SBS 2008 but it's run out and I'm hoping to replace it with something reasonably priced.  I've also looked into Avast and TrendMicro's Hosted Email Security (which I'm interested in but unsure of the whole cloud concept)  I'm hoping to find someone out there that offers nonprofit pricing.  Does anyone have experience with either of those or can anyone offer other suggestions?