2008/7/16 Richard Smedley <smedley358(a)btinternet.com&gt;: Cheers Richard :-) The answer is yes, I do speak from experience. I worked at Wolverhampton Uni. Though I left back at the end of the year 2000 I have kept up with job vacancies there. Pay is atrocious for the work involved. I used to run a department with about 6 or 7 staff. I was responsible for ordering new computer equipment for the staff of Learning Resources at the Telford Campus (where is was based). I ran a lab of 120 PCs with any running updates, repairs, installs etc. I also set up new PC's on the network at our end (involving cabling where necessary, allocating IP addresses and some switch gear work (low level stuff). On top of that I also did campus wide staff IT assistance together with student help and also ran a video editing suite. There were myriad other little jobs that I had to learn at the time including setting up an early video conferencing suite (proper business class). For that little lot I was paid less than £15,000 per annum. Private sector would have probably been double that amount easily. Of course my biggest problem was then (as it is now but it's no longer a 'problem') that I did not possess a degree. Add to that I really enjoyed the work so carried on. It was when I started to get hassle form my bosses that I had simply had enough. I had an offer that I couldn't refuse (would you turn down going to Australia?) Sadly a few months later I developed arthritis in more than just my neck (car accident back in 1992) and was then unable to work again... -- ============================================== Kevan Farmer Linux user #373362 Staffordshire