About Oscar 3
Oscar3 allows you to control your Internet access. Oscar dutifully logs all web requests to the logged in user, along with workstation address, and time. The log is almost real time as it updates every 30-60 seconds which means you can quickly see your current Internet usage for the hour, how many requests Oscar is processing and gives you the ability to easily search student or staff access.
Oscar has been in use in Bay of Plenty schools for over 5 years. It's proven, reliable, and fast. Oscar3 adds a new reporting engine, better group support, and more flexibility in controlling your Internet. If you've been using the free solutions offered by the Ministry of Education, you've been missing out. Oscar is easy to use, and 'just works'.
Why isn't Oscar supported by the Ministry of Education?
There are a number of reasons:
- Totali is a small business - apparently we're unable to support a product which works
- There are other Linux based solutions the Ministry of Education funds
- It works!
We aren't totally convinced the above are good enough reasons not to be funded, but it appears the only way to get a decent service is to cover it yourself, or get together on mass to let the Ministry of Education know that you want Oscar funded.
Totali is able to support Oscar on a much larger scale. We have a team of people who can help you with the questions you have for configuring Oscar (there aren't many difficult settings), and can quickly roll out many servers with Oscar install ready for deployment. Totali has been doing Linux for over 10 years, and we're pretty good at it.