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About LinkBacksWhich PC control software do people here use and which do they recommend?
Ranger looks good but seems to muck about with Active Directory /me shivers.
Which PC control software do people here use and which do they recommend?
Ranger looks good but seems to muck about with Active Directory /me shivers.
Ranger has NO AD integration whatsoever.
Primarily because it was designed to work croos platform 95/98/Me and NT4/2000/XP
It uses registry merges and Ranger Policies that work with but often conflict with AD GP settings (if you do not understand what they are supposed to be doing).
CC3 and Viglen2000 have custom AD templates and extensions.
They all do things that are supposed to simplfy the way school networks are managed, that is a matter of opinion as expressed in many other posts here and elsewhere.
GeoffH
I use Net Support, love it to bits, would not swap to anything else, have looked at Net Op and I just feel that they are they step behind NSM. The other great thing I think with NSM, is if you get Net Support Manager (perfect for the IT guys) you get Net Support School as part of the deal (perfect for the teachers). Its very customisable, and people can log calls with you in real time and they appear in a help list, and you can talk back to them which can scare people, I did once by talking, and they said there PC was talking to them!
If you want to give Jason Thickpenny a call at them, he's my contact, great bloke, sorted out an extended trial for me so we could use it for longer than the standard trial, sorted everything out and knows his stuff, and anything he is not to sure on, he goes to find out and gets back to me which is what you want. If you want his number, just PM me as I have not got it here in my PDA for some reason.
NetSupport Manager for me too, and with no 'extra' hidden costs for admin consoles. NSM is by far the program which sets the industry standard, and with frequent updates and clients for Linux, Mac, Solaris and others (Pocket PC!) it is also the most versitile.
We looked at Net Support but the cost was too steep - we have Ranger at the moment but are going native 2003 and possibly LANView 3 which is free.
Expensive? Perhaps, if you have a network numbering in the hundreds of PC's, but the sheer number of features that NSM employs make it worth the cost. It is a real time saving and labour saving app. I could not live withoput it now.
Clients for Mac? Do you mean you can use the Net Support School to control classroom Macs?
That would be really nice.
Yup. Here is the page where all of the clients are available. As you can see, it's quite extensive.Originally Posted by NetworkGeezer
http://www.netsupportsoftware.com/su...sp?version=900
Yup, the latest update for Net Support added Mac and Solaris as officially supported products, so it gets better every update.
I have just requested a new feature for it, basically, when you blank a screen in NSM, its blank, and all I want is a message on it that says "This machines is in use by IT support" or the option to display a JPEG or some custom test.
Thats it! Thats all I want extra, I got the last feature I felt was needed - the option to find out who is logged on to the PC without running a full inventory scan, or opening it and looking at the name in the start menu. So if we got that, who knows we may get the message / image display.
I was told its in Netsupport School, it shows a padlock by default, which can be changed by chaning the BMP file to your own, but I have not looked.
I hop they will bring that option in to NSM very soon as well, if others request it as well, I think that may help confirm to them that we need a message. The number of machines I get the plug pulled on when I am working on them with the screen blanked is getting very annoying now! You may ask why the Blank Screen, but when accessing hidden shares on servers that domain users can execute (eg my application server), I dont want the kids to find the address out that easily as they will all be getting a copy of MS office Free as its a server install so its got the PID as part of it. Also if its a class full of kids, they can get easily destracted by the mouse moving, and in the case of little kids (4-6 year olds), they can get very scared! and I don't like scaring the kids, well little kids that is.
I trialled NetSupport Schools 8 this week. It's very nice and has lots of cool features. The application blocking/internet blocking features alone are probably worth the money. But with discount and for our machine it would cost nearly £8000.00!!
That's a *lot* of money. They either know it's good, or they are over-charging. Considering they know schools are strapped for cash and this is the target audience of the package perhaps a look at the price would be good for them to do.
In any case we are still looking at it. I'm having the head of ICT stress testing it in his room all month. One thing's for sure- it makes the students desperate to get on the net! They tried pulling out the ethernet cable from the master machine, turning it off, even tried accessing the machine while staff weren't around (they thought) ;-)
It was fun watching it.
I got a quote in Dec - Net Support School came in at £9835 for 500 clients and included £1638 for maintenance. NetSupport Manager came in at £15,127 for 500 clients including £2520 for maintenance. Although the sales guy did say he could probably get us a discount when we ordered. Unfortuneatley I have to refit an IT suite with new PCs, get a new server, some more laptops, IWB and printers this year
@Dos Box & john
The Mac client appears to be for the genric NSM remote control suite and not the Net Support School version.
@alan-d
£10K? Whoa!!!! :idea: For that kind of money you canjust hire someone to stand in the classroom gving kids stern looks.
We are trialling Net Support School at the moment. The thing I don't like, and I'm sure John maybe able to help on this, is that is doesn't seem to grab the logon names from the AD when you look at the PCs in the list. You have to get them to 'Register' if you want the names to appear. When you have lots of classes and many of them coming in from other lessons, you don't want to be going through that hassle every time. You want the setup time to be minimal. It seems to rely on the teacher seting up a lesson in preperation. You can time it out and everything. But all that is too gimicky. You just want to have the control. You don't need it to teach for you!
The clients are generic. net Support School is actually NSM with a fancy skin and teacher tools added. You can use any client and still view it, which is why it pays to get the full NSM and just use NSM School for free. You can also haggle loike hell with NetSupport for pricing.
The reason you have to get them to 'register' is because it saves on network traffic. The 'registering' you talk of is actually connecting to the client and acheiving a permanant connection until disconnected. If you connect to all clients then it will send your management station all of the info from those PC's and generate traffic.
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