Use laptop between schools.

[maniac]

We have about 6 teachers this year from a neighboring school that will be teaching several lessons a week in this school (You can guess what's coming next) Their laptops are already provided by their existing school, but we need them to be able to access resources, e-mail and SIMS when they're in this school. I don't have enough spare laptops to act as loan units, so I'm looking for a workaround solutions. It needs to be easy and reliable obviously, as this is a permanent arrangement between the schools.

The best idea I've had so far is duel-booting the machine with 2 installations of windows on different partitions, allowing them to select which one they want at boot up. The problem we fall into with this is licensing, and possible issues with hard drive space so I'd prefer not to do this if possible, there must be an easier solution.

Any other ideas?

Mike.

[j17sparky]

Are they local admins? If so just map the drives getting it to save their password. Or use a script which could even just be on the desktop ready for them to click once they have plugged the network cable in.

[plexer]

Why do you run into a licensing problem is the machine is licensed with a copy of windows and you're only running windows once on each machine where's the problem?

It can be the same copy of windows same key, same activation information.

Same for office etc...

Ben

[bossman]

Why use laptops?
Can you not create them user accounts so they can access the Sims and any resources from workstations in the classroom or is this just too simple an approach?

[localzuk]

Why use laptops?
Can you not create them user accounts so they can access the Sims and any resources from workstations in the classroom or is this just too simple an approach?

My guess would be that they don't have workstations in the rooms - as laptops are provided.

How about a terminal server?

I think your simplest option is going to be a dual boot system really. Otherwise you're just going to be creating problems for yourself, as they will find things that don't work the way they are used to and moan about it constantly.

[maniac]

@j17sparky: This is an good option which I considered, but creates problems if they change their password, and also I know they have some of the same drive letters mapped at their main school so I couldn't make them persistant drive maps as it would interfere with their normal network. I'm trying to avoid them having to run scripts etc if possible, (I know I'm making things harder for myself) but I know it'll probably cause problems in the long run.

@bossman We don't have desktops in the classrooms, laptops are provided for all teaching staff.

@plexer I was told we would require seperate licenses for the extra installation of windows and office if we went down the duel boot option, I might check this out further however.

@localzuk I like the idea of a terminal server, however we wouldn't have the funding or time to set this up for September, although I've noted the idea for future consideration, thanks.

Thanks for all the quick responses!

Mike.

[Abaddon]

Rather than dual-booting, how about using a Virtual Machine? At least you can use the same VM for each one, saving a little installation time at least?

[localzuk]

Rather than dual-booting, how about using a Virtual Machine? At least you can use the same VM for each one, saving a little installation time at least?

My thought on this would be that most laptops in schools aren't what we'd call 'beefy'. So running a VM would introduce a bit of a major slow down.