Desktop Shortcuts

[laserblazer]

I worked all through the holidays (unpaid) to get a computer suite up and running. Although I'm moving to group policies now we have got rid of the W98 machines I put Winsuite on these machines as an interim solution until I've sort the GPOs and I'll admit I'm at the bottom of the learning curve.

So what have the done to repay me getting the suite working? Given me 18 contact lessons this week because the classes are getting behind in ICT!

Anyway, one of the things I want to do is restrict the start menu to just the applications I want the kids to have. I have thought about making a Winsuite lookalike menu but I'm wondering if there is a simpler solution. Possibly disabling All Programs and using desktop shortcuts.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Domino]

Personally, I never saw the appeal of desktop shortcuts.

A redirected start menu, with folders by program type, tends to be a lot tidier.

That way you can redirect the desktop to a read only folder that has a couple of 'most used' shortcuts on it.

[box_l]

have a look at this

XIA Links - CENTREL Solutions

BoX

[laserblazer]

have a look at this

XIA Links - CENTREL Solutions

BoX

Any idea on costs? I'd rather not contact them at present.

[penfold]

As an interim solution you could always just hide the items on the start menu that you dont want them to see. This can be done using winsuite. I personally dont like just using a shortcut menu as I inherited a system that already used this method and it was a pain to maintain. I removed this and went back to a system that closer matched what people would be used to at home and it is much better.

[Gatt]

We dont have anything on our desktops other than BGInfo generated text
Redirected Start Menus (even with pinned items!) here..
Kids can do nothing to the desktop other than look at it...

[Gibbo]

Kids can do nothing to the desktop other than look at it...

Same here. No icons means no messing about with them. Everything nicely tucked away in the start menu, as it should be. We're not running Windows 3.1 anymore!

[penfold]

Another thing to remember is that when you are using Winsuite, it can fight with the GPO settings you have, so while you can make changes in the apropriate OUs, if you have any settings in Winsuite they can override those when the user logs on. This might explain things if you find your settings dont do what you want it to do.

I like to keep the desktop to a minimum so only things available site wide are there(eg IE and My Docs)Other than that only specialist software for changing the screen colours and zooming the screen(assistive technology for learning differences) on specific machines.

[djames]

Hi Laser

> Any idea on costs? I'd rather not contact them at present.
Sorry - I'm not sure if this counts as you contacting us but I came across this posting regards XIA -the product is £100 for unlimited computers in an Active Directory Domain.

The reason we wrote XIA Links (over desktop shortcuts / pinning to the start menu) is that it allows staff to modify application links deployed to pupils and you can display only applications that are actually installed on a given machine and/or for a given Active Directory user or group.


Thanks


David

[sted]

why not just use gpo to hide common start menu items and use a mandatory profile with your own start menu on it and any desktop items you want as well

[laserblazer]

This was done and dusted a year ago