OSX and XP on the same machine in schools.

[drjturner]

Hi


Are schools going to consider buying mac's now and dual booting xp and osx. Obviously the macbooks are here and are cheaper than most laptops that people would consider for reliablity and case strength in schools, the Emac is due out in september which is supposed to be a lot cheaper than existing ones. We are starting to replace all our pc's for macs for supporting the mac schools.

[drjturner]

Just thinking then that this is a big impact on all people that support pc's. We no longer have "pc" and "mac" but now have "mac pc" and "windows pc"

Weird!!!

[indie]

Just remember Bootcamp is still in Beta, you might want to wait for 10.5 for something more stable. There are still driver issues and some keys don't work properly. I'm typing this in OS X on a MacBook Pro but when I'm in Windows the key's arent mapped properly, the brightness and volume keys don't work.

The MacMini's we have at work running Windows also have quirks, on shutdown Windows doesn't properly issue powersave signals to the Cinema Displays so the backlight's stay on unless you switch them off at the wall, the Apple keyboard layout confuses people by having the Alt and Ctrl keys next to each other instead of having a key in between (believe me, something this simple confuses the children).

Of course, you could just plug in a standard USB keyboard but then you'll confuse the OS X users. It's going to take a lot of educating and right now I don't think it's time to replace all my machines with Apple boxes.

[DMcCoy]

Don't forget that you then need to factor in os x and windows license cost and maintenance for the machines. Remote managment is also more difficult as it depends which os the machine is running at the time. Doesn't this also make it more difficult to deploy windows, macs don't support PXE do they? (They might do, I've not looked) - You can't install windows from pxe anyway without destroying the mac partition afaik, but ghost might just be ok in sector copy mode).

[drjturner]

I have heard the Macbook and Macbook Pro seem to have better compatibility than that(Mini). I will keep you updated when we receive ours in a weeks time.

[indie]

It's not that they have better support, they both run Windows equally well.

I've get Windows on the MacBook Pro i'm typing this on, but the odd Apple keyboard layout still doesn't help. I've had to remap some keys and even then, then Volume Keys and Brightness Keys dont work. The iSight camera and Backlit keyboard don't work in Windows either.

[CyberNerd]

"Are schools going to consider buying mac's now and dual booting xp and osx.".

Of course - buy macs, pc's, linux windows - More the merrier, It gives students more transferable skills, better insight into IT and they are more able to compare. There shouldn't be one microsoft way in education (AKA the varndean approach to DiDA)

[sahmeepee]

Don't forget that you then need to factor in os x and windows license cost and maintenance for the machines.

I think schools with a Schools Agreement have to pay for a Windows desktop license if they buy any new Macs even if they don't have XP on.

[DMcCoy]

Schools agreement requires that you license virutally every PC, even the macs and linux boxes. You do get to use office 2004 for mac on os x though - also again covers cals, exchange for connectivity to windows.

[GrumbleDook]

Don't forget that you then need to factor in os x and windows license cost and maintenance for the machines. Remote managment is also more difficult as it depends which os the machine is running at the time. Doesn't this also make it more difficult to deploy windows, macs don't support PXE do they? (They might do, I've not looked) - You can't install windows from pxe anyway without destroying the mac partition afaik, but ghost might just be ok in sector copy mode).

I've been looking into this and trying to see if there is a definitive guide to rolling out dual boot machines.

From reading macenterprise.org and the osx interop list you can netboot / netrestore partitions of any flavour so all you need to create the XP volume, do your stuff and sysprep as usual.

Yes .. it means you cannot RIS as you would other machines .. but you will need a server running OSX Server. If I ever find a good link I will post it here.

[kingswood]

We are looking into this now. It would be great to have one convenient hardware type for both operating systems...

[GrumbleDook]

Fancy popping over for a chat to come up with some ideas?

Actually ... this is something we can ask Capita dotICT to look into for us ... they are looking for a few special projects to do. I'll actually post a bit about thim in a few minutes anyway.