Essential Goodies

One of my primary schools has ordered a new server, and is due to receive it this week; The whole network is also currently being upgraded- was all on Cat5 but is moving to a fibre backbone. Now seems to be a good time to start rebuilding all the workstations (It seems it hasn’t been done since 2003).

I only spend 3 hours a day at the primary school as I’m based at a secondary school. I’ve posted this thread because I want to know your opinions on essential goodies to put on the server and workstations.
I am able to VNC into the workstations from the secondary school so maybe something to enable someone ringing me up can easily give me the IP for the workstation they’re having a problem with.

I currently run SpiceWorks, this will continue to run on the old server, and I’m planning on introducing the staff at the school to the HelpDesk. Does anyone know of a better helpdesk than SpiceWorks’ ? Preferably I’d like one that doesn’t require a user to login or enter their email.

Look forward to your comments

BGInfo is a free tool that can display all sorts of system info on the desktop. I'm pretty sure it can be configured to show the local IP address.

With Liberum running under IIS - if you use integrated windows authentication and you're good with ASP you can modify it (free) to suit your own needs so a username is not required.

My Little Helpdesk from opsoftware Ozan use integrated authentication to automatically log the user in via their windows login id.

Ben

i use bozteck nvc manager to deploy vnc to machines, also allows you to run scripts and other nice stuff. and i use java in an intranet page to give the user all the details they could need for a support call (ip, mac, machine name, username, system variables)