RM. Creating a non CC3 Workstation

[Lorfarius]

We are at the stage where we are considering moving away from RM. To test what it would be like to run a vanilla XP workstation, I thought it would be an idea to see if we could mix and match a PC built with just a few applications (Office, Serif) that wasn't CC3 built/dependent.

My problem comes with the email setup. At the moment when a kid logs in the one thing they don't pick up is access to the Outlook.pst file which is saved in the My Documents folder of their user account. We don't run Exchange and from what I can see in the RM Management console, the location of the pst file is set there.

I'm probably missing something obvious here but how could this change be made so that the email account follows them around? So that they can log onto the CC3 and vanilla PC yet still access their email accounts.

[andyturpie]

We are at the stage where we are considering moving away from RM. To test what it would be like to run a vanilla XP workstation, I thought it would be an idea to see if we could mix and match a PC built with just a few applications (Office, Serif) that wasn't CC3 built/dependent.

My problem comes with the email setup. At the moment when a kid logs in the one thing they don't pick up is access to the Outlook.pst file which is saved in the My Documents folder of their user account. We don't run Exchange and from what I can see in the RM Management console, the location of the pst file is set there.

I'm probably missing something obvious here but how could this change be made so that the email account follows them around? So that they can log onto the CC3 and vanilla PC yet still access their email accounts.

One word of warning you risk profile corruption by logging into vannilla to CC3 and vice versa, why, I do not know..... but that's what happens to us. Our CC3 users all have RM easymail so its just web access to the mail. Our vanilla admin users have exchange so its almost automated...Hope someone can help further.

[Roberto]

As Andy says, I'd be reluctant to "mix and match" between these two types of build. Aside from anything else, if you do that (and the RM-built GPOs are applied to the users that log into these workstations for testing purposes, then you're not getting a fair test of what it would be like to run a vanilla system.

Speaking of GPOs, IIRC you need to use one of those to specify the default location for PST files and the like - there should be GPOs available for each version of Office on the Microsoft support website - download those and use them to create the default office settings you want to have - this is where Exchange would have been a benefit as the newer ones can configure outlook automatically when the user first runs outlook as andy says, or I'd consider switching people to webmail; running outlook without exchange or an exchange-like system seems like a bag of pain to me!

[Lorfarius]

Thanks both. I was hoping that there would be a way to faze out CC3 room by room, this non CC3 PC was to trial what it could be like, and switch in part to a more vanilla setup. We basically have 2 years of CC3 licenses left so have the time. For classroom management we would be looking at Impero, everything else on vanilla.

Its a tough one to tackle all round as everyone here has been using the CC3 system since 2004/05 and prior to that 2.4. Vanilla is entirely new

[Davit2005]

We had CC3 at previous place and gradually fazed it out over about a year whilst we had only XP clients. What have you got too lose by building a Vanilla image and see what happens. Not sure how difficult it would be to have a completely mixed bag of XP CC3, Vanilla XP and Vanila Windows 7 clients all on the same site however.

Create a OU for the Vanilla PC's in the AD tree beneath any RM machine policies. Place the vanilla clients in this OU. Write the machine policies from scratch just copying the needed things if neccesary.

[Lorfarius]

We only have XP clients at the moment but I'll give the new OU a whirl to see what happens. Just built a single PC as plain vanilla so have a guinea pig.