Impero Education Pro question - No suppliers please!

[Koldov]

*EDIT: Possibly wrong forum!*

 

 

Hi All,

 

Can I just ask those that use this software, whether it is worth using?

 

We have had a message that this will be available to purchase by the School soon. We have had no issues that I know of regarding pupil useage and I keep up with day to day, update/print/patch management etc. As you do in the role of an IT tech.

 

However lately I have been looking into remote access, SCCM, print management, power management and a lot of the things mentioned in the 'sales' list. I am really liking the 'look' of it from an lonely do-it-all/NM/tech's role position. In fact the more I think of it, the more appealing it sounds rather than have to install all sorts of separate programs/roles and services on my servers/network to do it.

 

E-safety - key word detection ensures usage can be closely monitored, highlighting any violations, (such as

inappropriate email content or web searches) to the e-safety coordinator and ICT Technician. Additional

blocks and filters can also be put in place.

Inventory management - keeping on top of ever-expanding software and hardware can be daunting. This

feature will enable ICT Technicians and ICT / Computing Subject leaders to have an up-to-date inventory.

Computer usage monitoring - the intelligent reporting function draws from a log of network activity to

provide a comprehensive account of power usage, print history, deleted items, violation alerts, CPU and

memory usage,

Licence management - managing licence compliance at a network level means one licence can be shared

between a number of computers, cutting down on the amount being spent on software and essentially

providing more for less. Acting as your virtual licence manager, the intelligent monitoring functionality

highlights how many licences are being used and restricts access to the software before this exceeds its

legal limit.

Patch management – ICT Technicians can quickly and easily keep software up-to-date and automatically

patch all vulnerable software, to the latest version, saving valuable staff hours from the laborious manual

download process.

Desktop utilization - reports the utilisation patterns of specific devices by monitoring usage, ensuring value

for money from all devices and supporting refresh plans and budgets.

Additional key features also include:

• Print management

• Power management

• Remote control and support

• Computer lab management

 

Please respect that I do not wish to hear from anyone who has a biased view...

 

If you wish to say anything that you might not wish to make public feel free to PM me!

 

Kol.

[6Foot2]

We have Impero on our network: It came in with a new network deployment during the Summer break last year.

 

Although we do not use all of the features available would not be without it now. We have allowed a small number of staff to have access to the console connecting to their classrooms only and the feedback from these staff is also very positive.

 

We did have PaperCut on our old network. With the advent of Impero I did not renew our PaperCut as Impero has a print credit feature. I feel that this was a mistake now and that I should have kept PaperCut for our new network. Aside from that I think it was a good investment.

[Gaz]

Its a bit of a swiss army knife. I probably only use a small percentage of what it can actually do.

 

Features I like are, remote viewing, msi deploy (better than using GP if you only need to install something on 1 machine and you want to do it instantly) power management (start up and shut down at certain times) Password reset for trusted SLT.

[Koldov]

Could a MOD please move to the 'Network and Classroom Management' forum please?

 

Kol.

[synaesthesia]

We're very happy with it and believe it's worth every penny. Again we don't use all features - patch and licence management for instance, but for quick & dirty MSI deployment, classroom management, first level website & keyword filtering, remote support etc it's awesome. Logging is great and has helped us deal with problems whether they're user, computer or security related. Even gets used just to find people now and then.

Some of the teachers have really taken to it, so we've added second monitors to our ICT suites for Impero to be used exclusively for them, aiding in classroom management.

[Gibson335]

As others have said, great tool, many features we don't use, but those we do use are excellent. We happen to have power management anyway, and won't get rid of PaperCut, and there are bits and pieces we prefer to use existing methods for, but overall if the price doesn't prevent you, I'd go for it.

[CamelMan]

We've had it for about a month now - classroom management & internet abuse has been massively improved and it's given us as technical staff a bunch of new tools to save on the leg work.

 

Quite expensive but its better than anything else I've seen.

[Gaz]

Something I forgot to mention. It may not play nice with some AV software as it hooks into lots of different files, the program is also encrypted using a program (Themida) that virus writers use to mask their virus' so our AV (ESET) freaked out until we added in the exceptions. Unfortunately Impero won't give ESET the files to whitelist.

[Koldov]

Something I forgot to mention. It may not play nice with some AV software as it hooks into lots of different files, the program is also encrypted using a program (Themida) that virus writers use to mask their virus' so our AV (ESET) freaked out until we added in the exceptions. Unfortunately Impero won't give ESET the files to whitelist.

 

Well, we gave ESET NOD32 the boot when we signed up for EES and swapped to the MSCEP, so if anyone knows if they play nicely together please shout!

 

Liking what I hear so far, seems like it has a lot of features I was scratching around trying to get sorted out here.

 

Kol.

[synaesthesia]

We use MSSCEP here with Impero and it all works nicely. Likewise, one of my primary schools is using it with Sophos without a hitch.

[fiza]

 

I feel that this was a mistake now and that I should have kept PaperCut for our new network. Aside from that I think it was a good investment.

 

I didn't think you had to renew papercut as it was a one-off cost? You only renew the support and for upgrades. if you purchased it already then its yours to put on your new network.

[synaesthesia]

Absolutely - we still use papercut, not paid for upgrades though so still on 11. but it's worth it.

[Dos_Box]

Moving to Network and Classroom Management forum.

[Love_Sausage]

Impero has been excellent for us so far, saved a lot of time and the teachers that wanted it all still use it - which is a pretty good indication of its usefulness. As said earlier I wouldn't use it for Print management as that side of things is fairly basic. As far as E-safety you have to tweak it until you get the results you actually want to be looking at instead of a wall of alerts, but the Impero support in sorting that out has been brilliant (and fast). One word of caution - our Impero doesn't play nicely with Server2003, some kind of database issue that causes the server software to crash when you go too far into a user history.

[howartp]

I'd echo most of the replies here. I'd used two or three products for remote control & classroom / network management before getting Impero. Don't use all of it, but often when I think 'I wonder if I can do xyz on my network', Impero seem to have got there before me. Can't fault their support either.

[russdev]

Something I forgot to mention. It may not play nice with some AV software as it hooks into lots of different files, the program is also encrypted using a program (Themida) that virus writers use to mask their virus' so our AV (ESET) freaked out until we added in the exceptions. Unfortunately Impero won't give ESET the files to whitelist.

 

Hope OP doesn't mind me posting.

 

Wanted to clarify. We would love to give ESET a copy and tried but sadly they are only one (and I mean only one) AV provider who insists that we give them a un-themida version (lets be honest no company is going to give their source code away) all others we submit a Themida version and goes through and gets white listed. Obviously once added exceptions in ESET it all plays nice.

 

Impero has been excellent for us so far, saved a lot of time and the teachers that wanted it all still use it - which is a pretty good indication of its usefulness. As said earlier I wouldn't use it for Print management as that side of things is fairly basic. As far as E-safety you have to tweak it until you get the results you actually want to be looking at instead of a wall of alerts, but the Impero support in sorting that out has been brilliant (and fast). One word of caution - our Impero doesn't play nicely with Server2003, some kind of database issue that causes the server software to crash when you go too far into a user history.

 

Just to again clarify the server 2003 bug (if it what I think it is) has been fixed in a 4.1X release.

 

Russ

[6Foot2]

Forgot to mention in my reply: Impero has a feature on the console that deals with an issue that has been vexing many Network Managers in this thread:

 

Link: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/security/49064-login-then-pull-out-network-cable-admin.html

 

http://i.snag.gy/XPrTI.jpg

[Lock the users screen when the network cable is pulled out]

[woody]

Hope OP doesn't mind me chipping in here with a question, but I think it is on topic. Can you manage OSX clients alongside Windows clients from the same console?

[Griff]

How does Impero justify their maintenance and support being nearly 3 times more expensive than Netsupport? not a dig just an open question to those already paying for it. I managed to bump them down to only 2 times more expensive but that's only if I go whole network not just the IT rooms..looking at the figures I'm gonna have a hard time selling Impero.

[DrPerceptron]

When we were using literally everything except Impero it was all Client based and was virtually useless. If the sun was out and it wasn't a full moon recently then you could probably find all the machines in the room and they would work, but really, it was such a faff that it wasn't worth it.

 

With Impero we set the machine to lock on no network connection and that's it, the machines have always connected to the server and the teacher console can always see the machines when they're turned on.

 

Have you had a trial of the software? The other thinsg you can do with it beyond basic classroom management are worth the cost - MIMIC Scripts, OSX deployments, remote support, software licensing restrictions and to some extent the reporting and inventories (which I still don't get why they're so hard to use)

[JJonas]

How does it compare to Securus for E-safety?

[Griff]

Got the trial in now just setting up today looks good on first glance much easier to setup than NetSupport but then we are using an old version of NetSupport so cannot really compare.

[DrPerceptron]

How does it compare to Securus for E-safety?

 

Out of the box, it doesn't - I think the newer versions of Securus also have the capability for detecting flesh tones etc which I imagine.

 

Correctly configured, it is probably a little better than Securus as you could get an instant notification in the room it occurs (assuming the teacher is using the console) and have it dealt with immediately,

[alexsanger]

Used it a while back in a school with serious discipline problems. Immediately saw the benefit, although the kids became rowdy because they couldn't get away with being off task! Compared to other classroom management products its streets ahead - centralised management of the PCs, rooms and staff users makes it so much more reliable. (Used NetSupport in a previous school - ended up with a raft of policies making it communicate on a different port for each room just so the connected PCs didn't follow the teacher to the wrong suite). All the bells and whistles seem to work well, including the power management which is one argument for justifying the cost - "Look at the potential power savings!". The staff really like the instant alerts if the kids try blocked activities (no sitting staring at 30 thumbnails). If you need classroom management software, and want some simple network management tools then all you have to do is justify the cost, which is also streets ahead of rivals!

[Griff]

Good feedback cheers people sorry to hijack an old thread but hey seemed relevant..3 days into trial and we are really enjoying it compared to NetSupport this thing is a breeze to setup and manage I am sat here in a state of paranoia because normally something has broken by now...mmm