Standalone Mac

[googlemad]

We've got 5 or so iMacs and they've not really been too successful in terms of...working!

 

Anyway I've got one in the office now, I've wiped the disk, set up a local admin account and installed all the updates including whatever the latest OS X is! (Mavericks maybe?)

 

Installed Adobe CS6 and Office too

 

Before we had them on the domain but I'm not sure they need to be for their usage within OS X, therefore can they be set up with local accounts that are a)locked down and b)'Deep Freezed' (so they lose Internet history etc at log off).

 

We do have a Mac Mini server but again it has basically gathered dust for a year, does that need wiping and updating to the latest OS X server too?

[wealthy]

If you add a Mac to the domain it is there for Network users from your windows domain only, it won't use any GPO's from your DC.

 

With your Mac mini server, if there is no risk involved and no data to be lost, would be worth updating to the latest OS X (10.10.4 Yosemite) and install Server 4.0. With this setup you can that setup policy's to control the PC. Not too difficult to set up just needs tinkering with if not done before! Be warned tho with pushing profiles to the macs and the server the network ports will need to be open for all apple traffic otherwise you won't get any profiles to a device!

 

Hope this helps

[wealthy]

Might also add that for 5 computers this maybe overkill, you could also just change the default user template for all users that logon

[JasonNVSD]

therefore can they be set up with local accounts that are a)locked down and b)'Deep Freezed' (so they lose Internet history etc at log off).

 

Yep. I posted the login script that I'm using here.