Windows 10 for mobile devices

[gshaw]

Currently trying to figure out some quandaries I'm having with Win 10, in particular with some of the challenges on mobile kit. Would like to get some second opinions as I'm finding it hard to justify some decisions at present:

 

In my head I've got the devices split into two use case scenarios:

 

1. Staff devices, issued in a 1:1 model i.e. long term loan
   
2. Student devices, shared trolley use model
   

 

Staff devices:

 

Joining these to Azure AD seems to make a lot of sense as they spend most of their time away from the domain and accessing Office 365 services.

Setting up MDM policies in Office 365 looks good and means we can manage encryption and so on.

 

That said I can see quite a few devices in MDM already that seem to have been used for what I assume are mobile Office apps so so somehow need to figure out how force our organisation-owned devices to be force encrypted etc. but without affecting end users who are just activating Office. Anyone figured this bit out yet?

 

Student devices:

 

This is the tough one and where I'm finding it almost impossible to defend Windows 10 right now. These devices can't be 1:1 model as we have too many students for it to be feasible (FE college) so they need to work in a hot desk fashion, quick login and ease of management essential.

 

They'd live inside the college pretty much all the time so joining to internal AD DS makes more sense in this case. ADFS would provide SSO to cloud services.

Problems here are all specific to Windows 10 and really drag it down compared to its direct competition in this space (Chromebooks)

 

• slow login (due to provisioning of unwanted Modern apps \ large profile)
  
• clunky management e.g. broken Start Menu, Edge etc.
  
• still some element of doubt over which edition to deploy (Education \ LTSB)
  
• major build updates on non-LTSB version
  

It seems some on here have found workarounds for removing the default apps but I just find it bizarre that Enterprise \ Education versions of an OS contain so much consumer-level junk - how many hours have been wasted on the Start Menu and default apps alone I wonder?

 

The only reason I've not gone further with the Google side yet is the potential confusion of deciding where data lives if we run both products concurrently without giving any clear guidance to go down one path or the other, but at the same time that seems to be the way forward until the basics work better on 10. We've been on Office 365 for a couple of years now so I'd rather make use of what we have right now but as it stands getting a user onto a Chromebook via GAfE is so much slicker it's hard to argue against. Does anyone else have similar issues?