DfE laptops security measures

[LeMarchand]

Not had the email yet, but glad that I stated that we would have difficulties reissuing them after the cut-off on the questionnaire.

 

Pleased I only wiped a couple as an experiment!

[StevieM]

@StevieM and @Fazza where did the email come from informing you of the extension? I've not received it, yet.

 

It was a DfE email sent to the head, who then forwarded it to me.

That does change our plans for what to do with the devices. I've reset a trolley full of the better spec (HP) ones and added them to our domain. The cheaper DELL ones I might leave as they are if the filtering is extended so they can be quickly deployed to pupils as the need arises.

 

The same here. We had 20 unrestricted HP laptops that I was happy to add to the domain. The restricted Dell ones were a pain, though. I had to order a USB/Ethernet adapter and re-image them one at a time. I would definitely have left them as is, as I'm sure we'll have need of them the way things are going...

[ITGuyNW]

I was literally finalising my image this morning when the email came through.

[Kitkatninja]

@StevieM and @Fazza where did the email come from informing you of the extension? I've not received it, yet.

That does change our plans for what to do with the devices. I've reset a trolley full of the better spec (HP) ones and added them to our domain. The cheaper DELL ones I might leave as they are if the filtering is extended so they can be quickly deployed to pupils as the need arises.

 

This is the email that we received yesterday (if you pm me your email I can forward it to you):

 

[hallb15]

This is the email that we received yesterday (if you pm me your email I can forward it to you):

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]63071[/ATTACH]

 

Thanks - I mentioned it to our Head yesterday and she forwarded it to me so I have a copy now.

[toffee_paul]

I left wiping these until coming back term as I had a suspicion the licences for web filtering would be extended even though I didn't think it would be as late as 2 weeks before it was due to expire!

 

I had started to get a few back in to reset and enrol in Intune / Smoothwall Cloud Filter but now they've extended it til Sept '22 I won't be in any rush. General plan here is to allow pupils who had one assigned last year to keep it for the duration of the time they're pupils here. Some of our surplus ones from last year will go to pupils in the 2021 this month and they'll have the reset (Intune/Smoothwall CF) ones given to them that have M365 A3 for students benefit licences on them.

 

Ours are set up in Autopilot and they work very well the only downside being the length of time it takes to get Office on them during the Device Setup phase of OOBE. I dabbled with White Glove as a way around this so the standard apps like Office and the Smoothwall unified client were pushed down to the device before pupils get their hands on them. I initially tested this on GeoBooks but was having issues with the TPM during the Device prep phase even though they apparently support the required v2.0 standard and attestation already. Had no such worries with the Dell 3190's and White Glove on these was smooth as butter.

 

Also had some weird issues with the time zone of Autopilot/White Glove devices being set to Pacific even though during OOBE English was selected for region and keyboard. Didn't seem to affect anything in any major way but was annoying me so solved this by assigning a device configuration profile and setting 'Configure Time zone' to 'GMT Standard Time'.

 

EDIT: For anyone wondering, White Glove (or Autopilot for pre-provisioned devices as they call it now) is possible on the DfE laptops that won't have an Ethernet port by just connecting to to WiFi on the first OOBE screen following a reset. SHIFT+F10 > type 'control netconnections' then connect to a WiFi network. Thenn the usual 5xWindows key process to kick off pre-provisioning. I appreciate WG can be unrealistic depending on the volume of devices but it's nice to know it's doable even with the DfE-provided laptops.

Edited September 20, 2021 by toffee_paul