Bootcamp enviroment in school

[CyberNerd]

A couple of local shops got busted by microsoft for just htis sort of thing.

They can now only sell OEM licenses with motherboards.

They also sell linux now so its not all bad.

[Ric_]

@Grumbledook: I don't see the point in Bootcamp since a cheaper PC will run XP better than a Bootcamp Mac. I just checked the Scan website and the licenses may only be distributed with a 'nonperipheral' computer component for the PC that the OS will be run on or a fully assembled system. I guess you could buy some RAM then to make your bootcamp Mac run at a decent speed

[drjturner]

Bootcamp is not an emulation, it is a partition selecter and xp is a native install and uses all the intel processor, Our MAC Book Pro runs fast enough on XP.

 

 

Best Regards

 

Dan

[GrumbleDook]

My MacBook running XP under Boot Camp (not just a partition selector but a driver generator ... something that will become important in the final release of Leopard) is actually one of the quickest and most stable XP laptops I have.

 

An Intel Mac running XP works out cheaper having a Mac and a cheap PC. We also want to make serious use of the media based apps (start them on iLife, get them onto Final Cut Express / Soundtrack, and eventually have them on Final Cut Studio and other Pro apps) over the next 4 years. XP on the Mac is a limited investment to keep some programs running so existing schemes of work can still be used.

 

The decision on this is an educational (T&L) rather than technical (the teachers' time saved by doing this is worth it ... it gives them more time to create even better resources for the Mac apps) ... but I seriously do rate Intel Macs as damn stable XP machines ... even the P4 Dells we had in music (dedicated Creative soundcards) struggled with Dance eJay (repeated loss of settings, BSoD, knackered registry) but we have yet to have *any* problems in testing it on XP on an Intel iMac.

[Ric_]

@Grumbledook: Since I last checke, some of the driver issues must have been ironed out... I apologise profusely!

 

However, you did then swer twice in 1 sentence - Dell and Dance eJay!!!

 

I am just moving our suite of 'musical' PCs over to Mac. The PCs will still be used in the second suite for Cubasis but Cubase and Sibelius will now be run on the Macs (dual platform education license). The technology-leader in Music doesn't mind Macs and the PCs that were in there must be the most unstable affairs ever made!

[GrumbleDook]

The update to the beta has now been made public and can be found here and I would advise all people to update (there are updated drivers for those that have issues with some things, including built-in mic and iSight)

[drjturner]

Hey they have fixed the headphone problem whereby it used to come out of the speakers and headphones at the same time.

 

 

Dan

[GrumbleDook]

And the issue where the iSight would be recognised as an imaging device but could not be used (and used to crash the machine in some cases until you had installed a seperate webcam)

 

The Built-in Mic works now (huzzah ... narration on Powerpointless again) and speed of burning discs is more steady without having to resort to 3rd party apps.

 

There will be several more updates over the next 6 months and work will go into guides for XP client integration into OpenDirectory environments as well as improved guides on deployment of machines with both OS X and XP on.

 

Thins still needed to be worked on is improving the partition wizard to give users the chance to create a seperate transfer partition that can be left Fat16, or maybe for someone to buyout MediaFour so we can use MacDrive :-)

[Roberto]

@Roberto: mind if I rack your brains too? I have a few ideas about home areas that are slightly different to yours and want to check you haven't already tried them and scrapped them.

 

ask/pick away!

[GrumbleDook]

I want to keep the standard folders redirected to the AD specified SMB shared home area. However, I would like to keep ~/Library on a network volume. This is in addition to your directions on creating default profiles for users ... this means I can control most of the plug-ins and a few other functions too.

 

One idea (based on what I had to do for 10.2) is to create a standard login hook to replace ~/Library with a softlink to another location. Again, this was using Mike Bombich's stuff originally, but I am happy doing this directly now.

 

I was also considering similar for ~/Music so that all users would have access to some royalty-free music in iTunes that could be used with other iApps, but I am unsure and unhappy about centralising this. The promised iTunes University does not seemed to have appeared in the UK and even this would not be quite what we need ...

 

A little off track perhaps on this from the OP, and I'll ask for a thread split.

[Roberto]

I want to keep the standard folders redirected to the AD specified SMB shared home area. However, I would like to keep ~/Library on a network volume. This is in addition to your directions on creating default profiles for users ... this means I can control most of the plug-ins and a few other functions too.

 

One idea (based on what I had to do for 10.2) is to create a standard login hook to replace ~/Library with a softlink to another location. Again, this was using Mike Bombich's stuff originally, but I am happy doing this directly now.

 

Are you using an Apple Server? I think you are yes? This is certainly do-able to the point where Apple have added specific settings to the workstation admin tool in server to set this up (look under 'sharing' IIRC). I assume it's just creating a symbolic link to a afp mountpoint on the server at this time.

 

I was also considering similar for ~/Music so that all users would have access to some royalty-free music in iTunes that could be used with other iApps, but I am unsure and unhappy about centralising this. The promised iTunes University does not seemed to have appeared in the UK and even this would not be quite what we need ...

 

A little off track perhaps on this from the OP, and I'll ask for a thread split.

 

Not a bad idea. This could work quite nicely I would have thought. I'd want to test it a lot to be sure, and one thing that springs to mind is - are you happy for your mac workstations to be unavailable or at least unpredictable if their home server is offline for any reason.

 

That's the immediate downside that I can see to this way of doing things, and it could be a big problem or it could be no problem at all.