visionsoft - powerout

[goodhead]

we are thinking of buying visionsofts powerout software to shutdown pcs at the end of the day.

 

I tried scripts and just cant get them to work well.

 

Has any one else used powerout and what do they think about it?

[tosca925]

We use scripts here very succesfully on 650 clients.

[Ric_]

@tosca925: Maybe you should post your scripts or add to the wiki... maybe save goodhead some cashies

[mac_shinobi]

I got a script to work to remotely shut down a system, just not sure how to get it to do lots at a time because I couldnt quite get it to loop through each machine name and spaces and invalid characters were interfereing with it plus didnt have time to look into it further at the time I was doing it.

 

so would be interesting to see how it is done.

[goodhead]

Our bursar has agreed to pay for it.

The script i tried was one from MS i think. I had to setup txt files with the pc names in. the problem i found was the sheduling on the server didn't work with it that well. and also didn;t seem to work on some dell sx270 USFF pcs.

 

I think powerout will pay for itself in a few months.

[cjohnsonuk]

This is not a promotion. I'm in no way linked to visionsoft.

 

We just got an offer of £495 for us to have all of the following from Visionsoft:

 

Visionsoft - It's Back (469/)

 

PowerOut

Visual Audit X3

Chronos

Patch IT

PiXi

WinLock

 

for three years

 

Plus all new products during the period.

 

Until 30/4 there is an lea option of £995 for power out for the whole authority.

 

We've only used Visual audit before and didn't have time to look into it that much. Our helpdesk software now does the auditing for us.

 

Primarily our focus will be on Power out to save on our electricity bills but we can do that already with

 

dsquery computer -name * |dsget computer -samid>pclist.txt

to get a list of computers (need to put an ou in there to prevent it getting your servers too!)

and

psshutdown @pclist.txt -f -h -t300 to shutdown all the PCs (although it may be easier to launch one psshutdown per PC so that they all start that bit quicker. Nothing a bit of Perl couldn't handle). Putting the first shutdown scheduled for the end of the school day with an option to cancel and then every half hour until the school gets locked with the last one after the school is locked to catch everything still on.

 

Not had any problems with Psshutdown. Not sure what benefits power out gives (but it does need local software installed iirc).

 

Anyone got any up to date experience of these products from Visionsoft or of Vuisionsoft from a support point of view?

[mattx]

I dumped PatchIT - WSUS is much better and free. When I used PatchIT it would fail to install some patches, it would prompt users !!?? It would also install patches I asked it not to.....

I also found their support VERY lacking.

 

In regards to powering down PCs, I use psshutdown - never had a problem with it - its part of the Admin Bar - [ see below ]

[flyinghaggis]

Anyone got any up to date experience of these products from Visionsoft or of Vuisionsoft from a support point of view?

 

Not had any experience of their software but their sales dept wont stop spamming, cold calling and mailing us with their 'offers' despite us asking to be removed from their lists.

Admittedly I've not used it but at a glance most of their software looks pretty outdated IMO. I reckon it looks as though it could be easily replaced by simple scheduled tasks/scripts, built in MS group policy settings and open source software that would work just as well if not better.

Edited April 23, 2008 by flyinghaggis

[mattx]

Not had any experience of their software but their sales dept wont stop spamming, cold calling and mailing us with their 'offers' despite us asking to be removed from their lists.

Admittedly I've not used it but at a glance most of their software looks pretty outdated IMO. I reckon it looks as though it could be easily replaced by simple scheduled tasks/scripts, built in MS group policy settings and open source software that would work just as well if not better.

 

Free Ipod, Free Tom Tom, Free crappy old laptop - I know what you mean. One thing I hate is cold callers and constant junk mail from them. Glad I dumped it in the end.....

[enjay]

We use PowerOut here, but I don't believe it is capable of shutting PCs down - we use BeyondExec for that. PowerOut controls power management settings like screen savers, when it turns off disks/monitor, etc. It is really useful, and has made a big difference to the temperature in our IT Suites (plus our electricity bill is lower to the tune of £3/PC/year)

 

We use a few other Visionsoft products here, and I must say I like them - I wouldn't pay the full whack for them, as that is just crazy money, but they are often doing special offers.

 

I agree with those who comment on their over-zealous spamming though - we get weekly mailings to a number of addresses in school despite already having literally every product on a 3-year licence!

[TronXP]

We use PowerOut here, you can change power management settings and yes you can program it to shut down your PC's, we have it set to shut down at 7pm, So far it has worked brilliantly. We got it on offer for £90, wouldn't pay full price for it. The interface is a bit rubbish but it depends on what your looking for.

[georgebush]

We've got it here, the interface is horrible but it does work. We just put it on the origional machine images pre-set then we dont have to bother much with the main program, this way it works a treat.

 

Only other issue we've had is with mice on reflective surfaces, tiny pointer movements make it think the computer is in use and it doesnt shut down. Can't really blame the program for that though