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I do like Windows 7 but have to agree with you. Apple OS releases always feel so much more complete and thought about.

It must just be the Apple way of thinking. I bought a MBP and an iMac just before Leopard was released and both machines qualified for the free upgrade, although I had to pay £6.50 postage. I could have got a way with applying for just one upgrade as there is no serial number or anything but I still got both sets of Leopard disks, paying two lots of postage effectively. Would never dream of doing this with anything from Microsoft, and I'm supposed to be "selling" Microsoft services etc!

They should take a lesson from Apple. I have no problem purchasing new OS's for my Mac's whenever they are out (I even BUY a copy for each one of them). I somehow always manage to acquire my copy of Windows. If Microsoft would be more reasonable, I'm sure it would stop much of the cracking and piracy that occurs.

Well that didn't take long!

If it's emergency info then as well as having an electronic copy, it's a good idea to have a properly sealed, signed, etc hard copy somewhere in a fire resistant safe away from the main school network.

Was going to mention this myself earlier as it is very similar to Openfiler. I do find Openfiler is easier to configure and manage with a little bit of knowledge, and much much better at dealing with software raid systems though. Not that I think software raid is going to be an issue with the poster.

Is putting it inside a password protected zip file any better security wise than adding the password through word itself? Not sure on this one!

Nothing special at all. I have an old P3 system with 512MB RAM stuffed in the corner of my ultra modern server room (old cleaning cupboard :-)). I have a hardware PCI IDE Raid card in set up for Raid 1 and it offers me a fair amount of basic protection. I don't know if I would trust anything mission critical being on it but then that's really up to you. The main reason I set it up was for the iSCSI connection to my Server and desktop machines.

I use it in the office for an iSCSI backup drive. Nothing very important gets backed up to it but it always works perfectly. Has the ability to do its own "snapshots" which can be handy. Works very well as an iSCSI drive with Server 2003/2008 and Vista. I have even managed to get it working with OSX using a third party initiator.

Very true however - even if it is "a full wodge of notes" "full price" version, it will not be expensive. Snow Leopard doesn't really offer very many new features, more an improvement on the core and how it runs and as so will be either £19 or £29 (I've heard sources quoting both" As for people that have purchased a Mac since the 8th of June this year it will be £6.50 postage or something like that, exactly the same as when I purchased just before the release of Leopard.

Strange then. I suppose it's never simple though is it! Were the shares normal ones or admin ones i.e. Netlogon / Sysvol etc?

The best way to prevent this is to get the script to delete all potential drive mappings as one of the first things it does. Start from a blank slate so to speak and then add relevant drives back in later on in the script. Tom

At least your honest! I don't think there is a way to rename the mapped drives with a batch file. I'm sure you need to use VBS or something similar for this. I may be wrong though!

Like so: Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network") objNetwork.MapNetworkDrive "X:" , "\\Server1\Share"

Mapping drives in VBS is easy as well. You could map the drives with VBS instead and have them given a custom name as well? Scripting is far more powerful with VBS than with a standard batch file.

If you have been deploying an application with GP from \\Server1\Share and change the policy to \\Server2\Share there should not be a problem. As is the way with things though, sometimes the application will reinstall when the client machine next updates it's policy. Theoretically being the same application MSI in both locations should be recognised - but it isn't always. DFS is probably the way forward for you. It is fairly reliable in 2003 but much better with 2008. 2008 also adds many more redundancy options for your file shares. Tom

Isn't this a known issue with certain versions? Mine does it at the moment but as you say, I just keep an eye on the used space increasing.

Used AB Tutor in a few schools and would highly recommend it. Always found it slightly more involved to set up than other products but once working it's a very complete piece of software.

Thank you both for your replies. I will be in touch with both of you soon for further discussion, and a slightly better explanation of what I am looking for! Thanks again Tom

As I become aware that more and more schools are implementing Mac's either in a small or large scale, I have been wondering. Are there any schools that offer teaching on Mac specific software? Either learning to use the OS itself or learning to use specific Mac applications? As there is a bigger push in many schools towards vocational subjects, surely somebody will be teaching either design or production on the Mac platform? Any thoughts or input would be greatly appreciated. Also, if there are any schools with a large Mac infrastructure that wouldn't mind a five minute chat at some point then this would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks Tom

It would make data from the drive slightly more difficult to recover - but if you are just talking about a standard classroom machine; then just re-imaging it will have the same results.

Did you get mine?

I always do this when I buy a new laptop as the trend for not issuing recovery CD's or even OS media is starting to grow. Never had a problem with it and WDS would be my preferred method as well. Obviously it will depend on the size of the image as a lot of manufacturers fill new systems with so much rubbish these days. Tom

I'm sure you might have tried this but if you click on the Link button on the google maps website (once you have it displaying your area) - it will take you to a screen to generate HTML code to inject into your site. Works for my sites anyway. Tom

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