fafster

You don't need AD though. A client application runs on the user's machine, and controls printing.

I downloaded and set up the single server inside a virtual machine earlier, but didn't get a chance to test it though. I really do like the sound of what this offers. If you could integrate an LTSP server too, you'd pretty much have all bases covered. How's the integration with XP clients?

We use PrintLimit Pro at our school. It's saved a LOT of money. You can set the printers up into groups and assign them to classes via AD. You can refuse printing of certain documents by name, such as document1 etc. You can also prevent people from printing more than once in a certain period, so no triple-clicking the print button. It also has lots of statistics and logs that you can peruse at your leisure. Check it out.

I'm having a play with it now. Apparently you can also image machines remotely, too. Can't find any options to do this though, so any ideas?

By setting the boot server flag in the DHCP settings, it's not going to affect any machines other than those set to boot from the network. I'd just alter the current server. If people decide to fiddle in the BIOS and boot up a thin client, then they'll just have the access they're normally allowed, anyway.

Are you using openoffice, or crossover office to keep the staff happy?

Everything except the servers most likely. That's including switches, UPS, etc. It's looking more likely that we'll have to continue along this path for the time being. Ah well, I'll just have to find little compromises and rebel against the system whenever I can

If we were to go down the Sun Secure Global Desktop route, would we be able to keep our old machines as the clients until we were able to buy snazzy new ones?

How much, all things considered, would it cost to turn a class of 30 machines into thin clients? I'm hearing things about Sun Secure Global Desktop being cheaper that Citrix etc. but I need advice. We'll finish paying for our last lot of machines this year, so I want to see if it'll be cheaper to convert a room than buy new machines. Cheers.

Nope, in South Wales. The management here really aren't keen on opting out of the managed service, either. Basically, the machines that are already here need to stay here.

I've recently taken over as technician at a secondary school. The school has a managed service agreement with the local authority, which takes care of the network infrastructure and the domain. Unfortunately, this means that I'm completely cut off from group policy management, DNS, DHCP and a host of other things that ideally I'd want access to. The idea is that if we want a change to the system, we submit a request and receive feedback on it. This usually means no. Nothing can be installed on the domain controller or file server, either. Because we hold all our own licenses, I've been toying with the idea of buying a new server, and creating a new domain in front of the other one. The trouble arrises when you take into account user creation, which is done by sims and fed automatically into the AD. Is this idea feasible?

Sorry to drag this back up. Saw this mentioned on some other sites, so I thought I'd give it a go. I've installed this under Fedora 8, which is running on VMWare server. After the intial setup, I created another virtual machine, and installed XP Pro on it. I haven't bothered with a sysprep as it's just a test run, but I'm liking it so far. I've changed the boot priority of the XP virtual machine to PXE by default, and now whenever the machine boots it grabs tasks from the server. At the moment it's creating an image of the XP machine and storing it on the server. Next I'm going to restore the image and see how it handles it. Pros: - Easy initial setup. - Web interface. - After first configuring a client machine to PXE booting, no need to visit it at all. - Fast enough. - Comes with an installable service that detects new tasks and reboots the client machine. Cons: - No multicasting. - Have to enter each client station into the system manually, but this will be remedied in future versions. - Little documentation at present. I think this is something to keep your eye on. It has other tasks too, like memtest, disk wiping, disk checking, file recovery and WOL. Not having to visit a workstation to restore it because someone's cocked it up is a massive plus.

I don't understand the thinking behind this. If the Storebox is pretty much functional domain controller, why need the Master at all to hand out DHCP and proxy settings? The issue with the laptops is that the master isn't going to be left on the whole time, and I can see myself getting phonecalls when the setup doesn't work. Can't I rig something to force the storebox to act as Master?

I hope someone can help me make sense of what's going on here! I'm providing support to a primary school who have bought a trolley full of RM laptops and an RM StoreBox (a windows 2000 server machine, controlling it's own domain). From what I understand, the StoreBox is a fileserver, using something called RM SchoolShare on the laptops to save their work. The laptops also run something called ClassMate 5, which I think allows them to share work with each other in a P2P type of setup. To get the ClassMate software working though, one of the laptops needs to be promoted as a sort of master node. Does anyone have any experience with this whole setup? I've been asked to get it running, but it's the first time I've ever played with it. I'm tempted to just convince the school to use them the old fashioned way and just use network shares...