Exos

Most school deployments I have catered for have generally required Dual Boot scenarios with both Windows & Mac OSX with the windows component being used for general domain access, office etc and OSX for the more specialist areas such as for media rich content. However; since the inception of EES and entirely unconnected, one school has decided they want to forgo this option and simply keep their Mac's as ...Mac's running Snow Leopard. Now, I have a question I've posed to our Gold Partner, but wondered if anyone else had come across this: The school potentially still wishes to use office, but on OSX, so is this covered by EES or does it need to be covered under the AELP as a separate isolated cost? My gut feeling it isn't as generally M$ licenses are restricted or termed within their EULA are "PC". Thoughts? There are other considerations outside of this of course such as managed service support for 2011 Office for Mac but that is a different debate.

Not according to our Gold Partner.

Microsoft licensing is a minefield, your best bet is to speak to one of the M$ Gold/Education partners and have them look at what is best for you as a school. If you only have a small amount of equipment it may not work out viable for you. Just some basics about EES. 1. FTE's are ONLY those staff that work more than 200 hours per year and have access to a workstation, so you can effectively wipe off some of your staff such as cleaners/kitchen staff/caretaker etc. 2) If your students are allocated laptops on a 1:1 basis and take them off site rather than issued from a pool, then you need to also get pricing for the Student Option Pack - This is debatable as I'm not sure how this is enforced or managed. 3) Pricing for EES enterprise is approximately £38 per FTE. 4) EES includes SA. 5) Depending on a number of factors such as workstations, students, FTE's, current pricing, whether you want "buyout" perpetual licencing etc all affect how you manage it going forwards. 6) For some schools (and most i have been working with) you can save anything from 30% to up to 80%. 7) All other licenses (excluding those listed below) and CALs are purchased via the select or other agreement as normal (e.g. Server licenses etc) : Windows 7 Enterprise upgrade (Legacy Upgrades & New) Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 (Legacy Upgrades & New) Microsoft Core CAL Suite** (Includes Windows Server Standard CAL, Exchange Server Standard CAL, SharePoint® Server Standard CAL, and System Center Configuration Manager CAL) Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite** (Includes all Core CAL Suite components plus Active Directory® Rights Management Services CAL, Exchange Server Enterprise CAL, SharePoint Server Enterprise CAL, Office Communications Server Standard CAL, Office Communications Server Enterprise CAL, System Center Client Management Suite*** CAL, Forefront® Protection Suite CAL, and Forefront Unified Access Gateway*** CAL) 8) Schools, after 3yrs, have the option to exercise a "buyout" to purchase their licenses outright (however cost can be prohibitive . Indicative pricing as of May 2011 is £41.00 per device) Hope this helps.

They just use any sort of standard mount as long as you have data and a power point in the location, but personally i would strongly advise against placing mini PCs in the ceiling void. Funding as a consideration obviously, but do it properly, go for an A&K Pads, Onelan or Samsung MagicInfo Solution I am just pricing a Samsung solution at the moment for a client and it is about £1500 a screen, then £400 install for each backed off with a support contract. Training/Extended Warranties are additional. Software is pretty easy to use and you can control/publish to each in bulk or individually, from experience it is pretty flexible and not complex so can be used by school staff.

Depends on the context in which you refer to as authentication, if your talking within an AD envirnoment as a login device, then i guess it is entirely dependent on what you go for and cost plays a big factor, but i've not really used them in this way. Taking your original premise into consideration, then certainly for biometric printing and casheless catering they are pretty accurate once in place, although not without some contention. From experience systems can take a few weeks to bed in and students may have to get rescanned a number of times. There are occasions when they are also mistakenly identified, but it's quite rare.

From my experience for a student or teacher it has no advantages. The general use for network connectivity is for SNMP traps and management which can be used to setup "Admin" alerts for limited customizable events such as bulb failure etc. The Windows 7 connection you see is most likely because it's a UPNP device and you should in effect be able to connect to the web interface (depending on port configuration) I wish there was something more exciting. As an aside I am currently awaiting a demo model of the 460i which essentially does away with the IWB and allows for a modicum of latitude when it comes to teacher wall placement http://www.epson.co.uk/Projectors/Epson-EB-460i

You didn't detail what your setup is, but I've seen this before although in a far worse case where the wifi adapter on the device (laptop in this case) floods the RF channel and stops anyone accessing the network, the foolproof approach is to use laptops/wireless with a/b/g/n ranges. Are they all on the same model device? if not are there more of one type of model than the other, it might only be one of the devices which is causing the problem for the other users. As Paul above has said you won't really know without some type of analysis. Hope you work it out.

Use KMS, you can set the interval for the checking so it shouldn't be a problem unless staff who use laptops are likely to be off site for a long period (if i recall its 180 days max)

Theres and old saying in IT. RTFM! I despair when schools purchase IT equipment without looking at requirements or indeed have not bothered to research what they buy.... http://www2.smarttech.com/kbdoc/133564 The management interface is for just that, managing the device.....

Toshiba MFD's integrate with PCounter utilising their biometrics really well, so much so that they have done some significant development work in that area, hence I am in the process of drawing this solution up for a few schools.

Ahh balls, i read the sales blurb when it was first launched and obviously didn't take it all in, just got all excited that someone had the initiative to replace it.

Don't forget the back end infrastructure. If your only getting a few you will be fine and can use things like deploystudio and/or carboncopy. If you looking a suites then you need to invest in an XServe and associated licensing (As of End Jan Apple no longer sell directly, but they do still support their product.) Alternatively can can use a cumbersome Mac Pro (not rack mountable) or look at ActiveStorage's alternative the ActiveSAN. Active Storage | Solutions for Apple Creative Environments

Looks like a Zenithink ZT-180 (You should be able to tell from the detail in the Android O/S and what version of 2.1 is installed. Zenithink.us - Zenithink ZT-180 Android Tablets Shipped from USA I have one.

I'll provide my two cents. Assuming you don't have the luxury of offsite d2d, and if you really want to go down that route, then ideally you need to look at an integrated solution that uses both media. Initial outlay may be more, but you need to see the wider longer term cost savings and not the immediate capital expenditure. I've designed and implemented a few backup solutions over the years and a combination of both is suited to most situations, obviously discounting disk to disk datacentre/enterprise solutions where offsite snaps are taken at a location significantly distanced from the primary site (unlike Salan's unfortunate incident) Every environment is different and in some cases can be really limited in terms of design, but your solution is primarily determined by cost, existing infrastructure placement, setup and capability and not to mention your DR/BCP requirements. However many people don't really investigate this properly, and it's something that needs some degree of planning (data sizing, throughput, location, mechanism (NDAS, SAN, Tape, Fiber, Network etc), backup windows, retention periods, archiving policies and so on) I've recently proposed a small "upgrade" solution for a corporate virtual environment consisting of a Scalar i500 LTO4 solution and a 4TB dual GbE connected DXi4520 De-Dupe unit for d2d capability. Because there was no fiber connectivity I had to use network which of course throughput can be a factor as tape drives suffer from “shoe-shining” (This is the stop-start element during tape backup). The introduction of disk improved that performance, if only to the level allowed by the network. I used the dedupe unit between the master server and tape library as a buffer and the used that to stream data at a nominal level across the network, it also reduces tape media needed and can be controlled by the same backup software, in this instance Veritas Netbackup. The disk i then used for incremental daily backups and then the tape unit used as a second process for full backups that require a longer retention period. It also allowed backup to tape at more convenient periods which could also be sent offsite (less frequently that previous, and reducing tape requirements significantly so lesser ongoing cost) The disk backup was set as the primary target with duplicate copies of the data moved to tape as a secondary process outside of the backup window.

Lots and lots of Haribo, orange juice and anything with e-numbers for the kids....alternatively you can arrange for Maggie Thatcher to visit one Friday having given the kids milk on the Monday to Thursday, just to keep her dream alive Seriously though, £600 doesn't get you lot on ICT other than a new PC, tablet or small accessory. Maybe you need to think of an extension to something already in existence? or enhancing some other learning platform or mechanism. Maybe a few small video or still cameras or scanners? Do they have a media solution which you can upload data to a VLE for parents and others to see, or for internal use as teaching aids...(like pictures where they can use them as jigsaws and such) Lots of info and ideas @ http://ictearlyyears.e2bn.org/ http://www.teachers.tv/videos/ict-in-nursery http://www.itass.newham.gov.uk/curriculum/fssow/resources.aspx http://primary.naace.co.uk/curriculum/earlyyears/foundation_ict.htm

Can you just remove the folder before the sysprep? Are the drivers required for your VM to run? I've not used VMWare yet to create my images but my Win7 images are in Citrix Xencenter, I then run the capture/sysprep script to create the .wim, but up to now I've never had to remove anything from the root other than the MDT scripts at the end of the build (which is automatic). Maybe thats all you need is a "cleanup" script. But then again, if the "device" isn't present on the target machine, then it isn't going to install it. As an aside from an AD/GPO perspective, end users shouldn't be able to write or see local drives on fixed workstations as ideally data should be stored centrally on the network, and if its there are not it shouldn't matter to much.

I'm assuming your talking about the the point it requests the domain and account at the welcome screen? If so i don't display this on my builds and use a "build account" with limited functionality to complete the imaging. There is an example of the customsettings.ini here in which it's detailed: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/o-s-deployment/47596-anyone-using-mdt-2010-a.html Additionally even if someone can PXE boot and get to that point i've added in an initial task sequence which points off to a script to request a separate build password. Dim env,oTSProgressUI,MyPass Set env = CreateObject("Microsoft.SMS.TSEnvironment") set oTSProgressUI = CreateObject("Microsoft.SMS.TSProgressUI") oTSProgressUI.CloseProgressDialog() env("ALLOWOSDBUILD") = "NO" MyPass=Inputbox("Please enter the Password to continue") If MyPass = "password" then env("ALLOWOSDBUILD") = "YES" End If

British Thornton ESF Ltd Probably something near the trunking for the IWB (http://purchasing.uk-plc.net/websites/product.aspx?CompanyID=226094&lngProductID=713059)

MSI via SMS / SCCM. There are plenty of "free" packaging applications around, although be selective over what you package and deploy, for example, SMART software and associated galleries are huge.

Yes they can, you need to enter a sequence in your customsettings.ini to force a reboot. Under [Default] add FinishAction=RESTART, or alternatively within each of you separate deployment or capture sequences. Effectively you should have something that looks like this: [settings] Priority=TaskSequenceID, Default Properties=MyCustomProperty DeployRoot=\\xxx-WDS1\DeploymentShare$ [Default] SkipCapture=YES SkipAdminPassword=YES SkipProductKey=YES SkipDeploymentType=YES SkipLocaleSelection=YES SkipUserData=Yes SkipFinalSummary=YES SkipSummary=YES SkipDomainMembership=YES SkipComputerName=NO ComputerName=-- KeyboardLocale=0809:00000809 UserLocale=en-GB InputLocale=0809:00000809 SystemLocale=en-GB UILanguage=en-US SkipTimeZone=YES TimeZone=85 TimeZoneName=GMT Standard Time FinishAction=RESTART ;Variable to set task sequence for installation TaskSequenceID=DEPLOY001 ;variable to set WSUS location WSUSServer=http://xx-WSUS01 ;Variable to set organisation name on deployment _SMSTSORGNAME= [DEPLOY001] OSInstall=YES DeploymentType=NEWCOMPUTER JoinDomain=x.x.x DomainAdmin=xxxxx DomainAdminDomain=xxxx DomainAdminPassword=xxxx MachineObjectOU=OU=x,OU=x,OU=MDT,DC=x,DC=x,DC=x FinishAction=RESTART You should also edit the unattend.xml for your sequence to change the login from 999 to 1. The reboot happens within about 30s of the final login to run the scripts. Also make sure when your sequence adds items into the domain you use a container not affected by GP (a quarantine zone) otherwise the GP polices screw with the process. With regards to MDT and WDS it can be a bit flaky at times, but on the whole is really good and much better than BDD. WDS is good for your PXE boot environments, which for schools makes building workstations a breeze. Mapping drives and using DVD is completely pointless when this is available. The only interaction within the whole process is to select your image deployment or capture and at the point you enter the asset/device ID. (Thats also assuming you are using a KMS server so no requirement for serial numbers etc, although you can do this within the same process)