Roberto

I understand as I say I am not trying to flame anyone just trying to understand, are there different levels of contract then, as posted above we have a full rm school in the city and they have a nightmare at times? I think we're talking at cross puposes here. RM sell a product, CC3, a middleware layer that sits on top of Windows and attempts to make running a system yourself easier (with varying degrees of success depending on who you ask). We still have a full network to run and do everything ourselves. That's what we have. You seem to be talking about a managed service, where you outsource all or part of support of your network to RM's own technicians? While I'd imagine they also use CC3 to achieve this, we don't do anything like this ourselves.

CC3 isn't a managed solution, it's a middleware layer that attempts to make some aspects of administration easier. We've got a team of 6 people here and trust me, we're all quite busy.

Actually time isn't irrelevent. If you want to do this properly then you have to accept that having a subcontractor on site setting the server up by themselves frees you up to do other things. Hence the time your employer has already paid for is an opportunity that can be 'spent' on setting up this server from scratch or it can be 'spent' doing the myriad of other things you're being paid to do. We've called in consultants to do stuff I'm perfectly capable of doing but don't have the time to get into before now.

RM solve a particular problem, and do so in a particular way. In order to derive good value from a RM solution (or, to be fair, any other similar type of thing from another vendor) you need to be sure you've got the actual problem they attempt to solve and not one that sounds similar, and you also need to be sure you want to solve this problem the way RM solve it. I've not got a high opinion of the RM Connect solution as applied here, but upon reflection, I wrote something in an internal report a while ago that explains the situation as I see it and I'm going to reproduce the appropriate extract here: I’ve been very critical of RM in the past, but having recently reflected on how we’re using the product, I’m not sure this has been entirely fair. A better way of looking at things might be that RM produce a ‘one size fits all’ product and we are simply at the edge of their product envelope. The majority of happy RM Customers I speak to appear to be using a full ‘end to end’ solution from RM, e.g. they purchase RM workstations and RM servers, and only use RM CC3 and other ‘RM Supported’ tools on their network. Many of these people hardly ever use tools such as terminal services or ADU&C to administer their network, and can achieve all that they want through the admin tools RM provide. The majority of unhappy RM customers I speak to appear to work like us, where they’ve taken the CC3 product and customised it in some way, from the supposedly trivial (using 3rd party workstations) to the complex (using lots of non-RM servers on the network). This is not a given, e.g. some people with ‘end to end’ solutions have had problems and are unhappy, and some people with ‘custom’ solutions are entirely satisfied, but there is a definite correlation between level of customisation and potential for problems. These problems are not the ‘fault’ of RM, any more than an inability to fit a square peg into a round hole is the fault of either the peg or the hole. However, we should accept that buying a solution from RM that only meets part of our needs and requires customisation before it is ready for use, will have great potential for problems. We are certainly going to have an increased support burden because the assumptions and rules that RM Support would normally use to address a problem on a site may not apply to us.

So are you saying you've been to http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macminiefifirmwareupdate11.html, grabbed the update on that page, and verified that it installed correctly but you're still getting an error?

You're trying to manipulate Active Directory to do this I presume? You need to create an Open Directory Master on the Mac server, and use Open Directory to manage computer preferences. For user preferences, you'll need to create groups in OD to contain the AD groups... which is a problem because (as you can see from some of the other threads here) OD to AD integration isn't all that it could be.

Usually a variation of "What part of 'illegal' are you struggling with here?'

Define "Lock Down" There's a method for distributing a standard OS and APP install for OS X on my website (http://rhymeswithgeek.com) and also a method of creating an account 'template' that gets applied to users the first time they login to populate the dock, etc, in the way you desire. At the end of the day though, If you want proper network orientated control of the desktops on all your macs, give different groups of users different options based on group membership, etc, you'll need to buy a Mac server and use the tools available in that to integrate into AD and to use the results of that to determine available resources on the Macs. I wouldn't say it was a difficult task as such, but it requires some investment in buying a Mac Server (Maybe not server class hardware but obviously the server OS at least), and some commitment to learning how to do it all. You need to think about the effort it's going to require and decide if you really need all the options that badly.

A server (as Ric says, you don't need the fancy hardware bit of this) enables you to do two important things: - manage machines, to lock down what can and can't be changed, centrally manage software updates, etc. - deploy "images" of the computer installation, so all your computers are built from a standard image, and hence easier to support / update / etc, using NetBoot and NetRestore.

I think Ric has nailed it. To get decent Exchange support with Apple Mail, enable the IMAP service and configure your apple client to connect to the exchange server using SMTP and IMAP. This will give you an email experience as close to that of Windows/Outlook as is possible.

Nope. We prefer to do things that actually work. Imagine trying to pull a whole melon through a drinking straw without harming the straw or the melon. It won't "work well", it won't work at all. Wireless is absolutely not viable for shipping the sort of data involved in a timely manner. Don't get me wrong, it's great technology at what it does, and I'm using a wireless connection to write this reply. But "what it does" is allow people quick convenient connections to browse the web, check email and swap around the odd file. I wouldn't run any classroom over a wireless connection, let alone one which I knew would be straining the bandwidth of a wired connection to its limits.

I think you need to provide some elaboration for that one. Time Machine --> A hybrid of Volume Shadow Copies & System Restore Fast User switching was in XP before it was in OSX I think Widgets --> Can trace these back to at least IE 4.0's active desktop There is very little new and original in computing. Can we please concentrate on solving the problem instead of endless discussion of what manufacturer's name is branded on the handle of the screwdriver you're trying to solve the problem with?

I think you posted this in the wrong place, this is the Apple Mac forum. I actually use firefox on both Windows and on Mac, to try and keep things similar whatever system I'm sitting in front of.

Glad to have them here, I've got pretty high standards for suppliers and trainers and Solutions Inc are on my 'preferred' list, instead of the considerably longer 'kill' list.

You've seen Pirates of Silicon Valley, right? It takes a lot of licence in how it tells What Actually Happened, but its portrait of the main players is supposedly very accurate in spirit. Though I'm not too sure about Ballmer as a crazy 'jock', he's seemed very switched on and actually quite scary when I've spoke to him, and y'all know i'm not that easy to intimidate.

Ah, Solutions Inc. are here! I'm looking forward to being back down your way next month for your Mac Server OS course. http://www.patchburn.de/ might be of interest, it opens up the Mac burning interfaces to work with a lot more drives.

ah! I did mean to ask how you got on!

They do if you leave the old server up for a while to redirect them

Indeed, especially in light of this quote: "I've cost Dell £50, not Microsoft, which is a slightly annoying," said Mr Mitchell. He encouraged other people to try to get a refund and wondered if Dell's policy on which operating systems it offered on laptops would change if enough people tried." I'm sorry but anyone who courts publicity if there is another way to solve their problem probably has "Black and Decker" branded somewhere about their body, if you see what I mean.

check yer PMs...

As an aside to what is already been mentioned, don't name your active directory domain in a name that ends in .local, you'd have only been swapping one problem for another if your domain was named that way.

thought it was command-click myself, but plugging in a mouse might be easier!

now thats just mean. Everyone knows it should be mv /dev/tty0 /dev/tty0_old cp /dev/null /dev/tty0 n.b. NEVER run Unix command lines suggested by me When I use this phrase, it's code for "Well you insisted on asking, but chances are you're gonna seriously hose your machine and I don't want any part of it". I don't know what it means when Tony says it...

To run Logic? Well I'd go for an iMac. I don't know that I'd be confident that the Mini has the overhead / expandability to take Logic to the next level, whereas the iMac does. Also, whether we're talking Windows machines or Mac machines, I really like that iMac style 'all in one' form factor in and of itself for a music classroom as it gives students more room on the desk to lay out the other equipment they might be using, they can shove the computer keyboard under the screen for a bit of extra room and still use it, etc. It might cost a bit more than a Mini + screen (though not by much if you pick the educational iMac), but it strikes me that you'll be looking for a decent TFT to go with the computer no matter what and this way its all integrated. Money well spent imho.

Better for what purpose? We use both. I consider the iMac better for classroom use, and the Mac Mini better for sitting in the corner quietly doing a job and for providing a display for large screens. And - I don't know if you intended this as a hypothetical discussion, but I don't think you can get an iMac and a Mac Mini that are the same base spec. The iMac is built on a different, faster, processor, and as tight as space is inside one, is far more expandable than a Mini.