robjduk

-Microsoft's Onedrive is great as is Google and dropbox. Onedrive may be top for you as you plan on using onenote and should just work out the box. -I believe any sensitive data should be kept within the EU. I know cloud solutions are starting to allow you to choose a data centre but no doubt someone else will have the complete guide on that. -Don't think you can do much better than an iPad for onenote and cloud however the surface pro would allow you to use a pen to jot down ideas which may be a plus. The surface 2 or 3 (out in about a month) would do you very well.

Agree with thegoodguy. Remove all apps from image and you should see this reduced to about 2-3 min upon first login. Future logins should be considerably faster. My new 8.1 build is down to about 1:20 for a new user to sign in for the first time.

the way I do it is create (via group policy) a new folder in C:\ called 8.1 and put everything in there (again by GP). May be worth doing as Windows 8 is quite funny with folder permissions in my opinion. Think I mentioned before, I have not yet met anyone who has got it working correctly via UNC.

When you sign on as a user, does it allow you to edit the start screen at all? If you can not pin items or move what is there around then the group policy is applying and the problem is somewhere with the xml. If you can edit the start screen then the group policy is the issue.

is the xml on the local PC or network location?

oh one thing to mention is have the XML on the local machine rather than a UNC path. I know it claims it will work but never seen it happen yet.

Group Policy Loopback....

Im a little confused. Do you mean pin them to your start screen? With me I made a shortcut to say N: (my users network drive), put that in the desktop/accessories folder and pinned that. As long as the desktop has that file in the same location, it pins it.

Dothill is sold by Stone and hear ok things about them. When I was quoted I was concerned about the speed of the disks they were trying to push on me. Anyway Dell came along and blew their quote out the water (seriously almost half the cost) so never went further.

you could rename them so the domain is listed (assume you are multi domain?)

omg I thought the academy with the EES was just for things like word! had no idea you could get the decent packages with this.... I feel an order being placed tomorrow!

Are the databases named differently? We just migrated and get your issue if the connect.ini file has not been updated.

on a Windows phone he would surly have onedrive setup which automatically backs up all photos, contacts and such... have him sign into outlook.com and check onedrive before worrying too much.

Just bought one of these for 32 Chromebooks. Works very well... Focus™ 36M

it "may" be worth disabling POE on the others to ensure the ones you need to have it have first dibs on the power. I doubt this is really an issue for you but I used to have a PoE switch which couldn't handle it if everything was using PoE at once.

projectors get a quick squirt of air once a year and machines if we know there may be an issue due to age. Saying that I am surprisingly low on tasks this summer (thank you Chromebooks) so may be opening machines to have a tidy this year but its an exception to my normal schedule.

Its some Intel system which lets you control your hardware centrally (wake on lan, bios updates etc). Looks pretty good but im not bothering as this has dumped after a few years written all over it. https://software.intel.com/en-us/vpro/

Im lucky. No fibre optic but in Kent there is a wireless internet ISP called vFast. When I heard about it I didn't in a million years think internet through the air would work but here I am, 25mb download and 10 upload. Why the country is not covered I just don't know.

I too looked at this after they changed it to per workstation over per user and came up at about £5000 pa just for our art department. On the other hand, the complete Serif suite cost us about £2000 for the site as a one off.

I used to have a lot of links go missing for different users too however solved this by creating a new link to the .exe, copying it to the following folder "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories" and using that shortcut on the start screen. Now works 100% of the time. Also just to add although you may just be adding Windows 8 now for the tiles, as time goes on you will find a lot of things which make your days (and the users) easier. Tons of new stuff in GP to play with.

Just seeing a post for Servicedesk Plus and got me wondering what other free helpdesk software is about that you use. Currently we just use a shared box in outlook but am fed up of having to chase techs to do the things in it so want something they have to keep tabs on more often. Service Desk plus looks nice but open to all suggestions except spiceworks and have tried and don't like it.

you should buy a book

Sharepoint

you should be able to make a basic MDT to do what you want in a few days. There is a truck load to it and can spend a lifetime refining it but as a basic tool, shouldn't take long.

i joined the dark side earlier today and wrong a vb script for my 8.1 deployment... removes and present printers,printers install in seconds, sets a default and all done with no messy please wait message added onto logon time.... should have done this years ago.