gshaw

Yeah it doesn't seem to make any auto saves on the default path so will try AppData

Funny you mention that, Google Apps is one that's on the risky list for some Unis etc. as they won't commit to storing data solely in the EU. Some places I talked to are comfortable using it for resources etc. but not for storing personal data. Interesting times ahead...

At a seminar it was said that Privacy Shield isn't up to scratch either. US companies will have to make some pretty specific changes to get up to GDPR standard (at which point they may as well host the services in Europe). What I was told was that EU companies haven't got this figured out yet so what chance US ones?

At present the guidance I've had is that no US-based companies are safe for GDPR. It's UK, EU or nowt for products we're using at the moment, others may have different views though.

@ass17 a few questions that may have been answered but can't find them re: entries in the config file if I want the default save location to be the user's Documents folder? will the Autosave (ProgramData?) location work with limited users? If not should I go for AppData instead?

Went for Dovestones in the end I like their site licensing model, no per user fees or subscriptions and reasonably priced too. Mobile number SMS-based reset is an interesting proposition but I've hung back from that getting into the GDPR mindset that if users haven't given agreed for their numbers to be copied into another system then we shouldn't go putting it there without getting consent via a manual registration process. Shame we can't make use of AAD Premium as it has some nice added features but MS have priced it out the Education market. Seems to be the way they're going with the future 20-30% price hikes too.

Some of our tutors are asking for the additional SMART Notebook Math Tools to be added to the existing installation. Does anyone know if there's a way to add them on after install or have I really got to remove and reinstall with a modified Install Manager XML file?

Holy thread resurrection! This just saved me when Notebook wouldn't launch this morning, was beginning to doubt my own sanity wondering if I'd forgotten .NET from the image for a moment there

...aaaaaaand today it's back again, the joys of cloud services eh

Just been running some staff training and went to show people the nice button on the Office 365 homepage to install the free Office ProPlus but it's... gone I can still get there the old fashioned way by going to https://portal.office.com/OLS/MySoftware.aspx or by clicking on user in top right > Settings > Install software but it's a lot more long-winded than having the button right there in-your-face Anyone else got the same UI quirk or know what MS are playing at?

Same here, we push them down on a per-application basis via our systems management tool (ZENWorks)

From that saveonlaptops link spotted the Dell Vostro and sent to my colleague who has got a good price on the i3 model with 3-year warranty. Should do the trick. Only downside is 7th gen so my Windows 10 pilot pool of machines has just grown somewhat larger Kaby Lake is meant to be better on battery life though so there are some benefits there.

You can make changes to the RDP files via Powershell on 2016 The Microsoft Platform: Adding custom RDP properties in Windows Server 2012 RDS/VDI environments What are the certificate name FQDNs set to in Server Manager? I much prefer the 2016 setup to any previous RDS deployment, have been rather impressed by it after finding the older versions clunky.

The V110 is a swear word around here, we had a batch of hundreds with over 25% failure rate. Lenovo won't accept the hardware fault and are being a nightmare to deal with as @ICT_GUY has also experienced I believe. Unfortunately they're about the only option in the price range. Suppliers seem to be struggling to get the 250 G5 with SSD \ i5 combo, not sure if it even exists (no way we'd accept anything HDD based now) It does seem that the Linx storage is too slow from the tests so far, it's struggling with the factory image and file copies so not looking good once it has Sophos and other college software loaded onto it. Key specs would be: 14" or larger SSD 128GB+ preferably i5 CPU but *may* consider i3 4GB RAM minimum, 8GB preferred manufacturer driver support for SCCM etc. (seems to be an issue with the Linx as well, only got the full drivers by running Export-WindowsDriver in PowerShell) With the VAT and dollar rate we seem to be seeing over £450-500 a unit for the same spec we were getting much lower only 6-12 months ago. All seems to have gone a bit crazy in the market this summer.

We're struggling to find a decent value laptop on the market at the moment (SSD and less than say £400 a unit) and as a result taking a look at the Linx 12 tablets. Is anyone using them, any feedback good \ bad e.g. do they image OK via USB NIC \ USB MDT media? is Wi-Fi reliable? what's build quality like for day-to-day use? Also noticed the "V" range has a Surface-like fold up keyboard that sits at an angle but the "X" (which I'd assume is newer?) goes back to a flat one that doesn't seem as good?

Check out Google Drive File Stream, that's where the future lies...

And until recently couldn't move items from a folder to another folder further up the tree, madness. The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update should make OneDrive usable at last but by then MS may have already lost a lot of users to Google Drive, which seems to have less issues in comparison.

Just confirmed with my MS reseller... just because the SSPR license check isn't enforced in Azure doesn't mean you can use it without paying for each user. Basically anyone following those steps above will be in breach of their licensing and could get caught out if audited. As far as AAD Premium goes the best price I've had was £1 \ user \ year for Edu. That may be workable for some of you but for us it's nearly £10k \ year, still crazy money and in very poor taste considering all other products are FTE based. I've said it over and over again and will keep doing so until MS see sense. In the meantime I'm looking at Dovestones instead who have a nice on-prem product for about £700. Not as perfectly integrated as AAD Premium but it'll do the job and at 100x less cost (!) It's similar to how you're granted access to pretty much every product in the Microsoft inventory via VLSC but you can't just go and run them all on your network without purchasing the appropriate licenses on your EES Agreement. Basically the old adage "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" Your reseller should be able to advise on any queries and if they can't... move your licensing to someone who can.

Yeah that seems risky to me, I'll raise a query with my MS reseller

So now we're moving forward into our next stage of deploying some test Windows 10 devices to users I wanted to get a grip on the Store. Blocking it completely seems to be getting more of a pain in each release and we do actually need some apps from there so I much prefer to use the "Windows Store for Business" \ "Windows Store for Education" that should give us something more controlled and appropriate. So I find this documentation page https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-store/sign-up-windows-store-for-business Sounds nice and simple so I go to... https://educationstore.microsoft.com/en-gb/store Try and sign in with the tenant admin account and all I get is a white spinning loading page that eventually crashes the browser. Interestingly at the bottom of the window I can see something along the lines of bsxmaintenancenotifyprod.blob.core.windows.net which suggests there's a technical issue somewhere at MS end? Has anyone managed to sign up for this (or did you use the Store for Business instead) and if so did it work correctly?

3000 machines, no one seems to care about getting a new local profile logging into a different machine. We only put Outlook on "staff" machines and use OWA in classrooms, avoids any cache download issues. We also run a DelProf2 script that's customised to remove student profiles after 7 days from classroom machines but leave staff ones intact on their office machines. Keeps the C: drive tidy and seems to be what MS have done with their "Shared PC" deployment method. As for speed, on 1703 with a couple of tweaks left over from MDT deployment (animation disabled, DelayedDesktopSwitchTimeout set to 5 seconds) logon speeds are fine even on new users. Build 1607 and onwards was the big change there, prior to that logon times were pitiful and it seems MS did listen despite trying to tell me no-one else had the same issue Documents etc. redirected and I'm using a hybrid approach on the Start Menu from here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/configuration/customize-and-export-start-layout Office, Chrome and This PC pinned \ locked, the rest available to users to customise seems a nice middle ground. Just testing it at the moment. Yup the first releases were nowhere near good enough for deployment, anything prior to 1607 was pretty poor imo which is why we stuck with 7 until now whilst waiting for 10 to get up to scratch. The forthcoming OneDrive Files on Demand feature in Fall Creators Update will be a big win too, although ironically it's taken MS so long to sort it out the college may move to Google before we get to deploy it (!)

Drop Ghost, use MDT and make a Task Sequence that builds cleanly from the LTSB media. Personally I'd say avoid sysprepping a "Golden" image if you can help it, 10 isn't exactly friendly towards it these days imo.

@p3t3r we actually do have this laying around in our old Novell setup but the version we have looks like it's come out the ark, is the new one more user-friendly?

I'm rejigging our Wi-Fi at the moment with a captive portal for Guest users, which is working great on Windows and Android but Apple (quelle surprise) is proving to be a problem. On the other devices the captive portal detection kicks in after login and auto opens the sign-in page but on iOS \ macOS nothing happens and the user has to trigger a web page from the browser. I've seen various theories around how it works as Apple doesn't seem to provide documentation CNA changed in 10.3.1 and no-one knows what the new behaviour is DNS must be working on initial connect (seems to be OK) access to captive.apple.com must not be allowed before auth (it redirects to login page) I've tried all those but no joy, has anyone found a workaround?

Sadly not, the page redirects you to AAD Premium If MS licensed it for Edu at FTE count I'd buy it tomorrow but charging per user (including students) is just insane. It annoys me in the same way when MS tried to charge for the O365 mobile apps, too much £££ for non-profits and they know it.