gshaw

All valid points and well detailed, I'm already a lifetime member of the Notepad2 fan club as it's awesome for working on scripts and handles the Unix line breaks of doom that Windows notepad trashes I've always hated pinning non-running apps on the taskbar, I'll only keep a max of 3 there which goes back to how I had my Quick Launch bar set up in the Win98 days, anything more just looks cluttered (ironic as my desktop is a tip!) Just want someone to make a slide out panel launcher so I can keep some useful but not-often-used apps there for easy access without disrupting what's on the screen. Can live with it on my laptop (where I've removed the Win7 dual boot now and gone solely Win8) but not so much on the more heavily used desktop machine while there's not a compelling reason to move apart from the fact it's "new".

Tbh I turn 90% of the default live tiles off as I find the constant movement irritating, the one that would be most useful (Outlook) still isn't a live tile which is a shame being a 2013 line product. Start screen is OK for launching programs, don't mind it in that respect but I had this scenario yesterday while I was working on a lab setup of Server 2012 on Win8 Hyper-V... Wanted to re-open my notepad doc to add some config details... Click back to the Start screen to run notepad or use Win+R manually File menu, Open Navigate to folder Open file On Win7... Start, move to pinned Notepad item Swish across to the jump list, click I know from the stats you posted on a link only about 2% of Win7 users had the foresight to do the jump list on the Start Menu but it really slows me down not being there in Win8 (I tend to work on lots of different documents at once and need to close / open quickly and easily)

Wanted a Start button that has at least some of the functionality of the Win7 one so while in desktop mode you don't need full screen Metro in your face. This implementation will help the absolute beginners who didn't know the Windows key but maybe not the desktop mode diehards.

It's not really the Start button though is it, just an additional graphic taking you back to the Metro Start screen, must've took a lot of effort to implement Still means you have to go full screen to launch an app unless you want your entire taskbar littered with icons. Funny thing is I don't mind the rest of Win8 and don't actually hate the Start screen as a first point of contact at boot - just don't like being distracted while working in desktop apps.

Interesting idea, might have a play with a logon script to try it out (on a Novell network so no GPP for me )

Still battling this, another one of those stupid design decisions that you wonder why no-one thought of: Prevent access to C: drive... great but the sensible thing would be to include an exclusions list, of course that's far too logical and an all-or-nothing policy is much more useful so I either have to redirect the Downloads folder to the network or have it blocked by the policy if left in the local user profile

My new build is: DB server: CentOS 6.4 / 8GB RAM / 2vCPU / 80GB HDD Web server: CentOS 6.4 / APC accelerator / 8GB RAM / 2vCPU / 30GB HDD (system) / 500GB (data) Running virtualised but on an EMC storage array with flash disks and auto tiering so in theory if the Moodle DB gets lots of hits it'll go onto the fast storage. Didn't like the idea of running Moodle on Windows, PHP doesn't seem to work as well as it does on Linux (imo)

Essentials with Veeam ONE is worth getting if you can, nice simple monitoring of your hosts that you can leave running in your office. The product itself is great, being able to drag back your VMs and even run them straight off the backups is so useful

Only problem is the large variation in installed apps so lots of dead shortcuts. Also badly behaved apps fall over if the Start Menu location is read only, granted they can be repackaged using MSI generators etc but no time for that in the short term.

Just re-creating some old XP policies for Windows 7 but found a slightly annoying issue. Originally I set two policies: Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer > Prevent access to Drives Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer > Hide these specified Drives With both enabled the Start Menu instant search no longer works If I turn off the "Prevent" policy search works again but you can get access to the file system by creating a shortcut or copying one in from elsewhere. Any solutions to making the search worked in the locked-down configuration or is it a case of one or the other?

Not going to tempt the iPad crowd at that price though

Not in my case, they're the most loved ones of the lot as it's what I remember from growing up Orange Morris Ital, Austin Maestro, MG Metro those were the days!

When I had one at my old place within a day he was swapping out rooms pretty much single handed, imaging PCs with SCCM, updating stock list and even got sent into a few classrooms to fix Smartboard issues (under supervision but fairly autonomous). Did the PC building exercise and taught him a few of the little "tricks of the trade" - at the end of it I basically had an extra technician for a week or so Depends on how good \ willing to learn the person is obviously but if you get a good one they can be very useful!

Fog might be quicker to push an image but once you build software deployment into your SCCM task sequences with WMI queries etc you won't go back

SCCM is a very good bit of software, used it since it was SMS 2003 so for those starting on 2012 you're very lucky Imaging is spot on and sounds like MS have finally integrated WSUS with SCCM properly so at EES pricing there's no reason not to go for it.

This suggests the software will need a direct connection to the Internet to verify the subscription and download updates - what's the betting Adobe will take the stupid route and force those running a large number of installs to update individually...

The Axel thin clients looked neat when I had one in on trial (was quite a while back though)

The only other product that's up at SCCM level is Novell Zenworks, it's better at software deployment but imaging not so good. Will also cost you a lot more than SCCM! Spend the time with SCCM and it'll reward you, better to learn how to harness the power than drop down to an inferior product for a quick fix (also better for your CV in the long run too )

Waze is a good freebie app, after that I only use TomTom

I'd rather have separate servers and a SAN rather than an OEM blade-style system where everything is tied to one chassis. Also means you're not tied to 2.5" drives with maximum 10k rpm speed. You won't go wrong with HP \ Dell servers in terms of future support and parts.

If you can find a cheap HDMI touchscreen to go with it I'm all ears...

Tbh if Adobe made a local caching server that downloaded one copy of their updates and distributed over a LAN (yes basically Adobe WSUS) they could either make admins happy or lots of money, either way it's odd they haven't done it for Flash \ Reader as there's something similar for the CS suite (AUSST) Same for Chrome and Java, the auto update technology is there and works well on a 1:1 download basis, just make it work on a 1:many from a central server et voila problem solved, but that's far too simple isn't it

Ye one of our techies found it, looks like it hasn't been developed in a while though... We're on Zenworks which makes things more interesting, they do a patch management solution but it ain't cheap (MS bribery works wonders for their market share )

There's a real gap in the market for something that could do Adobe, Java etc patches slickly and not at a mammoth price. If I could code I'd love to do something that mimics the update servers for said evil products but caches the updates locally... then you just repoint your DNS records to the local server rather than Internet... patching sorted So many solutions want to cover the MS patches (why put all that effort in when WSUS does it fine?) then charge an arm and a leg for the small bit of functionality you do want. Problem is they spend so much time working on the MS side that the 3rd party stuff is done badly (Java, Flash updaters not checking for open browsers and so on) and doesn't end up offering much more value than doing it manually yourself :-/

I've got a dual boot on my work laptop and seem to be using 8 at least 75% of the time now, only switching to 7 for VM work as it's on the larger partition. Might just start again with the Win8 restore discs they bundled in the box. The only thing that really irritates me is having to lose focus from the program I'm working on to start another one, still hope Blue has some sort of slide-out search bar for apps then I'll be sorted