gshaw

Any chance of naming and shaming said printers? Ours are mainly 2420, P3005, P2015 and 4250s so hoping they'll be fairly standard fayre... however I remember the great HP driver debacle of 2006 so don't trust their software developers one bit as far as printer drivers go!

Cool, just thinking x64 will make life easier at least from a printer perspective as we won't have to worry about the whole x86 \ x64 driver version business that seems to have caused quite a few grey hairs for Server 2008 R2 admins Was going to push a few PCs up to 4GB RAM as well with spare stuff we've taken out of old computers so would be a bonus there as well

Just a quickie, what flavour of 7 are you running on your networks at the moment?

Or somehow overwrite the files with 0 byte ones so they'll think they've been clever and beat the system... until it plays (or doesn't!)

Doesn't make a great deal of difference really, users still need the same amount of space either side of them to use the mouse and keyboard comfortably... at best you might gain a few inches depth-wise but with USFF PCs there's not much in it. I've seen some rooms where 30 odd machines have been crammed in but it's so cramped I'd hate to be a student working on them for any length of time

Next step now will be if a new plugin gets developed for Office 365, really hoping there will be something I can use straight AD-esque credentials without needing the Windows Live login

I remember reading that unless you do it the MS supported way certain symbolic links and other background pieces stop working properly? When we do our Windows 7 build I'm thinking of doing this... - build "Gold" image in VMWare so it's truly hardware-agnostic - capture to SCCM - deploy via SCCM with driver packages - take a snapshot of the VM before making changes - do all the settings required for mandatory profile - sysprep etc as per MS documentation - revert snapshot to "clean" state Rinse and repeat for as many times as we need to make changes to the profile

If MS gave everyone free touchscreens with every copy of Windows 8 maybe... while I still need a mouse and keyboard it looks like a backwards step (although waiting for the beta to decide fully)

Having tried Microsoft's Remote Desktop Web Access and being less than impressed with it from an ease-of-use perspective we found Adito through the forum and have been really pleased with it from initial testing. It manages what Microsoft finds impossible and passes logon credentials to the Remote Desktop session seamlessly. That's spot on for what we need but not 100% sure if we need RDS CALs to use it? I'm thinking that we do as the server will need the RD Session Host role installed?

There's also the ADM from the thread here, also removes libraries from the side panel if you don't want them visible... http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/46809-windows-7-removing-libraries.html

Computer Aid here, good to see them getting re-used

Also viruses could easily infect \ delete online NAS data if we're talking worst case scenarios. Could have a power spike affecting your site that kills HDDs even if on UPS (I've seen it happen) Having some form of offline \ different media makes me feel a lot happier... as it stands we have D2D backup via Veeam then D2T with Backup Exec streaming the Veeam files to tape. If you have a fast enough connection (and deep enough wallet) you could replace tape with online backup but the ongoing costs were too much in comparison to one-off capital purchase for the tapes in our case. As for the server, does look a bit on the pricey side... I'd go to Misco or similar and get them to do bid \ education pricing on the same spec and see how it comes back... if you're paying standard off the shelf prices on that quote there could be quite a difference

It's the rather brainless way it's been implemented for networks, seems so silly that we have to cludge up scripts to remove the C: drive public location when no-one in their right mind would want users to be saving there on a network as opposed to simple GPO config change...

Was hoping it would be that simple, saves a bit of digging around Now just to disable those pesky libraries, hopefully the ADM template from http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/46809-windows-7-removing-libraries.html should do the trick?

Just bumping this one, I'm guessing there's still no fix for the users' named folder in the Start Menu?

Having done some testing with Adito coupling that up with RDS might do the trick. I find it incredible that an open source project can manage to enter the session credentials smoothly into an RDP session but MS can't manage it with their own technologies!

Am I right in thinking that this is only a problem if you have the "Documents" folder as the root directory e.g. \\server\home\%username% is the folder that becomes "Documents" (then Pictures etc underneath in subfolders aka "follow the root folder") as opposed to \\server\home\%username%\Documents \\server\home\%username%\Pictures \\server\home\%username%\Videos etc Judging by the MS link that seems to be the best method (and looks nice and neat)

Personally I'd take separate boxes over a blade system any day, also saves you being tied down to the 2.5" disks used in the Intel server

Microsoft Windows... now available in monochrome In 1985 we had tiled Windows 1.0... in 2012 we now have tiled Windows 8... the future... it's just like the past! http://lowendmac.com/orchard/06/art0825/win101tile2.gif

4th video is one hell of a feature Been wanting something like that in Photoshop for many many years now!

Spot on guys, not sure where the Thank Post button has gone but it would be getting good use in this thread

With the advent of web-based apps for a lot of tasks all you need is Internet anyway so letting students do that on their own device makes sense to me. The cynical side of me sees BYOD partially being pushed by the big VDI vendors who make a lot of money out of Citrix \ VMWare View licenses and associated storage hardware. Do you gain much by putting that same locked down desktop to another device if the whole thing is meant to be about flexibility? Maybe from a home access point of view but then there's still a lot of issues around software licensing. As with any new "disruptive" technologies look at both sides of the coin then see how it can add to your existing provision rather than jumping on the latest fad and throwing away everything you've ever known hoping it'll be the panacea

In my ideal world integration should be at 3 levels... - user sign on integration (usually AD based) preferably SSO when inside the network - repository integration - single store of resources for tutors that is searchable to avoid duplication of content - productivity integration - so students can seamlessly create work in Google Apps or Live@Edu and import it straight into the VLE - portfolio integration might be useful as well depending on your target audience Having programs that can directly upload work to a student's area on the VLE or mark it automatically takes the product to the next level of functionality imo

Jon Honeyball in PC Pro made a similar prediction but around Windows 8 tablets... seeing as they should have a lot more grunt than the equivalent Android \ iOS device idea being you use it in tablet mode out and about but when back at home dock it up and use it like a standard Windows desktop... best of both worlds?

Adding it to existing provision is the way forward for sure, I remember a survey at a Uni that said students still want fixed PCs as much as (if not more than) BYOD. Not everyone wants to lump kit from home in education but giving the choice and offering flexibility is where the value comes in