rogerdnixon

Never pay more than around £17 for ChromeOS licences. When you get to around 55 Cloudready devices - you might as well go for a site licences, I think it is 70p per year based on student numbers. Then you can use it on an unlimited number of devices. Personally, I'd not bother "hacking" a Chromebook and sticking on Cloudready on it as its quite time consuming to do. Took me quite a while to do our Chromeboxes and I borked one in the process. However, its a great thing to stick on old PC hardware.

As an update to this (especially from my comments on the UK GEG) and as we have had Chromebooks since 2012, this is our take on it now: The only devices that we have had that have actually stopped updating at the Black Samsung Series 5's and Samsung Chromeboxes. The Black Samsungs we traded in with HP for some newer HP Chromebooks as few years ago. The Samsung Chromeboxes, we installed Cloudready on - I detailed the procedure here: https://wpsit.blogspot.com/2018/04/how-to-beat-chromeos-eol-and-carry-on.html - however, its time consuming and only works on Intel-based devices. Silver Samsung 303's from 2013 are now > 1 year past their end of support and are still getting updates and work fine (although a little slowly now). They look a bit battered - but are still going strong ~6 years down the line. The next devices that we have that will get to end of support are our Acer C720's and some of our Chromeboxes. I might try to do a trade-in deal with some of these in the coming year. But I'll keep them is service until they stop getting updates. I'd say the general advice I'd give is always by the newest device - to get the most of the 6.5 years of guaranteed updates. So we have just got HP G6A EE's for our new Y7 in September - these are good to June 2025 and very reasonably priced.

We use the local cache version - so its set to run from a network share and it checks if there is a local copy and if there is runs from the local cache - live is C:/cache. If there is a new version in the network share it puts the new version into C:/cache. Found this to be the best option.

Put &disable_polymer=true at the end of the URL to get it back. I'm speaking to my Google contacts about this.

No - they said it would be in 19.0.4 - but you can request it.

I got it direct from Papercut following out support ticket with them.

We are on pc-client.exe-100.10.0.927-2382DF8 and the local cache issue has gone.

The latest patch fixes the client issue.

Just got a version today that patches the client cache issue. Will try later.

We have the same error message - but only if a second user logs into the PC. First users is always fine. Rather than just running the cached client it appears to try to recreate the entire folder, but cannot as it open by the other user thats logged in. I'm just using the previous version of the client which appears to work fine. Papercut reproduced the issue after I reported it a couple of weeks ago and are working on a fix.

The simplest way is to use the migration tool in the G Suite Admin Console. You will need an admin account on the Microsoft side with sufficient privalages to move the mail - good guide here. Then you just follow the onscreen instructions. You can do Mail/Contacts and Calendar. Takes a little while to run - especially for big mailboxes - but just leave it to do its stuff once it starts.

We have seen the same and Papercut advised us to rollback to 18.3 as this is a known issue. So basically don't use 19.0.2 if you have not updated yet.

Sounds like its behaving as expected to me. If you are wiping user data on logoff, Android Apps will need to be installed every time a user signs in. They are deployed to users - not devices. Personally, I'd say Android apps are really only suitable in a 1:1 environment where you don't wipe local user data on logoff. When you deploy an app - it can take a while for it to show in the store for the end user. It also might not show if the specific Chromebook model is not compatible with that App. Compatibility of Apps does vary a bit between models. Even if the store appears empty - try searching for the app - incompatible ones will appear.

There are new devices from Dell/HP/Lenovo and Acer coming out in the next few months based on AMD and the Intel Gemini Lake Celerons. From my testing these are a significant uplift in performance - so I'd not go for current models if you can wait a few months. We are 1:1 and tend to go HP now as their parts have been easiest to source and generally pretty reliable. Lenovo are hopeless for spares and we have also had issues with Acer devices. So I'd go HP or Dell.

If the user signs into Chrome with s school account and you are force installing extensions - then they will be there. However, they can also just remove the school user and sign in with a private account. So while the extension is installed the user can remove it if they remove the school account.

The Chromebook only solution is free as is the base version of auditor. The other bits cost depending on what you get - so DNS filtering, Parent Portal, auditor thats does Drive content as well and there is something called "24" as well now.

Did this ages ago with zero headlines and we are down the road from Cherwell School (in the same MAT). Was never a headline grabber for us - must be a quite news week for the Oxford Mail!

I just put a spare touch screen Chromebook into kiosk mode and made our own with a Google Form and a bit of Sheets back end stuff - https://wpsit.blogspot.com/2019/01/simple-sign-in-system.html - does the job and costs nothing if you have the kit. Might not do all the things the pay for solutions do - but its fine and we have zero budget to spend on fancy things.

Get in touch with one of their UK resellers for a quote - ITS (its-group.com), C-Learning or Getech all do it. Pricing depends on what bits you want and how many years you go for.

Groups is the way to do it. We have an allusers group and our mono print queue is shared with that. The group is kept up to date with a GAM script. When you first set it up - make sure the account you are sharing the group out with (we have an account called printmanager) is the owner of the group. Owners have to accept the sharing invite - but if the account doingthe sharing is an owner - then acceptance is automatic.

Yes - thats me copying and pasting the wrong thing. The bit I'm stuck on is the string. Looking at some of the examples I've tried: ./Device/Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/Chrome~Policy~googlechrome/BrowserSignin But that does not work.

I'm pushing Chrome policy to some PCs via Intune. I've added the admx file for Chrome as described at https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9102677?hl=en I've pushed some of the example policies which are on https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d62txalah9kyEoJPK5hDS2Lo6cwHX7oPVQrm8ROfNHg/edit#gid=0 What I really want to do is use the one to force browser signin and restrict to a specific domain (as I do on regular domain joined PCs). So this one: https://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3#BrowserSignin Anyone know string value for this? I've tried various things and they have all errored. I'm guessing the OMA-URI is ./Device/Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/Chrome~Policy~googlechrome/AudioCaptureAllowedUrls/BrowserSignin but not sure of the string value - the value is 0x00000002 - but the exact syntax eludes me. Anyone any ideas? Thanks

Not automated the teachers on. Use commandreporter for the students. Just run the staff timetable report and the flip button is top left I think. You have to expand the options on the right for the other bits. You remove the rows on the excel export.

I did a guide a while back - https://wpsit.blogspot.com/2018/06/smime-email-signature-and-encryption.html

Not sure about Outlook - been years since I used it. I do know that you need the certificate installed on the device - otherwise, you won't be able to read the message (so having their login details is not enough). Mind you - I've yet to find an external organisation (except for Google) that actually support it - so its probably not that useful and I don't enable it for staff unless they request it (one to date!). then you have the faff of renewing certificates etc. Many don't even do TLS..... What confidential mode does bring is the inability to open the message without the code (unlike on O365 where you just click on the link and it opens - never been quite sure what this is achiving...). I've not seen that on anything other than a separate third party product that both ends need to subscibe to. So you need the login details of the individual (maybe get past 2FA - in our case) and nick their mobile phone to read the message.