Primus

Sorry Witch - they're wrong! But if you've got it in writing then at least you're covered I suppose.

Well without being at all sarcastic you should!

Sorry Witch I don't think he was being sarcastic and he is right on receiving regular reports about users and their activity.

Need the details!

Nope MS tells you not to use it as it's not suited for general purpose computers - they're the manufacturer and they know the roadmap beyond what is public. If you go against a manufacturer recommendation then you can expect headaches and issues when you try to bend it to your will. MS aren't making money off windows as a service over LTSB/C - you're paying the same licensing whichever you choose. LTSB/C was deliberately created for systems that need to stay static in functionality - from this discussion it is clear that it is being used on a system that is not staying static in its functionality...

And this is why we don't use LTSB/LTSC outside of its usage case as stated by the manufacturer - you should never have been on LTSB in the first place - it's not designed for general purpose computers.

I do take your point, however updating OS is not a "bodge" and it's not "premature" given Win 7 goes end of life in January 2020 and 10 has been out 4 years now. Running an unpatched OS is incredibly risky.

You're going to be going without patches for at least 6 months then if you go to summer 2020. - risky business! You don't need servers to be on 2019 to go to Windows 10 - we still have some on 2012 r2 - most are now 2016 with a few 2019 but don't let that hold you back.

Not to be annoying but is it really worth pushing Office 2016 out now - wouldn't it be better to get to 10 given how little time you've got left now - as a school I wouldn't want to move OS during the academic year - summer holidays is the best time for a change like that - just my opinion though!

Seems as reasonable as servers named after favoured politicians and desktops named after LoTR characters...

Seems reasonable, over the holidays I'm going to rename every PC using character names from Game of Thrones - reckon I should have enough unique names!

What you mean you don't name your servers after politicians from the party you personally favour?!

Yup Win 10 on spinning rust is painful. We switched all ours out for SSDs when we moved to 10.

Yes - use AppLocker

When we used it, it was £1144 per year for up to 100 students.

We used TurnItIn but it costs a fortune.

These Macs are so old they don't support Internet recovery...

Did you read his post?

Seriously?

Sure but why make it harder than it has to be? Why not just give them all sensible names that relate to their roles?

They're also all Conservative/Tory - is this really appropriate? It's a bit overtly personally political on your part given these are school servers not your own personal servers - unless you're talking about your home lab?

Just throwing this out there as I did at one time consider "comedy" server names - if you went under a bus tomorrow do you not think the names would make it harder for someone to pick up the pieces? Do you never find yourself forgetting what each server does - or others on your team forgetting? I don't want to be a party pooper but I do think stuff like this is why IT gets a bad name - it's all a bit silly.

The whole point of LTSC is it's for systems that are static - it's not for general purpose systems (according to Microsoft). Hence why there are numerous downsides to using it.

Yes you'll need to get the correct Mac OS installer (latest that model accepts) and make a USB boot device. Then hold alt when it boots and select the USB drive.

But LTSC still gets security updates??? It doesn't go years without any patches - it gets the same monthly patches as Edu, Pro etc.