DavR

Yeah, I know one of our suppliers used to do a scheme like that. I only remembered after completing the procurement for the new ones and kicked myself, should have tried for trade in. Although I think they were advertising for trade in on iPad 2s several years ago now, I doubt whether there's much value to be realised from them now.

If test page works, but printing from an application causes a hang, that would suggest drivers to me. If you're worried about performance and server load, have you checked whether the printer has "Render print jobs on client computers" ticked? That will take much of the processing load off your server. Alternatively, it could also be putting too much load on the client or application. Either way, I might try changing that setting and see what happens. I'd be very surprised if either of your servers were struggling for resources just to do print sharing.

That's interesting that your laptop can connect and use the printer shares just fine, but the workstations can't. I wonder what is the difference between the two? I assume you've cleared out all the old printer connections when testing from the workstations?

A couple of thoughts..... Elimination - I assume you can print a test page to the printers from the server itself? We need to know whether the problem is between server and printer, or between workstation and server. Firewall - have you got the necessary ports open for printer sharing? You probably do if it's a file server, but worth checking - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/file-server/best-practices-analyzer/smb-open-file-sharing-ports. If you have the option, you could try turning the firewall on the server off for a few minutes for testing. Drivers - have you got both 64 and 32 bit drivers installed for the printers on the server? Routing - it's worth checking that the subnet mask and gateway on all devices is the same, so that we know everyone can see everyone else. SMB versions - this is a very vague memory, but I think Server 2008 uses quite an old version of SMB, which may be disabled by default in Windows 10. This might not be it, if file sharing is working OK, but it's something that occurred to me. Of course, you could always just try installing these printers on your 2012 server, and see if it works through there. Two printers isn't going to be a huge load whatever they're on.

I used to go every year, but at the moment I'm still kinda reluctant to go to mass events if I can avoid them tbh.

I've got a batch of iPads on order to replace an ancient set of iPad 2s, and I'm just wondering what to do with the old devices when I'm done. They still work, for now, so I was thinking of maybe handing them out to teachers on a low-support, if it breaks, it breaks, deal. I understand that iOS9 is no longer receiving security updates, and may be vulnerable. I know there was a bunch of certificates that expired recently that was suppose to affect iOS9, although I haven't seen any change on our devices. What are others doing with old iOS9 devices? Have you junked them due to being out of date and insecure, or have you reused them? If you have reused them, what security mitigations do you have in place?

I'm a fan of Lock N Charge, mainly for the basket solution they use, where five devices sit in a basket that can be carried to the classroom by a child. I've been waiting six months now for the last one I ordered though, as @ICTDirect_Dave mentions above, the supply chains are a mess right now. Somehow, it always seems to be another two weeks away..... I have ordered a cheapy Zioxi solution for our new iPad set, as I only need charging on that one, and that was about £700. It looks like a laminated chipboard jobby, but it's going to live behind a locked door so I'm not too worried. In my experience for iPad solutions, £700 mark is about right for a charge only, and you'll be looking at £1k and above for a GOOD trolley, and/or, one with charge and sync. They've always been silly money, I guess because they're such a specialist product.

I don't think there's a great deal you can modify with the login process on these tbh. The child is going to have to login with their Google Account to access Drive etc either way, you might as well do it properly by having them login at the Chrome OS login screen at start up. Guest mode is always an option if you wanted to bypass the Chome OS login screen and go straight to a browser, but, then they're just going to need to login to their Google Account in the browser in Guest mode, so you've not made it any quicker.

Are you enrolling them into your Google Admin console with an Enterprise license? Using the controls in there, you can get it to pre-populate your G Suite domain, so the child just needs to add their name and password. If you're running them standalone, I think it will just remember the last user logged on. I'm not sure how much control you get of the logon experience with a standalone device.

Ah, sounds promising! Fingers crossed. The trick with Delete commands is to set them to apply only once, I find. Every now and then I'll redo all my printers and start with "Delete - All Printer Connections" set to run only once, before listing my new printers.

How are you checking that the print has, or hasn't installed? I have found recently when troubleshooting printing, that when I look in Devices and Printers, printers are visually stuck at installing. However, if I open up Word or something like that, I will see that the list of printers is there as it should be. Devices and Printers view catches up a few hours later. The other thing to look at would be Event Log, when printers fail to map, you should see an error logged under Application.

Chrome bookmarks are, by default, stored in App Data | Local in the users profile. So, they do not move between machines with a user's roaming profile, and also, get wiped if the local copy of the profile is removed from a device. You can set Chrome to save bookmarks into roaming profiles though, using this GPO setting - https://softcomet.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/6000223323-enable-roaming-profile

All of our printers are set to client-side rendering. It's the default, and we've had no reason to change it. If Papercut say use client-side, I'd take their word for it over that of a photocopier engineer, unless said engineer has provided any specifics as to why their devices need to be server-side rendering.

Problem is, there are a thousand and one ways to achieve what you want to do at this point, and I think everyone here has their own take! For me, I would focus on getting everything in Meraki, and managing from there. For 8 devices, you can happily forget Apple Configurator, it's kinda deprecated anyway. Shared iPad configuration is not necessary if you're assigning these iPads to one person / classroom For that, I would: Trash your Shared iPad / Classroom setup in Apple School Manager. You don't need classes, teacher user accounts, etc for the way you want to use them, in fact, as evidenced, it actually hinders you. Make sure you have Apple DEP (Device Enrolment Program) and VPP (Volume Purchase Program) set up in ASM and Meraki Factory reset the devices, and perform first runs again. If DEP is working correctly, this should enrol devices in Meraki for you. In Meraki, you can then set any restrictions you choose, and then deploy any apps that you buy through VPP As for Apple IDs, I would advise against signing the devices into any Apple ID at all. If you're deploying your apps through Meraki, it's not needed. If you choose to let teachers install their own apps, that's up to you. I have one generic school Apple ID I use for this, but, if you're giving teachers greater autonomy, you may want to create one per staff member, or per class. Disclaimer - this is just what I would do, and some of my info may be a bit rusty, as I haven't set up a school from scratch for a long time. But hope that's helpful.

I prefer to still use AC2, it's not strictly necessary, but it does streamline the first run setup considerably. It also allows me to wipe and re-image devices very easily, I try to do ours each summer or they run out of space.

When you say user-assigned, I assume you mean a single user? That's pretty good going, for a single user profile to fill up an entire Chromebook. Especially when, conceptually, all of your storage is supposed to be online I've noticed that the Camera app now stores it's pictures and recordings locally by default, as are screenshots and captures, so maybe that could be doing it. I'd also check where your Downloads folder is pointing to, local storage or Google Drive.

We run two sets of 16 devices, we're using Meraki MDM for management, restrictions, etc. We only use ASM for the DEP and VPP side of things. The devices are used as "standalones", if you like. IE, open access, any data that is saved, is saved to the device, or the student either copies it off, or remembers which iPad they were using for next time. It's not ideal, but when we last looked at Shared iPad, it didn't really work for us. We're primary, and each set of 16 devices is shared between a number of year groups.

Oh? How did you deal with re-joining the wireless network? I've got auto-re-enrolment setup, it's just the wireless step that still requires intervention here.

Are you using Apple Classroom or Shared iPad? That's the only application I can think of that requires you to log on to an iPad. If that's the case, then each user that logs on to the device has a storage quota, often about 1-2GB. That would explain why you're get file size messages, even though the device isn't full. I've not used Shared iPad myself, but I think you can change these limits. More info here.

Update - frustratingly, same experience as @jthompson! Ran the reset profiles routine, which causes the screen to flash on and off, or if you're logged in, kicks you out. But, on a device with 100% storage, this does nothing to clear disk space. Works just fine in testing if the device has medium amount of storage, but my suspicion is it just doesn't have the space to run the clean-up routine. Sigh. Looks like that's half a day of the hols next week powerwashing those devices then. Luckily I think it's only one trolley of thirty to do.

I will probably be testing this one myself soon, so that's definitely something to look out for. I think for us, we're not actually using much Play Store stuff, so be interesting to see what it does to ours.

It's a bit old now, and I've not used it in a while, but NTFSFix was always a really useful tool for adding %username% permissions on folders. https://wisedataman.com/ntfsfix

I quite like the Vostro as a teacher or executive laptop, generally a lot slimmer and prettier than the Latitude range, whilst still packing a decent punch. Don't get a chance to buy them often though!

You can do a "soft" reset of devices that deletes profiles from the Google Admin console in bulk, as discussed here - https://www.schooledintech.com/how-to-remove-profiles-from-a-chromebook/ - which should be a better option than powerwashing each one. I've successfully used this to clear the storage on an online device, I haven't tried it on offline devices, but I assume it will queue the actions for when they're next online. Beware this may log off any active users on the device.

+1 for device based deployment pls! Google, like everyone else these days, seem to be assuming a 1-to-1 device ratio, and more and more settings and app deployments are per user (see also: O365 activation licensing). They don't seem to remember that some key audiences, like schools, still use shared devices such as trolleys of Chromebooks and classroom suites of desktops that are shared by hundreds of users.