Software-Collaboration

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One piece of work that we will all go through individually (if we/you chose the NetBook option) will be to "lock down" each NetBook. By lockdown I mean, configure it to a state that allows each student a usable unit that is not impacted by a previous student or do any unintended (or intended) damage to the system and hence causing other students loss of available computer time. For example, on the windows side, depending if you are going to be part of a domain, you could use group policy and mandatory profiles or as non-domain units, each would be locked down on its own. Maybe you don't want to lock it down as defined above and only use a deep freeze type of solution etc. Similar work will be required for Linux units,,,Bios security is another area that needs to be addresses, either way each of us will be addressing this piece of work. I believe if we could have a place to share images or get images from each other, this would cut down on a substantial amount of work. I believe having a "starting image" (one that is 90% of the way there for your school and aligns with how you want to control your units), that you could customize for your own use, would be a big time saver. I think this is something we should consider as we go forward exploring the NetBook alternative. I would be very interested in learning how you are "locking down your units and I would be glad to share what we have done in the past. Possibly this could be a subject of a future meeting. Ed Bourdeau