Windows beheerde werkplek

General

The 'Managed PC' is a standard Windows-XP machine which gets installed with standard software. The installation of the PC runs fully automated without any user interaction. When such a 'Managed PC' gets installed an employee of C&CZ needs approximately 5 minutes to start the installation and to enter some initial data. Thereafter the installation runs fully automated and will be finished after, again approximately, 1 hour. At this moment the fresh installed PC needs to be added to 'Prism & Deploy' by hand. After a reboot the rest of the software is automatically installed. What that rest of the software exactly is, depends not only on the group in which the PC belongs, but also whether this PC has been freshly installed since half 2008. The new installation method, that has been developed and is maintained by several IT-support groups within the RU together, provides more software. For a list see below.

Capabilities

Because the needs differ for employees and departments within the Faculty of Science, there are different kind of 'Managed PCs':

Fully managed PC

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These are Windows-XP machines that are completely managed by C&CZ. The user doesn't have to worry about operating system or other software, updates and settings, these are managed by C&CZ. The user has User-rights, but no Power User or Administrator rights. It is (almost always, there are exceptions) impossible for the user to install software, update drivers or change system settings. The idea is that all user files and settings are saved on a network disk that is backupped regularly. The computer hard disk isn't used for savinf user data, but only for the operating system and the standard software.
If there are problems with a PC, one can easily move to a different "Managed PC".

For these machines C&CZ can give very good assurance for correctly functioning operating system and installed software.

C&CZ will try to fix any problem with the operating system or software. C&CZ helpdesk or sysadmins can also offer "Remote Assistance". When these problems can't be solved in an acceptable timeframe, the machine can be completely re-installed in about 1 to 2 hours.

Department managed PC

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In a department that needs more flexibility, own software, "strange" hardware or different system settings, the IT-support person of the department can get an extra account with "Administrator" rights on the departmental "Managed PCs". This makes it possible for that person to install software and change system settings for the employees of his department.

For these machines C&CZ can give good assurance for correctly functioning operating system and installed software. C&CZ will make an agreement with the departmental IT-support person.

C&CZ will try to fix problems with the operating system or software, that the departmental IT-support person can't fix. C&CZ helpdesk or sysadmins can also offer "Remote Assistance". When these problems can't be solved in an acceptable timeframe, the machine can be completely re-installed in about 1 to 2 hours. C&CZ can "package" departmental software on request of the departmental IT-support person, to make it easy to install this software on several departmental PCs.

This construction makes it possible to have important data on the non-backed-up hard disk. Therefore it is not immediately clear that the machine can be reinstalled in case of a problem that cannot be solved within a reasonable timeframe.

User managed PC

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Installed PC

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Hardware requirements

The minimal requirements for a new installation of a "Managed PC" are now (half 2008):

• A network card or onboard network interface with PXE
• Processor speed more than ca 1 Ghz
• 1 Gbyte memory
• 50 Gbyte harddisk

Software

It is not possible to exactly state what software is installed on any specific 'Managed PC'. This greatly depends on the purpose of the PC or the department where the PC is located. It is, for example, possible to distribute licensed software to individual PC's. Below lists of software packages that are already available for 'Managed PC's.

Standard software installed during the installation of Windows

• MS Windows XP Professional Upgrade UK Service Pack 2
• MS Windows XP Multilingual User Interface for Windows XP Professional UK - Dutch,
• MS Office XP Professional for Windows/98/Me/NT/2000 & XP UK
• MS Office XP Professional MultiLanguage Pack for Office XP Professional UK - Dutch

Standard Prism & Deploy software

New installation:

• 7-Zip
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1.1 UK
• Adobe Flash
• Adobe Shockwave
• FileZilla
• Jre
• K-lite Codec Pack
• McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.5i
• PDFCreator
• Printkey
• Putty
• Quicktime
• RealPlayer
• Vlc
• WinSCP
• WinTabber

• Acrobat Professional 8
• ActiveSync
• BASS-HRM
• Dev-Cpp
• EndNote
• Euroglot
• FileMaker
• Firefox
• FRONTPAGE
• Gimp
• gs
• InkScape
• IRFANVIEW
• ISIS-ICA
• Jdk
• KeePass
• Maple
• Matlab
• MS Office Project Professional 2003 NL
• MS Office Project Professional 2003 UK
• MySQL-connector-odbc
• Notepad++
• OPEN OFFICE
• SPSS
• Thunderbird
• WORKRAVE
• X-Win32

Old installation:

• Acrobat Reader
• Euroglot
• FireFox
• Thunderbird
• Jre (Java Runtime Environment)
• McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i
• Quicktime
• Shockwave
• Flashplayer
• Van Dale Woordenboeken
• X-win32
• 7-zip
• Maple

Standard software available from network drives

• Eudora (mail program)
• PuTTY (Secure SHell (SSH))
• RU-Huisstijl (RU letters)
• Van Dale (dictionaries)
• Vnc
• concern (map with several concern applications)
• Matlab
• Maple (Computeralgebra)
• R (statistics)
• TeXlive (wordprocessing)
• Gimp (picture editing)
• Gorilla (password management)
• IrfanView (picture viewer)
• FileZilla (ftp client)
• Dev-Cpp (C++ compiler)
• SciLab (open source matlab alternative)

On the Windows PC's in the computer labs a T-disk with course software is attached from the network

Available departmental or licensed software

• Chemoffice
• Chime-2.6
• Cortona
• Endnote 9
• Filemaker Pro 7
• Frontpage
• Gaussian
• Ghostview
• Ica32
• spss15
• Myodbc-3.51.11-2-win
• Nero
• Nitrogeniusdemo
• Corsa71
• Originlab
• Pearl-2.2.2
• Reference Manager
• Zier

External devices

Connecting external devices to a 'Managed PC' can run into problems. Especially if the new hardware requires installation of special software or drivers. As a 'unprivileged' user one does not have the rights to install such software. In this case a solution could be to change the PC into a 'Department managed PC' or a 'User managed PC' (this has impact on support available from C&CZ).

Printer

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Scanner

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USB thumb

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Digital Camera

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PDA

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Various

We already have a reasonable amount of experience with the 'Managed PC'. Below you can find news, manuals and an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).

News

• New versions of Firefox en Thunderbird are installed on all computerlabs PC's. For both programs it would be smart to save your userprofile somewhere under 'My Documents' (= home directory = H:\ drive).
• Java 1.6 installed on all computerlabs PC's, java plugin runs in both Internet Explorer as Firefox.

Manuals

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Comments, problems, status

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