Business laptops

[wolf_bluejay]

Strange, the one thing that always comes up when buy laptops -- what are the staff going to use it for.

Were I work we only have a few hundred laptops, but it generally goes like this:

If you are travelling a LOT, and need something that will stand up to a bit more abuse -- the thinkpad stands up well for getting acutall work done on a full size laptop.

IF you are mobile all the time (road warrior) and just need to check email, and do a bit of work, the acer asipre or other netbooks are a favorite as they are small and get really good battery life, but they are NOT powerful enough for doing CAD work and anything like it.

If you just need a laptop for the occasional trip and going to/from work and home, the CHEAP acer's are good enough. These are the vast majority of our laptops.

Of course, with that said, with the way our department (IT) works, we never actually use any 3rd party support, so the quality of support from dell/acer/IBM doesn't really factor at all.

Originally Posted by Aquattro

We do have a few Mac users, but I'd guess it's 35000 Windows PCs to maybe 100 Macs?

Wow, that is a lot of machines! It is rare for me to run into anyone that deals with the number of machines as me , let alone more. I guess this is where I get to rub our linux setup in a bit. -- Last week, I pushed out about 200 software updates to 3000 machines at over 40 sites, and that was during morning coffee. I always love to jest fellow IT people over that one

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by wolf_bluejay

Wow, that is a lot of machines! It is rare for me to run into anyone that deals with the number of machines as me , let alone more. I guess this is where I get to rub our linux setup in a bit. -- Last week, I pushed out about 200 software updates to 3000 machines at over 40 sites, and that was during morning coffee. I always love to jest fellow IT people over that one

Well ,hmm, we're rolling out our April rollout to 35k + machines right now. While I eat lunch We manage several hundred sites all across the province. We actually have a huge deployment schedule with our SMS team, all patches and upgrades ae deployed via SMS. We run Windows because our client asked for Windows (currently rolling out about 3000 Vista PCs/mo). I like Linux, but really haven't used it much the last few years. Now if you want to go on about GPOs, that's my specialty lately

[Snaz]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

We actually have a huge deployment schedule with our SMS team, all patches and upgrades ae deployed via SMS.

I hate WSUS so much. I am sorting out patches this week for about 80 clients over 2 sites and it will probably take me all afternoon to set the deadlines correctly.

I will definitely be looking at SMS shortly.

Sorry for the hijack!

[Snaz]

Originally Posted by Snaz

I hate WSUS so much. I am sorting out patches this week for about 80 clients over 2 sites and it will probably take me all afternoon to set the deadlines correctly.

http://www.wsus.nl/site/
Once again Google to the rescue. What normally would have taken me 2 hours was accomplished in 10 minutes thanks to someone else fixing Microsoft's terrible product.

[wolf_bluejay]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Well ,hmm, we're rolling out our April rollout to 35k + machines right now. While I eat lunch We manage several hundred sites all across the province. We actually have a huge deployment schedule with our SMS team, all patches and upgrades ae deployed via SMS. We run Windows because our client asked for Windows (currently rolling out about 3000 Vista PCs/mo). I like Linux, but really haven't used it much the last few years. Now if you want to go on about GPOs, that's my specialty lately

Dare I even ask who the client is? I'm assuming some crown corp or other government agency.

Well, I guess that is what happens when you get over a certain size. I just hate getting those wannabe computer guys that say silly things like "Oh, you just install it on each machine by putting the CD in, and clicking next,next,next,finish on each machine" and trying to explain why that does work on a large scale.
We acutally run diskless clients (fat clients) for everything now. It really makes backups much easier to do, as every machines gets a full nightly backup every night, going back a full year+.
I avoid GPO, PDC's and most of the windows based stuff now, as it is just too much of a pain. On the plus side, I no longer have to deal with any more Novell netware either

Sorry for the hijack.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by wolf_bluejay

Dare I even ask who the client is? I'm assuming some crown corp or other government agency.

Well, I guess that is what happens when you get over a certain size. I just hate getting those wannabe computer guys that say silly things like "Oh, you just install it on each machine by putting the CD in, and clicking next,next,next,finish on each machine" and trying to explain why that does work on a large scale.
We acutally run diskless clients (fat clients) for everything now. It really makes backups much easier to do, as every machines gets a full nightly backup every night, going back a full year+.
I avoid GPO, PDC's and most of the windows based stuff now, as it is just too much of a pain. On the plus side, I no longer have to deal with any more Novell netware either

Sorry for the hijack.

Probably shouldn't name client. Ya, you can't go around to that many boxes with a CD - lol. We used RIS images for our XP deployments, and with Vista we built an image using the WAIK tools. Real easy to add HW packs for new models, so our entire OS base fits on a USB key. Way more complex, with multiple runs using more powershell commands than I care to read, but much better than RIS. We also run some thin clients (Wise) connecting to Citrix servers. We don't back up PCs, all data needs to live on the lan. It's fun, and everyday is a new challenge
My main job right now is managing group policy, login scripts and image "issues". And like you, I haven't had to play with Novell in years!