Chris said:
I am heading up my company's computer training center and I need to
get some ideas on hoiw to move forward. I have 10 IBM's that came
with XP pro. I have not set any of these up yet (so no activating
yet). I was wondering, should I set up one of these machines with the
software I'm going to train customers on, and image that drive, so
when I have a class, I'll just "blow" that image on to all 10
machines, or should I just set up all 10 machines, activate each
machine, then install/uninstall the training software as needed?
Even though I have licences for all 10 machines, If I image one drive
and distribute that image to all 10 machines, I'll only "technically"
be using 1 license. Is that legal?
I'm going to be randlomly throwing out ideas in this email as well as
answering your questions.. so bear with me. *grin*
Look into purchasing a volume license.. After 5 licenses - you qualify.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/
I would suggest "Open License" or "Open License Value".
This would help alleviate this activation problem, and for a training
center, this could speed things up greatly.
Other ideas..
- Making an image of all 10 of your PCs once you get them setup with the
cloning software of your choice.
(Requires 2 to 10GB space per machine on some external device depending on
the software involved, compression level, etc.)
- Using some unattended-type setup to reinstall the machines at-will. In
your case something like
http://unattended.sourceforge.net/ might be a good
place to start. If you prefer by CD/DVD -
http://unattended.msfn.org/ would
be the place to go. Either can help you create a well rounded install that
will work even if you growe and have to replace all 10 machines.
As to your last question - legality aside, it goes against the EULA - given
(or not) you likely have OEM licenses for each of those machines.
In any case, for a training center, my suggestion is to find a way to
quickly redo the systems and maintain them. installing/reinstalling can
cause trouble and would leave behind enough that your training from one
person to the next could be affected (settings left behind although you
uninstalled, etc.)
At this point, if I was running a training center without too much concern
for budget - but some - I would look into the Open License Value program and
then I would setup and maintain a unattended install of some sort for
changing my systems (but maintaining a central location for it all - so i
know they are all the same when all is said and done) and then create images
from these setups to distribute quickly to all of the machines involved.
If i was running a training center and budget was a concern - I would get an
inexpensive extra machine, through in two 250GB SATA drives and a RAID card,
"Mirror" them for redundancy of sorts. I would then still setup the
unattended (likely network version from unattended.sourceforge.net since I
could use different CD Keys for each machine in a CSV file) installation,
install each of my machines from it during off-hours and clone (I'd use
ghost, others might use TrueImage) each of my machines to the 250GB hard
drive over the network.. That way I can redo one or all 10 pretty easily and
fairly quickly.
With the unattended in place - I know all machines will be setup the same
way - but since it takes an hour+ for the unattended and 5 to 15 minutes for
the reimaging... Reimaging is the way to go. You might even look into
sysprep for reimaging - but there is the 3 time limit for changes to the
original OEM.. (Activation I believe - I always deal with volume licensing
now - someone else can give you the facts or you can google for that one..)
Another option is making unique images for each machine and using DVD media
to apply them to each machine quickly (and it lets you label the CD/DVD so
that it matches the machine - etc.) This method is cheaper than having a
separate PC storing the images - but less dynamic in some ways. It could be
adapted to use an extra machine storing images as well as this method and be
quite the redundant/trustworthy process - easily upkept by one or more
individuals with some organizational skills..
Anyway - you have lots of options. To me, an unattended with imaging is the
way to go whether or not you get a volume license to make your life even
easier.
