Hi all.

What can any of you tell me about your experience with Deep Freeze from Faronics
LTD? Do you use the Enterprise or Standard edition? I am trying to determine
which version is easier to deploy and use for 38 PC stations. I hear good things
from schools in Chicago but I would like to hear it from actual users in labs.

Most Net reviews I found are from computer security experts (who do it the hard
but free way with Windows built in security) or the company itself and I would
greatly appreciate more objective opinions from other language lab people.

Other student computing labs at NEIU use Windows Group Policy Editor and file
permission lockdowns in Windows XP SP2, but that's taken me two years to learn
by myself with only partial success. The browser, desktop and menus are hardened
but unwanted and unauthorized programs still get installed somehow by students
and it's back to restoring from a drive image (twenty minutes per each corrupted
station) or going through the hour long process of manually unlocking Windows
GPO settings to remove the unauthorized program and relocking the stations.

The Admin versus Limited account does not help because it prevents most legacy
CAI language programs from running.

The open student labs are better "hardened" and seem to prevent unwanted
installs using the same built-in but intimidating and time-consuming Windows
technology. I asked for help and training but their IT people are too busy with
their own labs to provide me much support so I feel it's time to purchase a
third party solution.

Interdepartment cooperation seems to be a thing of the past. If I have to
continue as a lone wolf, it's time to pay for help from software. We are
renovating the NEIU lab in a new location with 38 new Dell Optiplex GX620s.
Don't want to expose those to the nonsense like our PCs. 

Thanks.
Tom Griffin,
Supervisor, Foreign Language Lab
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Northeastern Illinois University
5500 N. St. Louis Avenue
Chicago, IL 60625
773-442-4753
773-442-4752
[log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]

***********************************************
 LLTI is a service of IALLT, the International Association for
Language Learning, and The Consortium for Language Teaching and
Learning (http://consortium.dartmouth.edu).
Join IALLT at http://iallt.org.
Otmar Foelsche, LLTI-Editor ([log in to unmask])
***********************************************