Hi Everyone,

I am doing some research on best practices for our student computers along with our faculty and staff computers. Has anyone developed a best practices for management of computers and software? Is there a published white paper by Apple or some other entity that I can refer to? Trying to figure out what level of control a student should have on a computer and the same for users of their own district equipment. For instance, should we use parental controls for students and standard settings for our staff and faculty? This would mean only an admin could make changes to installations or software updates.

In addition to this research, I am looking into what it will take to manage our computers using Apple's workgroup manager. We have active directory running and the Macs are not a part of that yet, though they will be. That being said, should I use AD to push down group policies or should we simply use an Apple server solution to use workgroup manager?

Another question is referring to Apple's software update server. I understand it works best for workgroup manager environments, but if we don't use workgroup manager, can we still effectively use Apple's software update server?

Finally, if we choose to use workgroup manager, is there a limit on how many computers it can manage effectively? I thought several versions ago the limit was somewhere around 50-100 computers for effective utilizations.

Thanks everyone for your responses in the past and I am looking forward to continued dialog in the future. Sorry for all of the questions. We have a new security policies being put into place and I am trying to get a head of the fact and not to play catch up with the windows computers.

Regards,

Mick

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Michael D. Conners, APP
Apple Project Leader
3550 Anderson Street
Madison, WI 53704
Phone: 608-246-6360
Fax: 608-246-6329
Work E-Mail: mconners at matcmadison.edu
www.realworldsmart.com