Mac Admin replacement

[LisaGil]

I manage a lab of 50+ macs which we are planning on upgrading shortly. At present we use Mac Admin to restrict access to certain students at certain times of the day. This app is not supported anymore and won't work with 10.7 can you recommend any alternatives.

Rgs

Lisa Gilroy

 

[GGJstudios]

I manage a lab of 50+ macs which we are planning on upgrading shortly. At present we use Mac Admin to restrict access to certain students at certain times of the day. This app is not supported anymore and won't work with 10.7 can you recommend any alternatives.

Why not use Parental Controls?

 

[ezramoore]

Parental Controls would work for time restriction.

I use DeepFreeze from Faronics in my labs to lock things down.

 

[Les Kern]

I have quite a few Macs managed (1,200), and we use a combination of Parental controls and Deep Freeze with Thaw Space. Parental controls help lock down certain apps and can be used for time considerations. Deep Freeze for us was the single most important app we found that saves so much time it's almost beyond quantification. We literally set up a lab and never have to visit it again for the entire year. In the summer we make perfect sets of images for various purposes and locations, then do a net restore to whole labs in one go. Just have to name them and maybe set a static IP if you want to go that way. Our Dual boot machines also use Deep Freeze, and we can restore using WinClone. We found that a combination of this and a really good packet shaper (Cymphonix) precluded the use of Open Directory homes and tracking kids. WAY too much network and management overhead for the tiny, tiny, tiny chance they could actually find something bad to do or see. We sell pen drives at cost, have student and drop-to-teacher shares already pre-aliased on the dock, and encourage the use of Google Docs, which arguably is the future. Save yourself the headaches of active management and use the time to post to Facebook or take up that online hobby you've been thinking about.

 

[ezramoore]

^ This is a brilliant reply. EXACTLY how school networks should be run.

 

[Les Kern]

^ This is a brilliant reply. EXACTLY how school networks should be run.

Too kind, thanks.
A lot of thought and some sleepless nights went into setting this all up, but found that simpler is better... for everyone.