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They "sell" over 125 'security products'. Not including the other 30 Altiris downloads, and likely others.

Personally I have little faith that Symantec can securely maintain their insanely fragmented product lines.

And they all look so good... I do wonder how a business/server would run if every single applicable one was installed.

One of the things I have done to describe things in the past where a consensus had not been reached is tell clients something was a "common practice". I think any practice has to spend time in the common practice area before it can become a best practice, and I would be explicit with my clients if something did not match best practices. I have also many times told clients that there is more than one "school of thought" when it came to something with contradictory common practices.

Sources of best practices that I have used beyond my personal experience:

• Companies such as Cisco, Altiris and Microsoft typically produce whitepapers and publish other work that describe best practices.
• Any number of forum sites also produce best practices.
• I read books that cover best practices, and study for new skills (presently getting ready to take my CISSP which is all about best practices)
• I read trade journals, attend user groups and hear what the vendor has to say
• I spend time on forum sites
• I continue my education taking classes at night.
• The best resource of all without question have been the people that were senior to me that were willing to let me ask 101 questions on "why" they did something. Learning to listen when someone describes why something was or wasn't done a certain way and to look past the immediate technical solution I thought was best was the most important thing I ever developed.

One of the things I have done to describe things in the past where a consensus had not been reached is tell clients something was a "common practice". I think any practice has to spend time in the common practice area before it can become a best practice, and I would be explicit with my clients if something did not match best practices. I have also many times told clients that there is more than one "school of thought" when it came to something with contradictory common practices.

Sources of best practices that I have used beyond my personal experience:

• Companies such as Cisco, Altiris and Microsoft typically produce whitepapers and publish other work that describe best practices.
• Any number of forum sites also produce best practices.
• I read books that cover best practices, and study for new skills (presently getting ready to take my CISSP which is all about best practices)
• I read trade journals, attend user groups and hear what the vendor has to say
• I spend time on forum sites
• I continue my education taking classes at night.
• The best resource of all without question have been the people that were senior to me that were willing to let me ask 101 questions on "why" they did something. Learning to listen when someone describes why something was or wasn't done a certain way and to look past the immediate technical solution I thought was best was the most important thing I ever developed.

Seriously, the only thing HP has achieved in its 'Mozilla Firefox for HP Virtual Solution' is substituting-out IE and replacing it with FireFox v2, (and they are still using Flash 9). wow.

That's true as of this tech note dated September 22, 2008, 1 link from TFA: https://kb.altiris.com/display/1n/articleDirect/index.asp?aid=41672&r=0.4010279

Note that HP is still using some flavor of Windows, running Trend Micro OfficeScan, plus this which gives me the shakes because its called Symantec something:

"Symantec SVS 2.1.2096 Runtime: Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) is a revolutionary approach to software management..."

So firefox is actually opensource, but I see little else that is. Why didn't they use Linux I wonder? Nothing to see here, move along.

Not exactly what you were asking for, but once you have imaged the system with whatever tool you choose, you can use SVS to virtualize your software installs. There is a free personal edition, but it is also scalable to a full server deployment where you can create, push out and manage virtualized software packages.

Resources:
http://svsdownloads.com/
http://juice.altiris.com/ev

-lumenistan

How about looking at application virtualization technologies like Altiris's Software Virtualization Solution (SVS)? SVS allows you to capture the install of an application and see the files and registry changes it makes when installing an application. You can then save the application and all of its files and reg entries as a single file. Going further it also captures any changes made while running an application, which is also something you need to consider as some apps make further changes after running the first time. SVS is for enterprises though you can also download and use a personal version with all the same capabilities and features of the enterprise version. I use it for most applications on my home system and it is especially good for trying out new applications since you can simply delete the captured application after your done with it as easily as you delete a file! Once you have all your applications captured this way rebuilding a system is as easy as installing the OS or an image and reimporting the captured application files. Very quick and very easy! Check it out! http://juice.altiris.com/node/86

Or the out of beta http://juice.altiris.com/node/86 that provides similar functionality. And is free for personal use.

I currently run Firefox in SVS (Altiris) (Along with the suggestions above). Basically Firefox runs in it's own virtual layer on the machine with no access to the "real" OS. I can run multiple instances to allow for different security settings. It's nice because I don't have to actually boot a VM just to surf the web safely. http://juice.altiris.com/glossary/term/252

A competing product that we use here at Miami is Altiris SVS. Streaming comes with a separate product, but for us, SVS is the fastest way to package software with some nice features like resetting software back to a baseline.

http://www.altiris.com/Products/SoftwareVirtualiza tionSolution.aspx

Microsoft attacking Symantec on another front?

I had to call them recently for support and they are indeed Symantec. See the ugly Symantec logo here.

on that note check out Altiris: http://www.altiris.com/

And Altiris also, which I use to manage 1500 boxes (with about 1% of that being OS X and the rest Windows).

Is something like Software Virtualization Solution needed on unixlike systems? /opt handles separating programs pretty well. Environmental variables for the ld preloader help too, if needed. Special installation consideration only needs to be made for GUI integration (file assocations and menus). chroot and/or unionfs and/or lofs can provide most of the layer functionality.

Of course, SVS is so useful because it provides a good way to keep applications separate and keep them from actually leaving files on the system / breaking other things (and deploy them). Any unix has suitable functionality that makes this unnecessary in most situations -- for example, nfs-mounted /opt & group ACLs if licensing / who uses what is an issue.

• Copy files to client
• Based on OS+SP, copy some additional files
• Run a script that will do some mojo to combine the additional files
• Run an installer
• Based on the installer results, run another package
• Run another script that does reg patches to work around the problems that the package has
• Chain packages together, so you can dump all your hotfixes with one click.
• Better yet, since the job history shows up on the management screen, you can tell which systems have gotten which patches

Spent several years using the Altiris Deployment Server product to install software packages in a ~4,000 user site. It worked quite well; you install the Altiris Client on each computer you want managed (there's an automated remote install, or it can be done manually, or via logon script, or whatever works for you), and then you can perform a ton of actions on the client computers from the Deployment Server console--installing packages, removing packages, power on (via Wake-on-LAN) and power off events, hardware & software inventory & reporting, all kinds of stuff. The packages you install will generally be MSIs, created yourself with something like Wise Package Studio or from regular off-the-shelf software with a transform of your own making applied post-install.

Microsoft's SMS is also a fine option and competes with Altiris; while Altiris comes with a lot more pre-configured features out of the box, SMS is just as extensible and has the same leg-up over Altiris that most MS products have over competitors--seamless integration into the host OS and domain.

Sandboxing = Software Virtualization. I think Altiris SVS may do what you want.

http://juice.altiris.com/node/86

Unfortunately(?), they are now part of Symantec.
http://www.altiris.com/Company/PressReleases/2007/ 04112007a.aspx

Sandboxing = Software Virtualization. I think Altiris SVS may do what you want.

http://juice.altiris.com/node/86

Unfortunately(?), they are now part of Symantec.
http://www.altiris.com/Company/PressReleases/2007/ 04112007a.aspx

Any decent, current PM system (Altiris PM, MS-WSUS, MS-SMS, etc.) - using a SQL or other database back end - should have a method to identify the devices to patch and build a collection and allow you to specify a certain time frame for applying the patch to the selected groupings on separate schedules and perform any necessary reboots all in an automated fashion. (Sorry about the run-on sentence).

Altiris (or any other vendor, this is just the one I am most familiar with) would probably LOVE to have the opportunity to get their products in the door by doing a limited Proof-Of-Concept PM implementation. Or, you could download a demo copy of Altiris' Client Management Suite http://www.altiris.com/Download.aspx ) with a 30-day set of licenses and POC it yourself (1GB Mem Windows Server 2kN with SQL Server 2kN required). ( PS - They also have a Server Management suite with plugins that are appropriate for Dell and HP Servers.)

Of course one would hope that with 7k devices you would already have such a system in place already.

Best of luck.

So, the IT guys put in a new disk and a fresh load of Windows. But, they kept the old disk in the machine as a secondary drive so I could pull my data off it. (Here's where my Window's ignorance shines through) I was baffled that I couldn't just copy stuff from the old "Program Files" folder into the new one and have it work. Instead I had to sit through countless installations of all my applications again. If windows was more "network-centric", then it wouldn't matter where data and applications lived. As long as the code is complied for your hardware and libraries (or not even libraries if it's static), that all that should matter.

At Miami, we used Altiris to produce a report of all notebooks matching the serial numbers from Dell's battery recall site. It's a bit more reliable than asking everyone to look at their battery.

You'd be better off using a software virtualizer for all your virtual pirating needs.

[1] its hell of a lot simpler than mucking with VMs
[2] the apps you use are faster, since it is not running in a VM
[3] Option of sand-boxing/unboxing the apps to suit the app and your needs
[4] Apps can be completely removed and restored instantaneously with single button click
[5] No need to reinstall to reinitialize, system restored to a selected "fresh install" state in a single button click

Altiris SVS is free for private use (or was, check the latest licencing)... http://www.altiris.com/Products/SoftwareVirtualiza tionSolution.aspx It does have its limitations, but is useful for the vast majority of the stuff.

You can achive all of this quite easily with Altiris Deployment Solution, and then some. Imaging, application packaging and deployment, remote execution, basic inventory, remote control, and other management functions are all included. I've been using it for over 5 years and haven't used anything better for managing Windows PCs. You can buy it stand alone or bundled with the Client Management Suite, although for an organization of your size, the CMS is probably overkill. If you create your images properly with sysprep, you can achive near full hardware independence.

I'm surprised the article didn't mention software virtualization. The package from Altiris creates a virtual layer between the OS and the file system. It captures changes during the setup and then creates an virtual application 'layer' that you can turn on and off at will, or reset back to a default state.

The way they're pitching it to my department is that we can use it to deploy applications Enterprise wide with little testing. If a service pack or patch breaks the system it can be turned off. If a user deletes a crucial application file or an app crashes we can reset the layer to a working state. It also allows you to have different versions of a program on your system without causing conflicts.

I am using it for app testing. I can install an app in a virtual layer, give it approval or not, and then disable the layer and it's as if it was never on my system to begin with.

It works great so far although there are some problems making application layers. For example once you install Firefox in this way and download something it wants to capture the download as part of the Firefox layer and if you turn off the FF layer the download dissapears also. This kind of application specific tuning is the worst part about it but they have a nice user group page setup @ http://juice.altiris.com/.

The software has also been released for free non-commercial use and can be gotten at Download.com

This product performs the same functions (and more) than Microsoft's SMS. (different from SUS, I know.) The application packaging/deployment part of Altiris would be a way to apply updates for FOSS products, and the database tracks which application packages have been applied to which machines. It has its own client that has to be installed on each machine (though there is a client install wizard to speed that along). You might also sell this based on the ability to integrate Altiris' real-time inventory solution, using the same client software.

http://www.altiris.com/products/clientmgmt/

The BBC article mentions that EDS is responsible for the ugprade. They're partnered with Altiris, so I'd be willing to bet that the upgrade was carried out using the Altiris Client Management Suite.

It's a great set of tools--we own it at work and managed our own Win2k -> WinXP upgrade using the PC Transplant and Deployment Server tools, but can massively bone you if you don't do enough testing. PC Transplant, in particular, can hurt if you--that's the application that lifts your profile off of one PC and slaps it down on another, so that you don't have to re-configure your Exchange settings, Office personalizations, backup documents and application settings and bookmarks, and a whole mess of other things. When doing an OS migration, if you don't design your personality transplant template correctly, you can end up with all kinds of Win2k-specific settings stuffed into your WinXP profile, which can lead to all kinds of crazy-ass problems.

The BBC article mentions that EDS is responsible for the ugprade. They're partnered with Altiris, so I'd be willing to bet that the upgrade was carried out using the Altiris Client Management Suite.

It's a great set of tools--we own it at work and managed our own Win2k -> WinXP upgrade using the PC Transplant and Deployment Server tools, but can massively bone you if you don't do enough testing. PC Transplant, in particular, can hurt if you--that's the application that lifts your profile off of one PC and slaps it down on another, so that you don't have to re-configure your Exchange settings, Office personalizations, backup documents and application settings and bookmarks, and a whole mess of other things. When doing an OS migration, if you don't design your personality transplant template correctly, you can end up with all kinds of Win2k-specific settings stuffed into your WinXP profile, which can lead to all kinds of crazy-ass problems.

Sounds like the same problem we face--4k client PCs in five locations--and we don't have too good of a solution.

We're currently taking a two-pronged approach. First, for the big baddies like Gator or Bonzi, we use Altiris Notification Server to find them and block their execution. This works tolerably well, but it's a reactive process--for me to block a spyware app, I have to know about it, and it has to be something of which I can deny exeuction (so, no browser helper objects).

Second prong is a managed install of Spybot S&D--we're enterprise licensed and maintain our own update server. We stick Spybot S&D in our base loads and force it to run on a schedule, automatically updating itself and running non-interactively. This catches lots, but can sometimes interfere with the users' work.

There is also an ongoing user education effort, consisting of mandatory training and constant reminders about how spyware works and how one gets infected, but that's about as hopeless as bailing the ocean with a kid's toy bucket. I'm long past the point of hoping that the general user population can learn about how not to get infected with spyware; I'm resigned to spending the rest of my days hearing about how someone in Marketing was hitting the gambling sites at lunch and picked up yet another malware app.

We use the Altiris Notification Server product to track spyware at my job. I compiled a list of about 100 "worst offenders" from sites like doxdesk.com, and cast the net out to see where we stand.

Out of ~3,000 computers, ~750 of them came back with at least one positive. And that's just looking for about 100 known spyware apps based on the presence of a known-bad .EXE or .DLL or Add/Remove Programs entry.

That's a lot of fucking spyware.

Ah, this stuff has been around for like 4 years, at least. We were using this kind of technology at the University of Chicago back in 1999 with WindowsNT images. (The department I worked in was responsible for supporting all of the public-use workstations throughout campus, and we naturally relied on disk imaging technologies.)

If you buy a product like Altiris LabExpert or Norton Ghost and are very clever, you can jury rig an entire operating system environment onto a CD.

Oddly enough, we stumbled on how to do this kind of thing while researching Wake-Over-LAN and PXE technologies. Apparently, the system BIOS just needs to be smart enough that it can look at something other than a PCI/IDE/SCSI hard drive for information with which to load a kernel into memory. If your BIOS is PXE enabled, it's smart enough to tell the system bus to look for a kernel on the network card (in the case of a Wake-On-LAN network boot) or on a CD drive (in the case of a CD boot).

FYI, PXE is Intel's Preboot Execution Environment specification, and is therefore working at the hardware level underneath Microsoft PE (Preinstallation Environment).

Nonetheless, the hardware capabilities which have allowed Windows to be booted from a CD have been around since 1999, at least, as they are part of Intel's PXE specification.

Just my two cents...

I spend a large portion of my day using Altiris's Notification Server product to identify and remove spyware on computers at work. Believe me, this isn't new and there are *lots* of "spyware removal" apps that come bundled with spyware of their own--I see this crap every day.

Hate to say it, but I've spent plenty of time looking for Ghost replacements, and found none.

Well, you haven't looked hard enough...
http://www.altiris.com/home.asp

Altiris can do the following:
Reimage Machines
Clone an image onto another machine
Allow Remote Controlling
Create "Rips" for Installing software
Create Dos bootdisks with network support
Capture user settings to migrate to another machine
Run Scripts (For installing Patches etc.)
Edit the HDD & Software Install Images, without having to create a new image from scratch (A Huge Time Saver!!!)
Remotely Configure the machine's Netowrk settings (IP address, PC name etc.)
Remotely Wakeup, Shutdown and Restart Machines

Mind you, Altris costs a lot to license, but works a hell of a lot better then ghost in a corporate environment.

Altiris is what you need.

Not any more. We looked at the new version, it's got way too many 'features' for my taste. Much too complicated for a 100 or so node network. So we moved to RapiDeploy. Much much better. Super easy interface, easy to make network boot disks, and can strip the SIDs, change the computer names, join the domain, etc. Oh, and like 1/2 the price.

As to all those saying they want to backup a running workstation, are you crazy?? In my perfect world, all workstations are imaged, work is stored on the server, and if a workstation so much a hiccups, it's re-imaged. Forget fixing it, blow it away. Work should not be local anyway, cause who backs up workstations?! NOBODY!

Sysprep does NOT deploy anything, even though Microsoft says it does. Sysprep is used with separate hardware or software for making drive images.

Also, in the original article, I did not mention other software for making drive images: Altiris RapiDeploy, and Innovative Software's ImageCast.

Thanks for the link to Sysprep 2.0. I had done a search, and not found anything.

Image blaster was sweet though, and the server and the client fit on the same floppy. The only drawback was that I never set it up to use IP, just IPX, so I would flood the hell out of our network if I needed to cross the backbone.

-- This is my best sig yet.

Image blaster was sweet though, and the server and the client fit on the same floppy. The only drawback was that I never set it up to use IP, just IPX, so I would flood the hell out of our network if I needed to cross the backbone.

-- This is my best sig yet.

You can also build packages, essentially by doing an OS-wide diff to build a "patch". You can use these to deploy individual applications, configuration setttings, or whatever. So, for example, around here I have an image containing Windows XP and Office, and then I have packages for the optional stuff. Packages are usually deployed remotely, from the server, but they're just normal EXEs, so you can run them manually.

Although I haven't tried it yet, you could migrate a user's settings by making a package from the differences between his/her current machine, and the original image.

You can also do fun things like schedule deployments (complete with Wake on LAN) remote-control computers, or just spy on people.

When I worked in support (last gig was supporting internal classrooms) we used Altiris LabExpert. They've changed the name to Application Management, but this may be what you want. It's not open-source, but comparing this program's prices to the other similar ones on the market, we saved a TON of money (one vendor wanted nearly $150K for all the computers we were going to use this on. I think we spent $7K at each site for a total of $28K)

It has a server and client modules. The clients sync with the server on reboot. If there are jobs in the queue, the server pushes the jobs, they're applied and rebooted.

To create jobs, you make a baseline of an OS, install the application, and then run the baseline app again. The application examines the entire disk as well as the registry and notes changes. You build a package containing just the changes.

You can even turn the packages into self-extracting .EXEs, burn to CD and deliver that way.

If I understand the situation correctly then you want to re-image each machine on boot. I have looked at this and a complete XP Pro image on a Gb network takes anything from 20 - 45 mins. This is using a product called Altiris Deployment Server which uses PXE under the covers. If this is acceptable then I'm sure you could do your own PXE solution with a Linux DHCP and TFTP server. You can download a free 30 day eval to see how it works and "clone" the procedure.

...the privaty equity firm that is the controlling shareholder of SCO (I forget its name) managed to persuade another investor of the likelihood of a multimillior dollar settlement from big names.

The name you're looking for is the Canopy Group.

The /. crowd is generally unable to affect stock prices, but if we (a) start a campaign to hurt SCO sales and, even better (b) isolate the leading shareholders of SCO, figure out what other business interests they have, and boycott the whole lot of them, we're likely to have justice prevail.

Here's a list of the Canopy Group's portfolio companies, including some that should know better and might be encouraged put some pressure on their investors to stop this nonsense. Do you do business with these companies or recommend their products? If suing their partners and customers is just part of "the Canopy Way" should you or your company worry about litigation from them next? If you're an investor or employee and Canopy loses, should you worry about your stocks or your job? Maybe it's time to start the "reverse slashdot effect."

Altiris
Axiom Press
Center7/Inc.
Cerberian
Cogitoinc
Communitect
Data Crystal
Devicelogics
DirectPointe
Fat Pipe
Geolux
helius
homepipeline
iArchives
Industrial Training Zone
LearningOptics
Linux Network
luxul
MaxStream
Mi-Co
mti
MyFamily.com
Perimeter Labs
PlanetEarthTools
Power Innovations
SCO/Caldera
Trolltech
Tuglet
viawest
Wrenchhead

If you have physical access to a Windows box, pretty much anything goes, software included.

Now, I don't know if you're being serious or if you're just ignorant about Windows PCs.

Yes, they're not 100% secure. But, there are ways to limit access based on the type of userid.

Even if they weren't NT-based PCs, POLEDIT can be used to keep users from installing *anything*, changing the look/feel of the system, etc.

Combine this with Altiris' Lab Management Suite (formerly LabExpert; An application that allows you to reload all your PCs in a matter of minutes, and remotely) and you'll be able to keep the systems "pure".

In addition to our 'library', I also supported our internal classrooms. I would reload all of the PCs every weekend using LabExpert - those in my city, in San Jose, Dallas, and Atlanta. Never had a single problem.

• Linux Networx
• Luxul
• Altiris
• Cerberian
• Cogito
• Communitect
• Data Crystal
• Digital Harbor
• Perimeter Labs
• Mi Co

And, of course, the Trolls.

What do all these companies have in common? They're geek companies. They employ geeks, and they sell to geeks. What geeks think of them matters to them and can hurt them. If you're doing business with any of these companies, tell the people you're dealing with that you're not happy with SCO's behaviour, and that your unhappiness is sufficient to start you re-evaluating their competitors.

It's also worth pointing out that several of these companies are making use of the Linux[tm] brand, including one of them using it in it's name. The owner of the Linux[tm] brand has it within his power to have a quiet word with them, although, of course, that's entirely up to him.

Ah, so friend Google, who are the the Canopy Group? Aha. Ray Noorda. http://www.canopy.com

Ok, so here is some "blah" from their web site....

Canopy Group Overview :: Canopy Group has been categorized as a technology accelerator and a dynamic operating company. Funding and influencing emerging technologies and then providing shareable management resources across its portfolio of companies is what Canopy Group does best. Originally founded in 1995, Canopy Group continues to operate by founder Ray Noorda's vision of "co-opetition," where synergies across the portfolio are optimized at the same time that each company develops independent market success.

ie. Hit any in the Canopy Group and you hit'em all. ie. If SCO makes a sucess of this, the rest will share the "management resource".

So who is in the Canopy Group?

• Altiris--Intuitive Manageability. A complete line of web-enabled IT solutions used in managing the corporate IT resource lifecycle.
• AvenueMe--Personal Desktop Shopping. Select and deliver special offers and gift ideas tailored to your interests and gift-giving needs with Desktop Personal Shopper.
• Axiom Press--CultureGrams and More. CultureGrams and other publications focused on serving the needs of elementary, secondary, and collegiate educators and their students.
• Center 7--Host, Manage, Succeed. Managed hosting solutions and painless enterprise management with rapid-deployment solutions.
• Cerberian--Powering Internet-Enabled Products and Services. Internet management solutions that help businesses improve productivity, free up bandwidth, and control Internet access.
• ClearstoneHealth--Improving Healthcare. Technologies to improve healthcare through e-training.
• Cogito--Harness the Power of Your Knowledge. Making knowledge management the essential productivity tool in organizations with complex information systems.
• Communitect--Intelligent Mobile Messaging. Meeting the needs of an increasingly mobile population with simple-yet-powerful mobile management that delivers personal enterprise data to any mobile device
• DataCyrstal--Rapid Indexing of Video Content. Providing flexible solutions for advanced video analysis.
• DeviceLogics--Providing DOS-based solutions.
• Digital Harbor--Correlate, Collaborate, Cross Boundaries. Business front office integration that puts the focus on people, not infrastructure.
• DirectPointe--Managing Your Technology. Enabling businesses to leverage technology by making it simple, manageable, and affordable and allowing you to focus on managing your business.
• EBIZ--We're About Solutions. Providing multi-faceted computing solutions to customers nationwide.
• FatPipe--Low Cost, Highly Redundant Internet Access. Leading-edge technology that provides highly redundant, reliable, and high-speed Internet access for deploying mission critical applications over wide area networks.
• Geolux Communications-Enlightening The World. Geolux provides both enriching content and the learning platform to deliver it.
• Global Mechanical Monitoring
• Helius--Satellite Powered IP Networks.Efficient, secure, and reliable delivery of broadband IP over satellites and local area networks.
• HomePipeline
• iArchives--A New Page in Information Retrieval. The software application that makes finding the valuable details in your data almost effortless.
• Industrial Training Zone--Interactive Industrial Training. Content designed specifically for apprentices and technicians who lack the specialized training required to troubleshoot complex systems utilizing motion control devices.
• JanusLogix--Elevate, Integrate, Generate. Generating a new game by building a web services nanosystem that allows any application service to integrate, elevate, or generate application functionality.
• Linux Networx--Powerful Cluster Technology. Simplied cluster computing, with an end-to-end approach that makes cluster technology more powerful and easy to use for commercial and scientific high performance computing
• Luxul--The Wireless Wave. Patented solutions for indoor, outdoor, fixed, and mobile wireless computing.
• MaxStream--Smart, Wireless Connections. Wireless OEM modules and stand-alone radio modems that provide long range, low power, and advanced networking capabilities
• Mixerz, First Thursday is a national network of member entreprenuers, executives and investors. The organization provides a regular forum for the exchange of ideas, the formation of strategic partnerships, and the fostering of business relationships.
• Mi-Co--Handwritten forms for Mobile Professionals. Innovative end-to-end solutions enabling the wireless capture, storage, communication, and use of forms-based and free-form handwritten data.
• MTI--Innovations in Enterprise Storage. Reliable, integrated, enterprise-wide online storage and backup solutions for customers requiring mission-critical, high-performance storage.
• MyFamily.com--Connecting Families and Generations. The leading network and largest of its kind for connecting families and generations on the Web.
• North Face Learning--We provide students with a high aptitude for computer science a better, faster, and cheaper way to earn a degree.
• Perimeter Labs--Secure Data Solutions. Inventing and bringing to market information security technologies
• Planet Earth Tools--Compact, Versatile, and Powerful. Award-winning, patented handheld tool technologies.
• Power Innovations--The Standard for Perfect, Dependable Power. Committed to total power independence with alternative means of generation, energy storage, conversion, and management of perfect power
• SCO--Smarter. Better. Faster. Providing software solutions for small- to medium-sized businesses and replicated branch offices
• Smart Chip Technologies--Loyalty Program Management. Patent protected loyalty application for use in the smart card and wireless environment.
• SurfChina--Enabling eBusiness. Developing business solutions that help Chinese companies participate in global eBusiness.
• TrollTech--Software that Makes Sense. Enabling professional, efficient, portable and maintainable GUI applications quickly and easily.
• Tuglet--Marketing Powertools. Providing useful web-based communication tools for corporate marketing professionals and home based or small business people.
• Vultus--The Look of Web Services. Delivering web apps that are feature-rich, cost effective and platform independent
• WrenchHead--Automotive Operations Solutions. Providing innovative technology and services to the Automotive Market to further lower operating costs, enhance profitability, and accelerate growth

Oooh looky looky, Trolltech! So when are they going to be forced to sue for $1bn?

I have to agree that all of those applications will become your next best friend, if you're supporting a bunch of workstations (50+). I would also include Ghost and Altiris LabExpert to the list, as two other very good products. These two products may be slightly better for non-profit company, however, as they generally cost less money.

Ah, I used to do something similar at the Department of Networking Services & Information Technologies, at the University of Chicago, were I used to work. Setup up webkiosks and the like for the campus.

Your probably already know this, but I'll point out the obvious:

1. Set up a Ghost server for yourself. Maybe even look at a copy of Alteris LabExpert.

2. Backup often.

3. Set yourself a timeline with mile markers. Give yourself a few months, so you don't pull out your hair or have a mental break down. Plan a reasonable project timeline, such as 3 months.

4. Set up testing workstations. Get all of your networking issues out of the way before you start on Mozilla. TCP/IP or other protocol stacks should already be installed. All device drivers should already be installed.

5. Take the list which you've already made, and make the changes to the box. When you get the change to work, backup the box with your image server. Keep detailed notes of what you've just accomplished.

6. Repeat step 5 until all items are completed.

7. When step 6 is completed, backup the workstation, diff the image if needed, and push it onto workstations of similar hardware configuration. Either package the image as an application (tar, zip), an application image (ZenWorks, Active Directory resource, Ghost, etc), or an operating system image (SMS, Alteris, Ghost).

Once you get into the groove of the project, it'll go quickly.

Sorry for stating the obvious, but you're talking about a fairly complex network engineering task. Don't expect it to happen next week or even next month. Just make sure you have an imaging server and that you take good notes, and the project will go fine.

Way back when, I had the mixed blessing of working in sufficiently advanced enough laboratories, that I got certified as a systems engineer on Windows NT operating systems. So, I happen to be certified in this area of work, and know something about the process by which one makes console machines. Work I was doing included overhauling Windows to make thin client email stations at our university, which were actually quite similar to console gaming machines. One of the major differences is that thin clients email stations typically use network protocols and network file systems, whereas consoles use compact disk protocols and compact disk file systems. (Ethernet versus Sneakernet)

Anyhow, you have to realize that 'mod' is perhaps a poor choice of words in regards to how one would probably go about making a homebrew X-Box. I would suggest using the term 'lockdown'. In priciple, and in practice, the only thing that really needs to be done is the following:

1. Set up a gaming machine at home. Try using a pizza box or laptop.

2. Install drivers for your gaming controls. Control pads, voice recognition, video drivers, compact disk drivers, et al. Some good links to get started:

Sense8 - The WorldToolKit has the best device driver support that I've seen.
Immersion - Good starting point for haptics, game controllers, etc.
Voip-Calculator gets you started on voice over internet protocol.
Nero - gets you started on CD File System layouts.
Altiris - gets you started on image pushing.

3. Design your filesystem.

4. Get the basic configuration working such that it plays an off-the-shelf XBox game.

5. Make a backup image of your gaming station.

6. Delete all unnecessary files, remove all unnecessary subsystems. Lockdown the system until it does nothing other than run the game on the CD when you put it into the tray.

6. Make backup images of your station as needed.

7. When done, remove unnecessary hardware (floppy drive, keyboard, etc).

8. Push image from server onto new consoles with similar configuration as (7).

Now then, you may be asking 'Homebrew'? This sounds like a major operation! This is a going to cost a fortune! Well, yes and no. Yes, M$ is a for-profit company, which seeks to make money. Yes, if you went through this process, you could probably start-up a company which makes it's own console boxes which are XBox compatible. No, this isn't open-source and freeware technology. Yes, you could probably assemble a homebrew XBox by using these links, this process, a Windows 2000 operating system, and PC parts.

The benefit: You know enough to design games and accessories for the XBox market. Do something like make a stereoscopic VR hack of Halo, utilizing Immersion gloves, and CrystalEyes goggles. Submit the concept to M$, become a business partner, and sell immersive visualization systems to XBox consumers, or something.

There are a large number of other products that perform similar functions to SMS without requiring NT domains (althought most do need a WinNT/2k server to run on).

We use Altiris Deployment Solution at work, and while I do run it on a Win2k AD domain and SQL Server, it's not a requirement. You just need a WinNT/2k server. We use it to deploy hard drive images, software packages and patches, PC settings migrations, and remote control. There are also plug-in packages that allow for inventory and helpdesk solutions integrated into the same database.

Win2K Server and Professional are indeed slightly different animals. A single image of Pro can be replicated out to multiple machines, and once the computer name and IP are changed they will behave nicely together on a LAN. Server won't. Several companies (Powerquest and Altiris) have solutions for this problem.

As far as why you had problems with just replacing a CPU? Who knows? I've worked in a lab with +1500 machines which were constantly reimaged with 95, 98, 2K, Netware and Linux without a hitch. The secret was identical hardware. Hardware (NICs, VidCards, drives, etc) would go bad and we would try to replace them with the same component. This was not always possible, for whatever reason. In my experience, most of those OSes could easily deal with anything except a MB change. VidCard changes were not good either, but as long as the OS included support for the new card, it usually worked out without problem.

Obviously, your mileage has varied.

I would love to replace our Netware file/print environment with Linux/Samba, but I still haven't found a suitable replacement for Novell Zenworks.

If the workstations are going to stay windows, try Altiris Express. I use Zen 2.0 and am Altiris Certified. Next to Zen, Altiris is the best for workstation inventory/app delivery and adds workstation imaging. You could even use the Zen app packages with Altiris. One drawback is that it is for profit so there will of course be a fee. I don't know if you are MLA with Novell, but if not, then the cost of switching would be negligible.