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> From: jeff@cvm.msstate.edu (Jeff Thomas)
> Subject: NT2000server Vs Novell
> Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 14:36:45 -0500
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> We have about 200 students and 30 faculty and staff. The students are
> required to get laptops running NT. We would like to provide
> software from
> the server to the students. I don't think that NT2000
> actually pushes apps
> like Novell.
>
> What options does NT2000 have for providing or "pushing" University
> licensed software to student laptops?
>
In Windows 2000 Server, so called Group Policies in Active Directory allow
you to have this kind of "push install" of applications in a couple of
different ways. Basically you can have the applications in the Start menu
and file types for this application recognized in workstations, which deploy
the particular Group policy. When the user first time clicks the short cut
in Start menu or tries to open a file, associated with that program, it is
installed "on the fly" using "Windows Installer Service" (to my knowledge,
this requires Windows 2000 Professional in the "client" computers). One of
the benefits is also, that as with any service in Windows NT/2000, you can
have the Windows Installer to be run with different user credentials
(default is the "System" for Windows Installer), so that even if the users
themselves are not given the rights to install software, installation can be
done by the Windows Installer service. Then you can have different Group
policies for different user groups ("organizational units"), containing
different settings and "pushed" application installations.
In addition, you can customize how the applications are installed, have
installations removed, upgrade previous installations etc. This system
requires new type of installation packages (so called .msi files), and
currently it seems that only Office 2000 have these, but I'm sure the major
applications from other companies will follow. You can also use the
Wininstall LE system (included on the Windows 2000 Prof & server CD-rom),
which allows you to "record" an installation using older installation
programs and then wrap it as a .msi package. This way you can "push install"
also programs, that don't yet use the .msi installation package. We have
used this Windows Installer system in our Windows 2000 Professional +
Windows 2000 Server network, thus eliminating all the manual software
installations on workstations.
Juha Saharinen
University of Helsinki
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: Tue Apr 25 2000 - 03:52:12 PDT