On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 11:57:21AM -0400, Nate Hill wrote:
> Is anyone on the list using mac computers and bootcamp or some other
> partition to offer public access to either a mac or windows environment for
> their users?  This seems like ti could be a pretty cool option to present
> folks with.
> 
> Any thoughts on the matter?  I'm trying to figure out what to replace our
> public computers with here in Chattanooga.  Obviously I want them to be
> both inexpensive and awesome.

The big problem when I looked into this sort of set up is always the updating an imaging bits. If however you are willing to pony up some dough *ahem* I wasn't :-P it can be done. The way to do this in a place with all identical (I can't stress this enough... Identical hardware will keep you from aging faster) hardware is a combo of Apple + Bootcamp and Win Clone.[0] 

If you are cheap like me you will want to experiment with DeployStudio [1] (never quite got it bullet proof and I am happy to share how far we got.)

Deploystudio is extemely powerful and is a tough animal to control but it should be able to do what you are asking for. You will however have to invest a lot of hours to get it. When testing however we constantly came up on the varying hardware problem I alluded to here. Your managers won't understand why you are insisting on buying the same hardware in one batch. Do invite them over when the Windows image fails to load on a machine with a different and miniscule revision to sit in on your swearing session. ;-)


./fxk
[0] http://twocanoes.com/
[1] http://www.deploystudio.com/Home.html


> 
> -- 
> Nate Hill
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> http://4thfloor.chattlibrary.org/
> http://www.natehill.net

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