Are you saying if you do this, there's only one profile on the machine,
that all users share, or just that all the profiles are the same, and the
profile for a given user is the same on every machine they go to?

One thing that annoys folks around here is that, every time a person sits
down at a machine they haven't used before, it has to create a profile
when they log in, a process that can take a couple of minutes.  The
machine sits there with that small window in the upper left, saying
"creating personalized settings for" for a list of programs that seems to
grow longer and longer every time m$ releases another patch.  Then, when
the user first launches an office 2003 app, it says, installing office
2003, and sits there again for a while.  Very annoying to a student who
just popped into the lab to print a paper they wrote at home and saved on
a flash drive.  I'd love to have a way around this, though I'd have to
consider the tradeoffs, if any.



School Information Technology Discussion <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>In a Windows environment, you can use roaming profiles, then the
>students can all use just one profile.  Basically, they all log in as
>themselves, but the system "sees" them as one profile.  We have some of
>our schools use the same profiles for all students and one of our
>schools has a different profile for the older students.  By making the
>profiles mandatory, they don't take on any of the changes students might
>make, such as backgrounds and screen savers.
>
>The only thing with using a mandatory roaming profile is that it is
>imperative for students to save in their own network folder.  Anything
>saved in the My Documents folder is lost at log off.
>
>Sylvia Gagne
>Franklin Northwest SU
>District Technology/Data Coordinator
>100 Robin Hood Drive
>Swanton, VT 05488
>802.868.4967 x20
> 
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Eric Hall [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
>Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 12:03 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: User Profiles
>
>> What I've done is tried to set up machines initially so the default
>user
>> profile is as small as possible,
>
>Agreed. A significant amount of our image-building time is spent on
>creating
>a "streamlined" Default user profile - application preferences set,
>first-run messages eliminated, mapped drives set, etc. etc. I find that
>this
>step makes user experience as consistent and trouble-free as possible
>even
>when using different models and OS versions. As we compile lists for
>image
>updates (a process which usually starts within a week or two of
>deploying
>new images) I find that there are more user-specific changes than
>system-wide changes on the list!
>
>
>Eric Hall
>Technology Coordinator
>Waterbury/Duxbury Schools
>Washington West Supervisory Union
>Waterbury, VT
>(802) 244-6100