Lab Management

Managing labs full of Macs is where the Casper Suite shines. The Casper Suite has a full range of tools for lab management that allows you to maintain preferred user preferences between logins, to heal software titles that may be damaged or erased, and to reimage lab machines easily and automatically in off hours.

Imaging

• No more need to park your new machines in the cafeteria or library for a few weeks while you and your students run around imaging with FireWire drives. The Casper Suite enables you to image machines quickly and easily, with many different configurations.

Reimaging

• Once the machines are deployed, Casper remembers the image assigned to that machine. The next time you need to reimage the computer, the configuration is stored and ready to go. Many schools schedule the lab to reimage itself overnight on the weekend when the lab is closed. That way, computers are refreshed and ready to go on Monday morning no matter what students have done to the machines during the previous week. This saves valuable staff time and brings machines back to a known good state.

User preferences

• Would you like your lab computers to all look the same upon login? The same desktop pattern, dock, screen saver, homepage, and other user settings can be set and reset upon login or logout. This way, if a student personalizes a machine during use, the next student gets a standard, refreshed look.

Restricted software

• Many schools are faced with the challenge of keeping some software titles off lab machines. Whether it's illegal music sharing programs or instant messaging programs not permitted in classrooms, the Casper Suite can detect the process when it is launched on a machine. What happens next is your call: Casper can send you a message, send a message to the user, kill the process, delete the application, or all of the above.