Lab Laptop Management Cart Options?

[afraser2k]

My employer is looking at options for housing ~40 laptops for student labs in a secure cart solution that would re-image and charge each device overnight. Their idea is that the base Windows image would be from another laptop or local domain server (e.g. CloneZilla). Students could then use a local login for various experiments and projects but responsible for their own storage.

They generally want to avoid heavy maintenance for updates etc where all updates and software installations are done in the base image before labs. I had suggested a local domain with SCCM would be more suitable but they'd prefer standalone laptops as they could be lent out when labs weren't on.

Do any of you use a similar setup for multiple laptops? Budget would likely be under £3000 for the cart but might be persuaded to increase depending on teaching requirements.

 

[afraser2k]

I'm afraid it's work by committee at this stage and the idea is that if the laptops are reimaged every evening they don't have to worry about profile corruption or managing user accounts. I've already tried to persuade them against the idea due to the "simple management" of trying to find the laptops every evening but will wait and see.

Thanks for the link will take a look for recommendations.

 

[afraser2k]

Thanks for the additional feedback folks. Lots to look over and will provide to our working group on the plans. I doubt backup or maintenance has even been considered at this stage as it was supposed to be a "simpler solution". However, at the moment we are going through restructuring so might not have the staff for short-notice duties. Personally I feel they're just replicating our current student desktop solution for local control in case things don't work out as planned.