Andy,

I am quite confident that Sarah is not going to listen / accept anything
that we suggest to her.

I wonder what NOS / Application(s) she means.

I am a big fan of Active Directory and really like what you can do with
GPOs, whether making a couple - or lot - of configuration settings or
deploying applications to either the user- or computer-side of things.

I have never worked in an environment of more than 300+ users but can tell
you that GPOs are a really big Administrative 'Extra Strength Tylenol'!

Cary

"AndyC" wrote in message
...

"Sarah Tanembaum" wrote in message
...
"AndyC" wrote in message

msiexec /a office.msi

This creates the correct folder structure for the server. No files are
copied to the workstation.
Sure, but you have to do this for all the workstation, is that correct?
Imagine if you have to do this install 1000+ times.
Why can I just install all the file in the server and executed in the
workstation.

No. You do this on the server to unpack the installation structure from
the
compressed CD image. You only need to do it once.

Another thing is that it needs administrator installation, why? Again,
you are simulating workstation installation but using the network drive.
That's not the same thing.

You want ordinary users to be able to install applications on the server?

If this is a SMART and TRUE Network Apps, I will be able to execute the
apps as regular user where then I can customized whatever I want e.g.
location
of my personal template, my document directory, etc.etc.

Per-user settings can be configured by a user as usual. *Unless* an
Administrator specifically restricts them to do otherwise.

What happen if you have many users access it? How's the application
manage
to
keep each user to its own space?

Users files/settings are kept in their profile folder as usual. Have you
ever actually used Windows?


Depending on your environment you can do this one of two ways:

1) If you have Active Directory, just create a GPO containing the
Office
package with the .mst transform you created earlier and assign it to
the
relevant Organisational Unit.

Why do I have to go this trouble? I thought that all I need is install
the
apps
in the file server, attach the drive to the workstation, and all users
on
all
workstations can just execute the apps. No fuss.

It's hardly trouble, it takes approximately two minutes, regardless of
whether you have 1, 10 or 10,000,000 workstations. The advantage of Active
Directory is that you do not need to ever touch the actual workstation
machines at all. They don't even need to be in the same country. Heck,
they
don't even need to exist yet, they'll pick up the settings when they are
added to the Domain.

What's so hard to do that? The point is that it is not necessary to even
need AD to control it, or GPO to control it. If you need to change
permission
on the file, change it on the server and all those 10000+ workstation
can
see
it right away.

Again, you are avoiding the issues.

I haven't avoided any issues. You're either misreading what I said or
really
haven't got a clue how networked applications work on any OS.


2) Alternatively, run the msiexec utility from a startup script or
similar
method, again applying the relevant transform. Something like this
should
do
the trick:

msiexec /i \\server\Office\office.msi
TRANSFORM=\\server\Office\my_office_transform.mst /qb

This will create the appropriate registry information and Windows
Installer
shortcuts for the setup you decided upon in your Custom Installation.
If
you
don't want the shortcuts you can always opt to omit them in your .mst
file,
although I don't really see and advantage in that.

Oh my! How many more step that you have to do in the workstation?
I thought that you want to show me that nothing has to be done on the
workstation,
period.

What! That's one step. A single command. And only necessary if you aren't
using Active Directory. How much less do you expect to do? Even a *nix
based
OS needs one command to mount a networked application drive for crying out
loud.

AndyC, you got to admit there are room for major overhaul of how those
office apps
run and installed.

My point is, why can I just install the application in the file server
and
execute that apps
in the workstation network drive! Its just as easy as that.

That's what I just explained (several times) how to do. Why not try
reading
the posts instead of assuming you know better.

No administration headache.
Centralize apps administration
Patch and upgrade will be done only on the file server(instant upgrade
for
ALL workstation)
And many other ....

On the contrary. It's probably the one thing that Windows simply does
better
than any other operating system. If you really feel the need to slag it
off,
there are plenty of areas where Unix/Linux/Mac actually have a genuine
advantage. If you'd ever run a large scale network, you'd know this
already.
I'm an administrator in a mixed Solaris/Linux/Mac environment, I do know
what I'm talking about.

AndyC