The Amber Foundation has recently opened a new centre in Surrey. Farm Place has been configured with donated computer equipment for both Staff and Amberteers.
Hightrees Organisation Limited was on site to configure the Staff PC’s which are all running Windows XP. As the machines were all failry similar, by using a Fog Server, we managed to image 20 PC’s in one evening with the standard Amber software (Microsoft Office 2003, Outlook with Google Apps Sync, Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox)
The Amberteers network uses LTSP/K12Linux based server, allowing their PC’s to network boot to provide a Linux Desktop along with OpenOffice, Firefox and other open-source applications for basic use of the Internet and Document Creation. OpenOffice has been configured to run so that all files created are saved in a Microsoft format for easy of use.
We managed to utilise some old PC’s which would not have been sufficient for running Windows XP but which were ideally suited for Terminal Server use allowing more PC’s to be available.
Remote Access and Control methods are in place to allow the site to be remotely monitored and controlled in the event of any problems with any of the software installations, minimising the need for onsite visits for minor issues.
