The dual os classroom: if you build it, will they come?

The University of Southern Maine needed another computer classroom, primarily to meet the needs of faculty who utilize Macs or those with small, often upper-level classes. The opportunity presented itself to inherit a space that had previously been used as a Foreign Language Lab. We purchased thirteen Intel Core 2 Duo iMacs. We settled on Parallels Desktop for Mac 2,2 running Windows XP on Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger) to allow simultaneous running of both operating systems. By the time of this presentation, we will have experimented with the latest version of Parallels Desktop for Mac running Windows XP and Vista, and Apple's latest release of Boot Camp, also booting Windows XP and Vista. Two Software Support Specialists collaborated on the process behind the scenes, spending several weeks refining the final product. Some of the issues encountered included: early adoption of beta software (Parallels and VirtueDesktops); choosing between Faronics Deep Freeze for the Mac and Centurion Technologies MacShield (both new to Intel Macs); configuring settings for simultaneous IP connections on each platform; implementing our authentication (login) process; incorporating our in-house pay-for-print system; investigating Parallels Coherence mode pros and cons; utilizing WinBatch and other third-party tools for machine customization; and choosing a disk imaging solution.