Faronics has announced that Deep Freeze Mac OS X Version 1.8 has been officially released. This version is compatible with both Tiger (OS X 10.4) and Panther (OS X 10.3). A new user guide, brochure, evaluation version, and full shipping version are all available on Faronics’ Web site. Customers using Jaguar (OS X 10.2) still have the ability to use Deep Freeze Mac OS X version 1.7, also available on the Faronics Web site.
“Due to some fairly major core changes that Apple made to Tiger, this release took a few extra weeks to prepare and test,” said Brent Smithurst, Vice President of Technical Operations at Faronics in the press release. “I’m confident that the wait will be worth it for all of our Tiger users.”
Deep Freeze Mac OS X provides non-restrictive protection that allows a standard (nonadministrator) user to make changes in their home directory, but restores the entire directory to its exact original configuration after a logout, restart, selected time interval, or on a selected day of the week. Any changes made by a user are temporary, including changes to the desktop, Library, fonts, Dock, or screen settings.
Restrictive protection options let users specify read, write, and execute privileges on-the-fly and on a per-user basis for any file, folder, application, or system preference pane, no matter where it resides on the hard drive.
More info here.
yay?
Second post, you beauty. Never heard of Deep Freeze before but it sounds usefull for kiosks or cafes, maybe even class rooms.
Help!
I’m trapped inside this website! They’re conducting evil experiments on me. It’s all I can do to remain insane. I’ve smashed all my Windows computers! What more do you want! Please let me go!
Oh no. I hear them coming again…
Deep Freeze is IMHO the best piece of windows security software their is
Hardware firewall+ deep freeze= excellent institutional security
well, two years ago anyway. I t was nigh impenetrable then.
essentially what deep freeze does is: Let users install just about any peice of software they want on the computer. this is good from the users perspective because it means that they are less reliant on the IT staff (who can then do more important things like track down viruses and do user education (in theory(most just surf for porn through a web proxy at this point)))
IT also likes this because they can
a) get users to test out legit SW without having to make a new image constantly
b) get rid of any user-installed SW by simply restarting the computer(this essentially cripples a lot of malware)
c) easily “unfreeze” induvidual systems to install SW
I would say deep freeze is one of the reasons most IT types are quite happy with window’s “security”
I beleive they also give a decent discount to edu institutions
In short DF is both a blessing and a curse for macolytes (like myself). It keeps some institutions from switching, but it would be far worse not to have it on the mac platform if you want your IT people to consider Macs.
FYI; i don’t really know how it behaves on the Mac platform, but if at least the same amount of care was put into the mac vers I will vouch for it. Like I said it’s the best piece of Windos security software I’ve used.
on the mac platform it would seem to be a great substitue to net-booting off an xserve (like the apple stores do)
(or even a good addition?)
thanks for putting up with the super long post. I hope your *eyes* are still intact
mind you it is slightly less useful on a mac, faronics admits as much on their site
(Secure by design anyone?)
Re: theloniusMac
In a world of extremists (religious, political, windows and mac) it’s gratifying to see that there are some people out there who still have an insane sense of humour. Go dude, go.
It sounds like the RevRdist app I used for System 9 uni labs. Loved it and miss it.