Breaking Windows

I cannot express how much Apple System Restore (ASR) and most recently Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) makes life as a Mac Admin a more enjoyable time. After a couple weeks the job of cloning 12 eMac's is done. Why does it take so long? Step into my shoes (size 16) and see how many hours a day I can devote to setting up new computers :-P All I do is set CCC to prepare the image it makes for ASR. This takes over an hour for about 5.5 GB worth of data (OS 9 and OS X systems and applications). I have this on a FireWire HD that I can take from computer to computer to boot from and image the internal HD. That takes 18 minutes. That rocks! 18 minutes! Now the fun part is when you figure out you forgot something on the image. We have a bunch of first generation iMac's, these do not have FireWire. My job is always interesting in this way. I cannot image these iMac's using my handy bus powered FireWire/USB drive. And unfortunate as it is, I cannot boot an iMac from a USB HD. I guess I am going to have to do ASR the hard way (old way) of making an ASR CD for the iMac's. Oh well. Next up is to put two more third generation (yay FireWire!) iMac's down in the Yearbook office. Their secretary's desk is going to loose an aging 7100/66. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to get rid of that old beast. This will mean that Yearbook will have 4 iMac's and a 4400/200. I wish I could get rid of the 4400/200 but they use that for the SCSI film scanner. Oh Well. This is how work works sometimes. Oh well.