My school's comps are terrible too. Access to the C:\ drive is disabled, you can't save downloads (and when you choose run, it saves to the temp folder which is of course in the C drive so it fails to run, BIOS is locked, can't boot from CD/USB, right click menu is disabled in Explorer, which is very inconvenient when you try to create a new file, logins are your student ID number rather than name, takes 5 minutes to boot computer, takes another three to log in, and on and on. I hope I can get a netbook by next year.

Does anyone know how to get a computer to boot from the NIC? I can at least do that from the boot menu.

I want to run a boot server (that has a linux image) on one computer then connect an ethernet cable directly to the one I'm trying to boot.

sounds like fun, but I doubt the host computer will allow you to install software with sufficient priveleges to host the image. And the port's probably blocked for outgoing.

Other than that, it should work!

Sorry if I offended you z80 man, I was complaining about the same thing you were.
My school's tech is THE WORST. They give you computers to take home, but you can't:
Download anything (all of the sites are blocked)
Install anything if you do manage to dl it
Access email
Access any website that is not educational basically
Access 50%of even educational sites
You really can't do anything, not even legitimate schoolwork most times.
However, you can go on omni

After reading all these posts I would have to say I'm lucky, we've only had 1 drug bust and that was because some dumb seniors tried smoking weed, during lunch, in the bathroom behind the cafeteria... we all could smell it in a second...

The school doesn't have any strict rules on morality issues like z80's either, but we also don't get free computers like boot's...

As for the actual computer access, it's set up so that we each have our own H drive which can be used if you log on with your own student ID on any computer hooked up to that network. You can't download or install stuff either, but I'm really close to cracking the admin password (and by cracking I mean spying over her shoulder when she logs in   ).

Computer specs are surprisingly good... Windows 7 on everything, and some computers even have 6 GB of RAM! Usually around 4 GB though, and a 2.83 GHz processor. The GPU can even handle low quality gaming so we play SC... CS 1.6... Cod4... Downloaded under administrator supervision too! The new guy is pretty cool.

I did get past the "Websense" which blocks internet access to all website's which are deemed noneducational. Internet Explorer is all that's on the computers, and you need an admin password to change the LAN settings to configure proxy servers, so I just brought in a Flash Drive one day with Firefox Portable and moved all the data to my H Drive so I can access it whenever.

In sixth grade, the teachers were really dumb and we could just download whatever we wanted and go on what ever sites we wanted... We actually had a class paid account to a proxy site with the username and pass "fucko" "1234"... not really smart but it made it a hell of a lot easier  to the less tech savvy and I wasn't paying for it!

You can keep the computers at my school if you pay 160 dollars. And they are worth more than 1000. Although, it is Sci Tech.

Wow, my school must be rich. we have upgraded all the way to linux (aka downgraded ) or windows 7

Schools using linux and windows? I thought they used mac's as a rule of thumb.