Google Chrome - Auto update

[creative-2008]

I work in a school with approximately 35 desktop machines and around 50 laptops. All are running Windows XP and a large percentage have Internet Explorer 6 as their only browser. As time goes on the support for this browser is becoming more limited.

It's not been updated as Windows Update is disable on all of the machines - I don't know the reason for this, and time is limited for someone to update them all manually. Additionally with the age of a lot of the machines I'm not sure how they would cope with the latest releases of Internet Explorer.

I switched from Firefox to Google Chrome a few years ago, and feel largely positive about it. I'm considering suggesting that this is rolled out gradually across the laptops/desktops. The main advantages I see are that the browser updates automatically, even if Windows Update is disabled and also updates the Flash plugin, which is outdated on a large number of the machines and causing problems.

There are two areas I am unsure of:

1) Will Chrome run more successfully on these older machines, compared to IE6 or the latest release available for XP? This answer is obviously subjective, and a possible way to find out the answer would be to try it on a limited number of machines!

2) This is the most important question. Will Google Chrome automatically update on accounts that do not have administrative privileges? This is the reason that my previous employer (we're talking five years ago here) stuck with Internet Explorer over Firefox, even though the whole ICT department were using Firefox at home. Again this could be tested out by installing the browser on a small number of machines, but I'd rather make an informed decision before I suggest trialling this.


I'd greatly appreciate any input available.

 

[zero2dash]

You're going to want to go through Chrome's Enterprise page: http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/browser/
More info there, and the installer will install for all users by default (whereas the standard Chrome installer does it per user account, unless you download the installer for All Accounts, which essentially is the same as the MSI, in EXE form). Here with the MSI though you can push that as an mandatory/required app install through GPO.
AFAIK the updates occur whether or not the user account is admin or not, and the only way to disable updates is through GPO by disabling the Google Update service.

 

[thedocta45]

Are these computers on a Domain?

 

[creative-2008]

Thanks for the Enterprise link. I'll look into that.

And yes, they are on a domain.