The main site I'm employed by made the move to Windows 7 pretty much off the bat (3rd in the country! Woohoo!), but as the feeders - whom I support are still playing with XP I've decided that it may be a good time to move to 7 for security, stability and other schtuff beginning with s...
So - Have any other 'geekers that support primaries made the move? Just curious to find out really?
Or am I going to be the test subject as one of my sites has practically jumped on the idea!
Last edited by korifugi; 29th January 2010 at 02:30 PM. Reason: cursed fingers not working fast enough!
Can't afford it! Going to wait until server 2008 installed to make sure I get fully functional GPOs. Do the primary school you support have the finances and suitable hardware for upgrades then?
Yup - they're going the schools agreement route for licensing and they've got got enough in the pot to fund it.
As for hardware (aside from the oddelonex
Originally Posted by korifugi
We haven't yet but we will in the next phase of computer upgrades. I support 6 primaries and myself and the technician for our neighbouring cluster have decided now is the time to make the move.
We've already got a couple of staff laptops lurking around with 7 on. They've been no problem what so ever. In my opinion they are a great improvement on Vista, which we had no plans to upgrade to.
I am looking into this now it just depends on how good windows 7 plays with server 2003 as i don't have any budget to move to server 2008 just yet.
One of mine is a Junior, and all the teachers got W7 laptops. Bit annoyed that it turns out that they're being encouraged to keep those at home, and soldier on with their old ones in school. Seems a waste of money to me.
One of my other schools (a primary) is looking at getting a new bunch of laptops for staff - I'm quite keen on getting those on W7, but worried about the technofear from the teachers.
Both on Server 2003, as LEA still not supporting 2008(!).
Will you let me know how it goes for future reference?Yup - they're going the schools agreement route for licensing and they've got got enough in the pot to fund it.
As for hardware (aside from the oddAs we're in the same LA do you mind me asking if many of your feeders have got VPLs up and running? It's sort of on my list of things to do eventually.
Yeah - this is one of the three 'big' issues, along with there is an amount of software that will just not work and the cost.
Got the cost covered, now just need to do some testing to find out what software'll be nuked.
As for the staff - the ones using Vista at home I can just leave to their own devices (mostly!). The main problem'll be the ones who are still scared of the "Magic thinking box!"
I was just thinking that if I'm going to be one of the first to move I'll probably blog it right here on edugeek - that way everyone else can see any issues/responses/bonuses.
chrbb (29th January 2010)
That's a great idea. I'd definately follow it with interest !
I've got four primaries that I support and every single one has staff in it that will balk at the idea of something new... This has included Office 2007 where not one school has it installed although the one with the funds and licenses already in place is starting to get an upswell of staff who are keen to try it.
My biggest problems however are threefold past the technofear aspect
1. Money... Simply put, there is absolutely none available and if there were it would, for the most part be getting used for Office 2007 and other educational software rather than an OS upgrade
2. Training... As much for me as for the other staff. The need, for myself, to be able to deal with the myriad of new approaches and changes requires time I don't have so that's a non-starter. Teachers, even excluding the technofear crowd are also stretched as the pressure to deliver lessons with more and more interactive IT elements is just immense so they don't need something else that could break or leave them flustered in the middle of an inspection.
3. Software Compatibility... Almost all primaries have and rely on software that is anywhere from 5 to 10 years out of date or behind OS releases such as XP, much less Vista.
Just as a note... I'm aware that many of the posts on this thread are from Secondary techs looking to drag their feeder/satellite primaries kicking and screaming into the new millenium + 10 but I suspect you are approaching it from the viewpoint of Secondary software requirements and not taking into account the very different nature of Primaries and the fact that their systems lag behind quite considerably for the very reasons noted above.
It's only my opinion but I'd strongly recommend getting the input of other primary school techs as to what their experience and tips are on this because I suspect you aren't fully informed.
Why on earth would you want to waste a primary schools money on a completely unnecessary "upgrade"?7 for security, stability and other schtuff beginning with s...
Security - do they do stuff for GCHQ?
Stability - is there a piece of quality educational 16 bit software that crashes less on Win7? (If so - I'll be first in the queue if its called Textease or Black Cat Super Tools
s...
Now, I can imagine that a big network with sparkly servers running W2k8 SP20 "might" benefit from XPp-Win7 - but even then - I'd need a lot of proof - still not seen an eureka post saying thank god for win7 - I can now do xxx which I couldn't do in XP.
But then again, I've an automatic fillter for any IT invented after 1964
mm- lets think - do they have a geek for a head/ICT co-ord?Or am I going to be the test subject as one of my sites has practically jumped on the idea!
[/RANT]
regards
Simon
PS Seriously - forget it - please
SYSMAN_MK (30th January 2010)
@contink
Martin
You put it so much better
Si
contink (30th January 2010)
Good grief... There's a first... Must be because I finally finished my tax return after 2 weeks ruddy hellish work...@contink
Martin
You put it so much better
Personally though I thought your post was rather a nice balance on mine...
Perhaps the falling around on your back, kicking your legs in the air was a bit OTT though
Already pushed it to a large testing chunk of one of the schools and have the go ahead for another when a certain company finally creates some stable printer drivers. We had already upgraded to Vista though so training is not really an issue and it means that all of our hardware had been upgraded with more RAM. For primary usage it runs fine on a P4 or Celleron 1.8GHz with 1GB or more of RAM. Better with HT or dual core though.
The one minor hurdle that we had in one place was that they were using an old form of logon script that used con2port to setup the printers and another chunk of mental software to do the drive mapping (legacy from the last lot). Once I converted that to native VBS or even if I hade used native BAT it ran just fine.
As has been meantioned before for policies you will want to start fresh and if you still have XP computers floating around you will want to use WMI filters to make the right GP apply to the user depending on what OS they log in on. Search my previous posts for instructions as it has been covered lots.
When it comes to training I found that it actually helped alot swapping OSs. Because it was new everyone had the excuse to get training without thinking that it damaged their image and despite the apparent techie view of the new GUI the teachers found it really good. For about a year I had teachers telling me about the great new features of Office that they have found which have actually existed since Office 95 but had been deeper in the old UI.
@JOrdan01070 and chrbb - Yes it works fine, had it that way at one site during testing, just use a 7 workstation with RSAT to manage it and you have full GP support. The one thing that I have heard can cause issues is the new preferences feature which I did not use anyway.
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