Windows 7 upgrades. Which OS first?

[Dos_Box]

I've just received a reply to an email I sent to Ray Fleming at Microsoft letting him know that more EduGeek members now use Windows 7 than Vista to view the site, and he told me that the expectation was for Vista to be upgraded first then XP. However the opposite has been found to be true with XP getting upgraded first. I suggested that this could be because many schools now run Server 2008\2008 R2 and want their older clients to be able to use the advanced feature set of the latest server offerings.
So which are you upgrading first? Vista or XP, and why exactly?

[Netman]

I think that can be explained by the fact that many of us took a good hard look at Vista and decided to stick with XP - hence leading to an eventual upgrade of systems from XP to 7.

[BrianG]

I think that can be explained by the fact that many of us took a good hard look at Vista and decided to stick with XP - hence leading to an eventual upgrade of systems from XP to 7.

That's the same for my schools. We didn't bother upgrading to Vista so we'll be upgrading to 7 from XP later in the year

[glennda]

I think that can be explained by the fact that many of us took a good hard look at Vista and decided to stick with XP - hence leading to an eventual upgrade of systems from XP to 7.

I would prefer to work with xp on a network anyway, i like windows 7 for use at home etc, but i don't like the idea of it on a network (same as with vista) mostly because they have moved everything and it will take a lot longer for us to get used to finding everything again!!

[Dos_Box]

What Ray was suggesting though was schools with both Vista and XP were choosing to upgrade XP first rather than the 'flakier' Vista.

[tmcd35]

XP to 7. Why? Because we wouldn't touch Vista with barge poll so it's not installed anywhere

[DMcCoy]

XP -> Vista -> 7 (in the summer).

7 was too late in the holidays to go directly to it, so we had to go to Vista instead. The jump between Vista and 7 is minimal for apps/deployment etc seeing as 7 is only a revision of Vista and not new technology.

[Michael]

What Ray was suggesting though was schools with both Vista and XP were choosing to upgrade XP first rather than the 'flakier' Vista.

The more logical explanation is that Vista and Windows 7 pretty much use the same set of GPOs or ADMX files, and profile versions whereas XP uses older ADM files and a slightly different profile format. From a network management point of view it makes sense. I'm pretty sure however Vista also would quickly get upgraded to Windows 7 and won't last as long as XP.

[Diello]

Planning our migration from XP to 7 at the moment, will probably go out March/April time when Capita officially support 7 for SIMS (why they won't support 64-bit though is ridiculous).

We took a look at Vista, but were never going to subject our network to it! Windows 7 on the other hand, is superb!

[SYNACK]

Went to Vista ages ago and most of the features and benifits of 7 are already in there. There are a few speed improvements but there is not massive rush as we already have/use most of the featureset. There is also little interface/GP change and no profile change so it is easier to have a staggered upgrade of some machines initially allowing for a gentler deploy.

I think that the difference in uptake is due to the feature disparity, 7 is a vast improvement featureset wise on XP where as it is more like a revision of Vista so its not such a big deal.

That said I am in the process of switching over the machines to 7 (64bit where avalible) as every little bit of speed helps, well without the penalty of dealing with some of XPs more antiquated subsystems (Offline files, MSI installation integration, network stack etc.).

[BrianG]

As DMcCoy said, Windows 7 is more of an improvement to Vista rather than a complete change as with Windows XP. Maybe that's why people are opting to upgrade Windows XP first. They probably see having a Vista/7 network preferable to an XP/7 network. Too many differences

[Quackers]

Just out or curiosity, what percentage are the OS's that people viewing edugeek are running?

Is the loverly, brilliant, "just works" XP still king?

[Michael]

I would say XP is still king for the time being. I think what browsers people are using would be a more interesting statistic

[enjay]

Just out or curiosity, what percentage are the OS's that people viewing edugeek are running?

That might not indicate what our schools are running though. I had Vista and now have 7, but the rest of the school is still XP and will be for another 18 months at least. Same goes for browsers; I'm Firefox here, but the normal PCs are IE7 and IE8. Oh, and I have a different Office version too :-)

The statistic which is very difficult, if not possible, to gather is how many Win7 users went via Vista, and how many went straight up from XP. That would be interesting to see.

[wagnerk]

We tried a small run with Vista and it failed... The majority of machine run XP (a handful of teacher/staff machines are running 7 & vista), so we'll be upgrading machines to 7.

-Ken