When are you installing Windows Vista and running it?

[wesleyw]

When are you looking to install Windows Vista on your schools network and going live?

I'm budgetting for the next three - five years so I'd be looking to put the system in, in around 2009 (After SP1 and SP2 lol) due to the cost other things take precedence!

Wes

[wesleyw]

Also is it going to run on 32bit/64bit or just 64bit systems?

Wes

[Quackers]

I believe 2007 for us, when we change the main IT suite PC's. We have a technet subscription so i shall be playing with Beta 2 when it gets sent to me, and i shall get the image ready when the full version becomes available on technet.

Its Office 12 that looks more interesting to me, after playing with the Beta of it, office 2003 looks so old and dated. The save as PDF feature will be very useful, so we might buy that and dump Office 2003 early.

Its annoying, we have

80 Office 97 licences doing nothing
110 Office 2000 licences doing nothing

and soon 200 Office 2003 licences doing nothing

[StewartKnight]

Ha! Can I have your spare licences! As for Vista, the question is "whats the point", except I'm paying for it with the CAL!!! GRRRRRRR

[Quackers]

As much as i would love to give you the licences, we do not even have proof we have them! When we order licences we get nothing from our LEA, no certificate, nothing. Its really odd.

[plexer]

Presumably you have an invoice though?

We buy ours direct from ramesys and their invoice is the licence document.

Ben

[Norphy]

Unless there is a really compelling reason to run Vista over XP, I'll not bother upgrading the machines. However if new PCs come with it I won't take it off.

[flyinghaggis]

We'll probably have a play with it when it's out later this year to see what extra's it offers but won't consider deploying it anywhere 'in the wild' until the the next server release of Longhorn is out. Likely to be summer 2008 until we go live with it 8O
Hadn't given much thought to office 12 but we'll have to decide whether to wait until we move to Vista or to deploy it before then (we're on Office XP at the moment). Also depends on how much the Computing staff moan about having to re-write documentation

[Michael]

As well as system requirements and application compatibility, will Vista deliver any improvements/enhancements compared to XP?
Inevitably there will be some enhancements over 2000/XP, but then again there wasn't a massive jump between 2000 and XP. The main difference is XP's default GUI, but the OS's themselves are pretty much identical. It's only since XP SP2 that (in my opinion) it only just has the edge over 2000 SP4.

I read headlines about Vista being the biggest release since Windows 95, however I have my doubts. I guess I will find out for sure when it finally hits the shelves, hopefully in this decade!
I have installed a preview copy of Office 12 and I did like some of its features, but of course being so familiar with Office's layout since Office '97 I did find myself searching. The drop down menu compared to the ribbon menu really is something I haven't seen before in other applications, however my main fear is end user support work load could actually go up, because the GUI is very different.

I've also tested IE7. I'm currently using IE7 Beta 2 Preview and I am so far very impressed. IE7 Beta 1 occasionally made my machine restart, however I've had no stability problems whatsoever with this build - 7.0.5299.0. It now also has the option to insert the 'Classic Menu' - File, Edit, View, Favourites, Tools and Help found with IE6 today. The Stop and Refresh buttons have also been separated unlike Beta 1 which had a combined button (depending on website activity).
The address bar still cannot be moved and must remain static at the top of the window. The only problem I have experienced so far is browsing my FTP site. It works perfectly in IE6 but not IE7. I have to view my FTP site by going through Windows Explorer.

[Dos_Box]

Longhorn server looks increasingly like it will be 64 bit only, so i'll need new servers and Vista is currently so resource hungry that I will have to buy new platforms for it to run on. The beta's I'm testing at the moment drag on a 3Gig Sempron with 2 GB RAM!!!

[john]

for us, as soon as tested all the school apps by us, then it will go to the A level IT room, then a few weeks later the rest of the suites, then the world! We hope it will take no more than 3 months to do all testing etc.... Aiming straight from launch date to be going live

[kingswood]

Vista's imaging technology looks compelling but I doubt we would have the hardware to cope with it for around two years! I'm hoping to get the Systems Manager to subscribe to Technet this year when the new budget period enters in so that we can test things like Office 12 (which looks good) and Vista too. That'll depend on cost though.

Paul

[E1uSiV3]

Longhorn server looks increasingly like it will be 64 bit only, so i'll need new servers and Vista is currently so resource hungry that I will have to buy new platforms for it to run on. The beta's I'm testing at the moment drag on a 3Gig Sempron with 2 GB RAM!!!

Thats interesting mate, im running it on an old NEC Versa C160 (Athlon XP2200+, 384MB RAM) and it runs reasonably.

[wesleyw]

Not sure I'll bother then! I'll leave it til 2010 I think unless something comes up in the curriculum to force me to use it! The new server edition on the other hand I would look to put in and Office 12. If Vista can run on my existing setup I'll have to check the prices and see if its actually worth the cost of moving to it when its released or wait at least 12 months for the real bugs to be ironed out!

Wes