Printable View
Hiya All!
We currently have around 150 PC's with Windows 2000 on them, during the summer we are deploying Office 2007 and im sure most of you know, Office 07 doesnt work on 2000!,
I work at a private school so gettin help from the LEA is outta the window, so i need help, whats the best scheme to get into with MS? Select? Open??? Noooo idea,
Any help appreciated!
Mart
Alternatively use downgrade rights, install Office 2003 SP3 and install the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack. Save yourself a lot of time.
Deploying and installing XP to that many machines needs a lot of planning and testing. Deploying Office 2007 isn't straight forward at all unfortunately :(
For Office 2003 SP3 I would ensure all of your Windows 2000 machines are up to SP4.
I have had a load of problems getting Office 2007 to deploy properly via group policy software installation. Even when I specify an MSP file to remove Outlook and Infopath (for student machines) it still leaves them in anyway!!
Just as well that we are sticking with Office 2003, works, stable and SP3 makes it work well. Compatibility pack also works well, no problems with that at all in my experience.
So can you buy XP licenses now? or will you have to bin all your 2k computers and buy new ones that run vista!.Quote:
We currently have around 150 PC's with Windows 2000 on them, during the summer we are deploying Office 2007 and im sure most of you know, Office 07 doesnt work on 2000!,
No we want to buy XP licenses, but i wanna know the best way about doing this!
As stated above buy Vista and Office 2007 but use your downgrade rights to XP SP3 and Office 2003 SP3 i can't see any reason to move to Office 2007
Are all of your 2000 licences OEM?
It might be worth contacting Pugh or at least view the options and pricing
Microsoft Index
MSP won't work, you have to use the config.xml with GPO and forget about trying to deploy SP1 with it too... use WSUS or a script to handle it for you... Search the forums for more.Quote:
Originally Posted by dhoward_westexetc
Contact a Microsoft reseller (Pugh was mentioned above - we use them; Mike Young is the MS expert) and they will tell you the best way of doing this.
It's hard to work out what's best (eg although you want to get XP, you can't do that so you'll have to buy Vista and downgrade) and you also think about what you want to do in the future. For example, if you are just going to buy this and don't envisage adding more MS software in the next year or so then the School Agreement may not be a good idea. If you want to be able to upgrade to Windows 7/ Office 14 when they come out without paying more then you want software assurance.
You might want to go with one of the annual packages even if they look a bit more expensive because it means that you pay the same every year - this means that you don't have to worry about suddenly finding lots of money
I wouldn't worry about the problems of getting Office 2007 onto the machines - it can be a pig to deploy unless you use one of the "big" deployment tools but as you're going to have to reimage then just include Office in the image and the deployment worries go away :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by dhoward_westexetc
I have had a load of problems getting Office 2007 to deploy properly via group policy software installation. Even when I specify an MSP file to remove Outlook and Infopath (for student machines) it still leaves them in anyway!!
MSP won't work, you have to use the config.xml with GPO and forget about trying to deploy SP1 with it too... use WSUS or a script to handle it for you... Search the forums for more.
It's also necessary to pull a face like you're peeling onions while trying to comprehend the vastness of space the whole time you think about Office 2007 and deployment. Then stop and remember how easy Office 2003 is smile and deploy that instead ;)
Have to admit office 2003 sp3 was a breeze.
I created a new admin point and patched then deployed it to all my machines telling it to remove/upgrade any older versions found and it just worked.
SP3 also solved a problem our student data manager had been having for about a year when saving merged word documents.
Ben