Which Vista edition is best for schools?

[OverWorked]

Which Vista Edition should we be using in school? Our LEA don't have a position on it yet.

 

I need to upgrade two laptops from Vista Home Premium to something that'll join a domain.

 

The nice guy at Pugh told me that the MS School Agreement included Vista Enterprise. Do we need that, or will Business do?

[Geoff]

I'd suggest none. However if you really insist on doing this then the answer is either Vista Business or Vista Enterprise depending on if you have a Volume License agreement or not. There isn't a massive different between Business and Enterprise.

[OverWorked]

I'd suggest none.

 

Thanks! I knew someone would say that. I'd prefer the laptops to have an 'accident'.

 

I wish I had a choice. The laptops I've been presented with won't downgrade to XP because of lack of drivers. It seems manufacturers aren't encouraged to make XP drivers, so Vista (as a MS OS) will be increasingly hard to avoid soon.

[OverWorked]

If anyone's interested, I've just found this. The differences are minute.

[Geoff]

Out of interest, what is the hardware in the laptop that does not have XP drivers. So everyone else knows to avoid it.

[EduTech]

I would agree None lol but to answer question i would say use Vista Buissness.

 

also yh what hardware is in the laptop so i know to avoid it cheers

 

Regards

James

[apeo]

We had some HP nx7300 here and the hp site had more vista drivers then xp. Theres still 1 unknown device which we cant find drivers for.

[Butuz]

The best Vista edition for schools in my oppinion is XP Pro

 

Sad, but true! Vista will be staying off my network for the forseeable future.

 

Andrew

[enjay]

RM supply Vista Business when you ask for it. Personally, I quite like it, but it doesn't offer any advantage from the point-of-view of our students. As I see it, they just wouldn't benefit from any of the new features, so for us it will be a little while yet before we upgrade (unless Capita do anything nasty like pull XP support really quickly).

 

What's the hardware which doesn't have XP drivers?

[torledo]

The best Vista edition for schools in my oppinion is XP Pro

 

Sad, but true! Vista will be staying off my network for the forseeable future.

 

Andrew

 

With newer hardware and application upgrades likely to target vista specifically, not to mention support, it's going to be increasingly difficult not to switch to Vista in certain areas at some stage within the next year to 18 months.

 

I think XP SP3 will likely help admins put off making any decisions for several more months - but after January OEM's will stop shipping XP all together - not a problem if like us you use your Volume win xp upgrade.

 

But unless I'm mistaken you cannot license-wise install any xp upgrade version on PC's that ship with a later version (vista). Which isn't a problem for older PC's but anything new you buy after January you won't be able to install your volume licensed xp. Someone correct me if i'm wrong.

 

Also, while many large companies are very slow and methodical about upgrading/version changes for good reason - schools aren't in the same position. Plus even large companies will need to upgrade their NT/2000 servers at some point because they generally take out software assurance and support from microsoft which will eventually end if it hasn't already done so - same with XP although EoS is still many years away.

 

Windows Server 2008, IIS 7, IE 7, Office 2007 and Sharepoint 2007 will be/are too irresistible not to implement - same can't be said for Vista, but it's killer feature is it's improved security over xp plus new and interesting deployment features for the enterprise. For that reason i'll be switching by this time next year.

[OverWorked]

I'll go with Business.

 

I don't have the laptops in front of me right now amd can't remember what they were. (At the time I just wanted to get them out of my sight). They'll be back soon, though.

 

I do remember that although they were different brands and cases, the device manager showed almost identical internal hardware.

 

The missing drivers were for chipset, graphics and a few other things. XP would run on them, but very slowly. Vista ran at a decent speed, as it happens.

 

I don't think it matters, anyway. This is a sign of things to come. I believe that in a few months most new hardware (especially laptops) will be Vista only. XP won't be supported by the manufacturers.

[AlexB]

We had some HP nx7300 here and the hp site had more vista drivers then xp. Theres still 1 unknown device which we cant find drivers for.

 

Get the nx7400 same drivers, took them 3 weeks to tell me that, I'd tried all the earlier model drivers, never thought to try the later model!

[greenfieldsupport]

Oh great, people are stopping making drivers for XP too now!?? thats an outrage!.

 

Havent they started reprinting XP discs because they were shocked at how many people ordered their shiny new laptop with XP and not vista? .

[Geoff]

I expect there will still be 'business' PC/laptop models from big name suppliers that will have XP driver support for a long time to come. I don't see big business moving to Vista anytime soon.

[PeterW]

Athlough the drivers may not be available on the manufacturers site if you scout around you should be able to find the xp drivers for most hardware (its just a pain).

but anything new you buy after January you won't be able to install your volume licensed xp.

Thye have extended XP availability to OEM's to June/July I believe.

[Halfmad]

Vista business is the one I decided on after testing a few of the versions, there's not a lot in it though.

 

I still feel that vista is bloated beyond belief though, I'm avoiding it in the school for as long as possible, hopefully until vista SP2 is out lol!

[HodgeHi]

"Vista business is the one I decided on after testing a few of the versions, there's not a lot in it though.

 

I still feel that vista is bloated beyond belief though, I'm avoiding it in the school for as long as possible, hopefully until vista SP2 is out lol!"

 

Then it will just be even bigger. lol

[OverWorked]

I expect there will still be 'business' PC/laptop models from big name suppliers that will have XP driver support for a long time to come. I don't see big business moving to Vista anytime soon.

 

I expect you're right, Geoff. Our LEA still provide XP laptops, so they're still available. The description on the packaging states Vista, they just downgrade them to XP. I don't remember what they COA sticker says.

 

They got these from PC World. They just picked up 'consumer' laptops from the shelf, and happily brought them to me Monday morning, then trotted off to the bursars office to get their receipts refunded.

 

(I posted about this at the time, on FFS, and started a 5-screen ranting thread).

[OverWorked]

Athlough the drivers may not be available on the manufacturers site if you scout around you should be able to find the xp drivers for most hardware (its just a pain).

 

I had a good look round. No joy, though.

[Michael]

As already mention by a few others, I believe Vista Business will be the most cost effective/appropriate for schools in the longterm.

 

I also have held off Vista until a later date and at the end of the day, what's the rush? XP will still be around for sometime to come and I believe will be supported up to the year 2011 if memory serves me right.

 

My prime reasons are that Vista is a lot more resource hungry than XP and interestingly, I had a discussion with someone who recently bought a new laptop with Vista and Office 2003 apparently has "issues" running on Vista. I don't know if this is true, or whether Office 2003 SP3 fixes these issues. Office 2007 does work fine on XP however...

 

The point is as with any new operating system, application writers always need to play catch up initially. Sure, Vista probably has a compatibility tool similar to XP but the reality is you'll end up replacing the majority of your applications which is even more expense.

 

As you're also connecting Vista laptops to your network you'll also have to deal with new policies, *.admx files instead of traditional *.adm files. I believe you can only administor Vista policies from the MMC, until Windows Server 2008 arrives which will be much better equiped than Windows Server 2003. At the end of the day it's still all very new and I'd rather use the fast, mature Windows XP SP2 with SP3 on the horizon which will include over 1000 fixes and some Vista functions, XP is here to stay for at least a few years.

[webman]

My cynical side says that Microsoft will somehow degrade performance of XP machines via SP3 to force upgrades to Vista. :twisted:

[HodgeHi]

I read recently that OEM version of XP is being removed at the end of this year. I didn't notice the date of post. Is this still true? If so then any new hardware would need a license for XP as well wouldn't it?

 

I am still trying to get my head around all this licensing thing. I called MS to confirm a few things and even they needed to check their facts before telling me whats what.

 

I was asking about OEM licenses under the VLK and if they can be transferred to different hardware when the origianl hardware becomes beyond help. She said yes. I then explained what i wanted to do was to replace hardware with Mac minis and a copy of Parallels and she said that the machine would need to have an OEM XP license already to use under the VL agreement.

 

I also read that the OEMs for Vista are backwards compatible with XP but this somehow does not sound right.

 

I'm interested to hear from someone else who has diferent information or can indeed confirm.

[localzuk]

According to this the phase out date for OEM XP Pro is Jan 08. However, I have the destinct memory that it had been extended, but that may be the date it has been extended to...

 

However, if your machines come with Vista Business OEM then you have downgrade rights to XP - so you can contact Microsoft and they'll sort out XP Pro for you.

 

On the transfer of OEM license front, I don't believe thats right - you can't transfer them to new machines AFAIK. It goes further than this too. You can upgrade all components except the motherboard without needing a new license, but if you replace the motherboard, for any reason other than defect, then you would need a new license. (taken from here)

[localzuk]

I also have held off Vista until a later date and at the end of the day, what's the rush? XP will still be around for sometime to come and I believe will be supported up to the year 2011 if memory serves me right.

 

Mainstream support until 14/4/2009, Extended support until 8/4/2014.

[enjay]

You can upgrade all components except the motherboard without needing a new license, but if you replace the motherboard, for any reason other than defect, then you would need a new license.

I thought that OEM licences were bound to the HDD not the motherboard?