bwestlake Posted February 5, 2014 Posted February 5, 2014 Hi all, How many of you have/are planning to implement windows 8.1 into an educational environment on a domain rather than stand alone? What issues have you had to over come? Do Staff like/dislike the changes? Thanks
FN-GM Posted February 5, 2014 Posted February 5, 2014 Well we wouldn't have anything not on the domain but we have setup most of it, but been to busy to roll it out. 1 Annoying issue is the it removes duplicate shortcuts from the start screen.
DarrenM Posted February 5, 2014 Posted February 5, 2014 We have 8.0 on more than 200 PCs. I opted for it over win7 due to the quick boot time. We have Classic Shell to make it more like what people are used to. The other upside is if we start getting windows tablets which are fast coming down to our price point we will be in a great position. I often have staff wince when I say we are upgrading their PC to win8 but they are always fine when I check back with them a few days later.
Little-Miss Posted February 5, 2014 Posted February 5, 2014 (edited) I have just set up a room of 16 touch screen 8.1's. It nearly gave me a break down. My issue was the fact i've been adding OS on top of OS (not out of choice) and not doing the ground work to go with it in regards to GP's and legacy stuff. This has led to me having to recreate my curriculum GPO which has mucked other (minor) things up. It's still not working the way i want it to either. My main issue is shortcuts not appearing on the Start Screen. I've actually yet to allow anyone to use it because we use roaming profiles and it apparently doesn't play nice with mixed OS environments. There's patches and reg fixes to sort it, i just need to test it. Edited February 5, 2014 by Little-Miss
psydii Posted February 5, 2014 Posted February 5, 2014 Planning. Maybe 2015/16. Maybe 2017. Too much legacy kit (I.e no touch interfaces) to make it worthwhile yet. Realistically 18 months after w8.2/9 Quite frankly after smb2.1 I'm in no hurry to experience smb3 until long after it has been baked solid. The really tough call is office 2013, since sharepoint and lync really need that to be amazingly great... Trouble is the UI changes seem to cause people more grief than the introduction of the ribbon!
psydii Posted February 5, 2014 Posted February 5, 2014 I have just set up a room of 16 8.1's. It nearly gave me a break down. Having read up on some of the things one needs to understand are different between 7 and 8, I'm not surprised. Are there medals/badges of honour in our profession?
HenryJr Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 Any of you guys getting the Wifi drop outs with 8.1? Its driving our staff/students nuts to the point where I am pulling the pin and start rolling back to W7.
zag Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 Hi all, How many of you have/are planning to implement windows 8.1 into an educational environment on a domain rather than stand alone? What issues have you had to over come? Do Staff like/dislike the changes? Thanks Don't be silly, Windows 8 is a failure of an operating system and 8.1 is hardly an improvement. Windows 9 is just around the corner. I expect the next version will be much more suited to educational environments with desktop and laptop PCs without touchscreens.
SYNACK Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 Just finished the MDT deployment share for the second school, doing the rest throughout the week. We are going all in 8.1 for all new images, it is faster and now finally customisable via GP, the winey staff generally end up singing its praises two weeks down the line, it is faster at everything, imaging, booting, file syncing, installing etc. Apart from the temporary moans about the scary squares that show up when they click the start menu it is better in almost all metrics.
Netwacky87 Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 Any of you guys getting the Wifi drop outs with 8.1? Its driving our staff/students nuts to the point where I am pulling the pin and start rolling back to W7. Funnily enough, I had this on my Home Laptop, Drove me nuts!!! Turned out it was my Router, I had it set to 'Auto' detect the best channel to use, soon as I turned that to Channel 6, it worked like a dream!
Michael Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 It's not something I'd deploy. Windows 8.1 is definitely better than Windows 8, but there's still room for improvement. Changes at Microsoft HQ, I'm hoping Windows 9 will deliver. Please also remember that Windows 7 is very tried and tested and is support until 2020. I'm not saying you should run it until then, however it does buy you time when making key decisions you want your organisation to run. In the short term every Network Manager should concentrate on phasing out XP if they haven't already done so!
tmcd35 Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 Currently we're 99.9% Windows 7 (I'm sure there's still 1 or 2 XP machines hiding in corners). About to start a ground up review of ICT use. I can see Windows 8.1/9 being a possibility on laptops over the next 2-3 years and the use of desktops with Windows 7 will probably decline over that time. Not sure if/where Android/IOS/Chrome fit into the wider picture and may in turn question how much we move to newer versions of Windows.
hallb15 Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 There are some really good things that 8.1 does. Sadly, at least for me, these are way overshadowed by the rediculous way MS tried to make a one size fits all, touch enabled OS. This has resulted in a really poor user experience for anyone not using it on a touch enabled device. We're concentrating on getting rid of the final Windows XP machines and getting to 100% Windows 7.
Roberto Posted February 10, 2014 Posted February 10, 2014 We've been working on Windows 8 support to the point where we could deploy it if we had to, but my intentions are that we skip 8.x and wait for Windows 9. I think those that are expecting Windows 9 to be a complete rollback to Windows 7 in terms of desktop/start menu look and feel will be disappointed but I do think it will turn out to be a good compromise between that and "metro".
josiahe Posted February 11, 2014 Posted February 11, 2014 Don't be silly, Windows 8 is a failure of an operating system and 8.1 is hardly an improvement. Windows 9 is just around the corner. I expect the next version will be much more suited to educational environments with desktop and laptop PCs without touchscreens. I agree My work is running mostly Windows 8/8.1 with StartIsBack 1
john2k5 Posted March 4, 2014 Posted March 4, 2014 (edited) Our migration from 7 to 8 threw up a few issues with roaming profiles. (Why didn't they call them username.V3 if it won't talk to the V2 profiles properly???) We just redirected the 8 profiles to another share until we were ready to phase out 7 completely. We had to rip out all of the "Metro" apps with a powershell script and disable the store via GPO, because of productivity issues with giving kids metro apps, not because they didn't work well. 8.1 was a breeze. Everything played nice except IE11, which took a little bit of tweaking for Active-X content and a few sites being forced into compatibility mode. The new start screen layouts are a welcome addition to Group Policy. DFS and Deduplication work really well in Server 2012 R2. Our staff in general (bar the one or two that didn't get on with 7 either) have had no complaints and the kids just got on with it from the word go. 8.1 (and 8) are a massive improvement over Windows 7 in almost every aspect, live with the Start Screen for a week or two and you'll learn to love it. Everything is at your fingertips. I don't see this whole "Touch OS" rubbish, sorry, it works extremely well with a mouse and keyboard and is actually FAR more productive once you are using it daily. The Metro apps aren't needed in schools, but it's really not a lot of work to disable them. A powershell script before sysprepping and away you go. On a side note, we have also repurposed some old netbooks and made use of Windows 8.1's (limited but very useful) Kiosk mode, we now have 20 (written off!) translator netbooks locked into the free Translate Plus app for our EAL students to use. 8 hour battery life and a boot in under 30 seconds, what's not to love? Profile issues are rare (almost non-existent for any wired machines), the few that we have are all down to either users not logging off correctly, or our aging wireless system along with our older laptops (hoping to replace our 4/5 year old laptops and buy a brand new Ruckus system next year) Edited March 4, 2014 by john2k5
Jtrotta Posted March 4, 2014 Posted March 4, 2014 Dont Do it!! Haha we have 25 windows 8.1( were originally 8) pcs. Troubles? where do i start: first off the kids and the staff hated Windows 8 because of its completely new OS design. No start Menu, bulky tile menus made it difficult for students to find what they were looking for. We also had an issue were when the machines were left idle for a certain period of time the connection to the server to login got disconnected and we would have to restart the machines. I thought maybe it was just windows 8 so i decided to upgrade them to windows 8.1 As far as i know Windows 8.1 can not be pushed out via WSUS(to do multiple computers at once) so i had to update each computer manually buy using the Microsoft app store. It about 3 hours per machine to update to windows 8.1. Now everyone liked windows 8.1 a lot better it runs better than 8 and kind of has a start button now. The menus are a little bit more user friendly. Now my biggest gripe with 8.1 is it is now taking my machines anywhere from 3-4 minutes to login. In comparison to my 100+ Xp and 7 machines that log onto the network in seconds. Now i know some of my trouble may be the result of my environment but over all id say stay away from Windows 8 and 8.1 and stick to windows 7.
john2k5 Posted March 5, 2014 Posted March 5, 2014 3-4 minutes? Our students are in within 30 seconds on our oldest generic 5 year old RM laptops. First login takes around 90 seconds, while it builds the profile from the default one. I suspect that a lot, if not all of it, is down to your environment. I should have mentioned that Oblytile helped with 8, we had the same issue with the start screen looking bland and finding icons hard to find. Windows 8.1's colouring helped this no end and removed the need for it though.
hardtailstar Posted March 5, 2014 Posted March 5, 2014 In the short term every Network Manager should concentrate on phasing out XP if they haven't already done so! Not always easy when schools haven't got the money to upgrade. One school I work at only had enough to upgrade the IWB laptops, class ones are still old RM's still running XP.
Tesla Posted March 5, 2014 Posted March 5, 2014 similar to here @hardtailstar, most desktops are now win 7, but theres a lot of xp laptops knocking around...
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