To Vista or Not to Vista

[chalkwellstu]

Image one computer with the standard school image

Install missing drivers

Take new image

Image all other new computers.

 

Thanks Mrforgetful, i am not going to assume that the recovery disks etc have the necessary disks; is there a single place where i can download all necessary drivers as a zip or collective download?

 

Stu.

[mrforgetful]

It depends who manufactured your computer.

 

I download mine from the HP website.

[chalkwellstu]

there Novatech boxes ...

[mrforgetful]

Ahh.

 

That's where brands really do make up for the extra cost.

 

All I can think is that you ask them to bundle all the disks from the hardware.

 

Other than that hope XP picks it all up ok?

 

Could download a program to scan the hardware and then trawl the websites. Could be quite a pain though...

[chalkwellstu]

Ahh.

 

That's where brands really do make up for the extra cost.

 

All I can think is that you ask them to bundle all the disks from the hardware.

 

Other than that hope XP picks it all up ok?

 

Could download a program to scan the hardware and then trawl the websites. Could be quite a pain though...

 

Mmmm i agree, when i ordered the boxes i explained my intention to downgrade and they said that all necessary disks etc would be with them. it turns out that there are no disks as they create a recovery partition.

 

Watch this space ....

[torledo]

I disagree - the lay-out changes in Office 2007 aren't just cosmetic (unlike those in Vista), they offer a much quicker method of finding the more advanced functions, especially the ones which you know exist but can't remember where to find.

 

I would certainly expect the changes were more than just cosmetic, given the money they spent developing it. Annual R&D costs for office 2007 were just insane. And that investment by microsoft is increasing for the next version.

[enjay]

I would certainly expect the changes were more than just cosmetic, given the money they spent developing it. Annual R&D costs for office 2007 were just insane. And that investment by microsoft is increasing for the next version.

So they spent a lot of money researching how people use Office, and then spent some more writing a greatly improved product. Money well spent, I say.

 

(unless you take a bigger picture view and consider how many African families could have been fed, schooled and given life-saving medical treatment with the same money, of course!)

[CyberNerd]

What difference is a few hundred million pounds when it's taxpayers money - after all you get a pretty interface

[CyberNerd]

And that investment by microsoft is increasing for the next version.

 

It's because the next version will be 'more compliant' than there current version, which doesn't meet their MOOXML 'standard', they are re-witting the 'standard' because it didn't pass ISO under scrutiny - now they have to re-write their next product to keep up.

[torledo]

So they spent a lot of money researching how people use Office, and then spent some more writing a greatly improved product. Money well spent, I say.

 

(unless you take a bigger picture view and consider how many African families could have been fed, schooled and given life-saving medical treatment with the same money, of course!)

 

 

 

Let's put that spend in perspective. Sun spent $500 million dollars developing the entire Solaris 10 OS, an operating system powering some of the largest web server farms and mission critical applications all over the world. Developing a OS that has to scale to up to 144 processors is no mean feat - even if it wasn't a from-the-ground-up reworking.

 

That's considerably less than what it cost for microsoft to update a product that is fundamentally a set of tools that allows people to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The way people use office hasn't changed drastically despite the ribbon interface and re-workings - infact they actually took away the traditional office web development option with the EoL of frontpage, so i just can't get my head round the numbers involved - and where the hell the money has gone, particularly as sun can get an entire operating system in solaris 10 out of the door for a comparatively modest spend.

Edited February 1, 2008 by torledo