Network lease ending. Should I move to Vista?

[Jimbo]

Hi all,

 

My school is 2 years into a three year lease for our windows XP network.

 

Come September I’ll need to make a decision about “upgrading” hardware and maybe moving over to Vista.

 

Does any one think this is a good idea?

 

My options are as follows:

 

1. Stick with what we have, put an extra stick of RAM and a card reader in all the existing machines and hope they tide us over until Sept 2011.

 

(After all they run XP fine, in 2011 we get our BSF building and new kit)

 

2. Lease an entire new set of machines running Vista.

 

3. Lease an entire new set of machines running XP. I’m drifting down this route as it gets us new hardware but lets us stick with a reliable OS.

 

Cheers, Jimbo.

[torledo]

Hi all,

 

My school is 2 years into a three year lease for our windows XP network.

 

Come September I’ll need to make a decision about “upgrading” hardware and maybe moving over to Vista.

 

Does any one think this is a good idea?

 

My options are as follows:

 

1. Stick with what we have, put an extra stick of RAM and a card reader in all the existing machines and hope they tide us over until Sept 2011.

 

(After all they run XP fine, in 2011 we get our BSF building and new kit)

 

2. Lease an entire new set of machines running Vista.

 

3. Lease an entire new set of machines running XP. I’m drifting down this route as it gets us new hardware but lets us stick with a reliable OS.

 

Cheers, Jimbo.

 

I would extend the lease on the current machines, which i guess is option 1. As for a card reader, don't they have usb for usb sticks ?

How much RAM have they got in them, 512 mb is fine, 1gb is ideal. If they've already got 1gig you don't need to increase the RAM.

 

A new batch of machines would probably give you gigabit if the existing machines don't.....but you may not need gigabit for any applications an d there's the infrastructure upgrade which you've not planned for.

 

Don't under any circumstances go with vista. It's rubbish......official.

[conehead]

I would stay away from Vista on a domian until Server 2008. As to new kit versus upgrading old kit, depends on cost.

 

I assume the PCs you have have paid for themselves after 3 yrs from the Lease side of things, so if the Leasing company will let you keep them cheaply enough then fair enough, they should as you say "tide you over" on XP, seems a waste of cash to buy new gear that gets thrown in a skip after 18 months with BSF coming in.

[bossman]

Stay Away from Vista until you can't possibly avoid it that way you will have the benefit of keeping your end users happy and then when you get BSFd you can blame any misgivings on BSF hey presto your a winner both ways.

[Jimbo]

I would extend the lease on the current machines, which i guess is option 1. As for a card reader, don't they have usb for usb sticks ?

How much RAM have they got in them, 512 mb is fine, 1gb is ideal. If they've already got 1gig you don't need to increase the RAM.

 

A new batch of machines would probably give you gigabit if the existing machines don't.....but you may not need gigabit for any applications an d there's the infrastructure upgrade which you've not planned for.

 

Don't under any circumstances go with vista. It's rubbish......official.

 

We just need card readers because we take hundreds of photos a day and teachers always loose their cameras usb cables.

 

We have 512 of RAM currently so I'd definitely up it to a gig.

[MK-2]

by 2011 the new microsoft OS might make an appearance, so why get users comfortable with vista when bsf will no doubt go with the latest fangled technology.

testing? damn testing to hell

[john]

Any new PC purchased / Leased today should be a Vista Business Edition PC then use the legally provided Downgrade rights to go back to XP Pro on them, then the choice is yours

[Michael]

Personally I would stick with XP. I have tested Vista and it just isn't as good as XP in my opinion. It's slower in every aspect and I have no desire to manage a whole network of Vista machines in the short term.

 

XP will still be supported for some time to come, so unless someone can persuade me that Vista is superior to XP and that it'll benefit my users, then I'll stick with the tried and tested XP. Especially with SP3 around the corner, there's more reason to stick with it

[Norphy]

Any new PC purchased / Leased today should be a Vista Business Edition PC then use the legally provided Downgrade rights to go back to XP Pro on them, then the choice is yours

 

What he said. Irrespective of your opinion of Vista, getting the PCs with Vista licences is the best choice as you're allowed to run the previous version of Windows with them. You may find that in two years time, you'll get this *cough* wonderful piece of software which will refuse to run on XP and if you have nothing but XP licenses you'll be pretty much shafted. Getting them with Vista licenses is the only sensible choice

[dbrown]

If you don't want to fit all machines with card readers, we just have a handful of Pound Shop USB card readers for people to borrow for a couple of minutes when they need them.