Windows 11 in Schools

[3s-gtech]

i3 10th gen is not pretty old.

 

i3 5th gen is pretty old.

 

i3 2nd gen is crusty.

[Guest Guest]

i3 10th gen is not pretty old.

 

i3 5th gen is pretty old.

 

i3 2nd gen is crusty.

 

Mine must be a i3 5th gen.

 

It says it’s from 2014. Not really looked into the date of when it was built as I was just given it for work so I think it’s a 5th gen.

 

Thanks for that! [emoji3]

[mullet_man]

I installed it on my school laptop a Dell E7470 which is a 6th gen i7 processor and it was awful reminded me of Vista so much.

 

I can see why Microsoft is implementing strict hardware limits as my laptop became unusable, now back on 10.

[Guest Guest]

I installed it on my school laptop a Dell E7470 which is a 6th gen i7 processor and it was awful reminded me of Vista so much.

 

I can see why Microsoft is implementing strict hardware limits as my laptop became unusable, now back on 10.

 

Was it choppy, as mines a bit like that at the minute?

[mavhc]

Constantly replacing hardware that works fine isn't good for anyone except people who sell hardware. My desktop is an i7 2700k, it's somehow fast enough to run 40 apps and have 500 tabs open while I watch videos and code over 5 screens. Not even needed to overclock it yet.

[Primus]

Constantly replacing hardware that works fine isn't good for anyone except people who sell hardware. My desktop is an i7 2700k, it's somehow fast enough to run 40 apps and have 500 tabs open while I watch videos and code over 5 screens. Not even needed to overclock it yet.

 

Technology does move on, that CPU is nearly 11 years old now, you can't use the same equipment forever.

 

Your CPU benchmarks according to cpubenchmark.net at 5604 points, the new 12th generation i7 equivalent benchmarks at 34,340.

 

My beef isn't with 2nd gen Intel Core CPUs being unsupported in Windows 11, it's the ones that fall just the wrong side of the generation that's supported.

[KK20]

Technology hasnt really evolved. Short of the TPM, the last major innovation was the VTx support. I would argue that benchmarks are largely irrelevent, it depends what the benchmarks are doing vs what you want the PCs to do. Our standard desktops run office 365, the most worked PCs in the school run fusion360 and creative cloud suite. Our ancient core 2 duo will get from CTRL-ALT-DEL into a word document in under 2 minutes, they load browsers just fine, play youtube just fine and work well enough. cpubenchmark say that the e8400 benchmarks at 1165, our i5-4460 (majority of our fleet) benchmarks at 4841. So 4 times faster right? Nope. Put them side by side (such as in the library) and you are looking at maybe a 10 to 20 second difference in CTRL-ALT-DEL -> word document. The bottlenecks are elsewhere, network, internet, sharepoint, onedrive. Granted, first boot -> CTRL-ALT-DEL on a wednesday maybe 2 minutes on the i5 and 4 minutes on the core2 as we run updates at 5pm on Tuesdays so the first boot on a wed is always slow. Every other day not so much and WOL gets all my machines up and running in time anyway. The extra cores do help when running a lot of updates. My own PC at home is a 6600k (overclocked to 4GHz), this would be difficult to benchmark but stock would be 6320. This CPU is not supported for W11 but yet I can run elite dangerous in VR on my Rift (paired with a 1660TI). This CPU outperforms many CPUs that are on the W11 accepted list and is many generations behind. There are many CPUs on the W11 list that would be bottlenecked in VR.

 

So, the core2duo is an ancient dog that runs too slowly? Well. MS support the celeron 4250U, an 8th gen laptop CPU that benchmarks at 1348. We have a couple of small laptops with those in them (I was shocked to find these supported so we DO have some machines that support W11!), the desktops are MUCH faster (even with SSDs across our whole fleet). How about a more modern supported common cheap laptop CPU? Celeron G5900T which benchmarks a whopping 2648. Now dont get me wrong, im not saying that the venerable e8400 should support W11, however there are ample other CPUs that not only COULD support W11 due to TPM and other requirements met, they are simply knocked off the list "because".

 

What will we do? Pray for more money, we are a set of CofE schools afterall. I will probably lease the cheapest of the cheap I can find, PCs that ironically will perform worse than the fleet we already have.

 

EDIT: I will admit I have not looked into the 11thgen+ threat detection tech in the new CPUs, that would be useful (if it works). I dont know if TDT is only featured in high end CPUs though which would preclude our upgrades anyway.

Edited June 6, 2022 by KK20

[mavhc]

Technology does move on, that CPU is nearly 11 years old now, you can't use the same equipment forever.

 

Your CPU benchmarks according to cpubenchmark.net at 5604 points, the new 12th generation i7 equivalent benchmarks at 34,340.

 

My beef isn't with 2nd gen Intel Core CPUs being unsupported in Windows 11, it's the ones that fall just the wrong side of the generation that's supported.

 

But my new laptop has a cpu mark of 3411. Age and speed are not related at all. After all the reason I bought an expensive cpu was to not replace it for a very long time.

[Primus]

But my new laptop has a cpu mark of 3411. Age and speed are not related at all. After all the reason I bought an expensive cpu was to not replace it for a very long time.

 

My point was time moves on, you cannot expect to use a device indefinitely, it will always have an end point.

[mavhc]

Yep, when the hardware dies, not when some idiot at Microsoft decides to not support it for no reason at all

[CHiLL]

But my new laptop has a cpu mark of 3411. Age and speed are not related at all. After all the reason I bought an expensive cpu was to not replace it for a very long time.

Though you are comparing a mobile CPU against what was a flagship desktop model, they're not really comparable directly, especially from a power draw and thermal point of view.

 

However, unless you have the need, or can afford/justify the cost...then ideally you should only replace your hardware when it no longer performs the tasks you need (or in an acceptable time frame). If you were 4K gaming with max settings for example, then that CPU would be a large bottleneck. But if you're doing light tasks, then it's still perfectly capable.

 

We're about to enter year 7+ of our current desktops for staff and students. We'd have liked to have replaced them in 2020 as a five year life cycle, but the pandemic, debts accrued due to it and increasingly high cost of semi-conductors has removed that as an option. We're now looking at almost a 10 year lifespan, with an upgrade likely between 2023-2025. The PCs are just fine as they are. I'd like them to be quicker with logon times, loading files, etc...but they're 4th gen i5, 8GB RAM and an SSD...so they're still performing in terms of basic/browser office use.

[mattm_workaccount]

This is a longer post, sorry for any inconvenience.

 

Hello, I am an avid user of a home computer running windows 11 and I can say that it works fine. But, in the topic of school computers running 11 there is one issue that I am not sure whether it is known or not. For context, our school laptops are all from dell with the possible exception of a few. These laptops, the ones the students use are pretty cheap. They have 4 gb of single-channel ram, and a cpu that runs at 1.00 ghz (sometimes 1.01 to 1.02). They were built to run windows 10 (some run education edition others run enterprise edition, with the stickers usually never quite matching which version is actually on them), mainly made in 2016 I think. The issue I have noticed is that on the two laptops I have had from them that have windows 11 on them, they both had issues maintaining a constant network connection to our home networks. They work just fine on the schools networks but on the home networks they both have had the tendency to randomly disconnect from a network. By disconnect I mean that they will still show as "connected" but will say, "connected, no internet". Even if I switch to a different home network the same result occurs. The only way that we have been able to get them to reconnect was either through 2 computer restarts, or by rebooting the network. The ladder of which has become more common as of late, and this only is happening on the ones that were running windows 11. The first one was a loaner laptop while I waited for my previous laptop (the previous one having been ran with windows 10) to be "fixed". They couldn't fix it so they gave me a "new" one with windows 11 on it. The logo on the outside was worn with top of the lid also having multiple scratches. And, when the computers loading logo shows up, the Dell loading screen that appears before the windows loading screen on some dell computers, instead of displaying my first and last name it shows the name of a person who I actually know as they are a friend of mine. And not only did the loaner laptop have this issue, but this current one also does. And I noticed that even when not experiencing this network connection issue the laptops with windows 11 will take longer to auto-connect to our home network under normal circumstances. Anybody else had this issue? Sorry for the long post.

 

*Quick addition, the school laptops in use by the students are the Dell Latitude 3190 2-in-1 models for anybody who wanted to know*

Edited April 14, 2024 by mattm_workaccount

[MartinT]

The issue I have noticed is that on the two laptops I have had from them that have windows 11 on them, they both had issues maintaining a constant network connection to our home networks. They work just fine on the schools networks but on the home networks they both have had the tendency to randomly disconnect from a network.

 

I think this is device/drive specific. I certainly haven't noticed it on the circa 80 machines we have running W11 at work or the two I have at home.

 

By the way, we upgraded all our 4GB devices to 8GB when migrating to W11.

[Windows92]

We are slowly rolling it out to staff (students use Chrome) - our main issue, and I'm sure many others, is some of the hardware we have won't support it. We keep hoping Microsoft will change their minds but... wishful thinking. It could be a very expensive next couple of years for replacements.

[thimon]

We went 100% Windows 11 last year. Leasing is where it’s at. Helps spread the cost and ensures long term you’ll have a modern fleet of devices.

[timbo343]

Welcome... Windows 11 LTSC people!

[Michael]

Q4 2024 release, but looks promising.

[foofighterjim]

Welcome... Windows 11 LTSC people!

 

Just watched the first half of the video, it references this page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise/Hardware/System_Requirements?tabs=Windows11

 

Where it appears that from Windows 11 24H2 TPM may be OPTIONAL!

[LeMarchand]

We went 100% Windows 11 last year. Leasing is where it’s at. Helps spread the cost and ensures long term you’ll have a modern fleet of devices.

 

How does this work with pupils (and staff) who treat equipment like poop? Or are you lucky enough not to have too much of this?

[Primus]

I don't really see how Win 11 LTSC gets people any further - we already have Win 10 LTSC and if you use the 2021 IoT version it gets patches until January 13th 2032 - surely by then anything not Windows 11 compatible will be gone - I know funding is tight but...

 

It should also be noted once again that Microsoft say LTSC should not be used for general purpose computers and you may run into issues using it in this way.

 

Have I missed something?

[mavhc]

The last laptops we ordered that won't do Win 11 were in 2018, they're still in use today but can phase them out by 2025.

 

Desktops we paid £190 for refurb 8th gen core i3 earlier this year

[Oaktech]

We have a budgeted plan in place now at all 3 of my schools to replace almost everything remaining by end of September this year, with a small contingency for devices and requirements that crawl out of the woodwork between then and 2025.

 

It does still mean a small drop in creature comforts because we currently have TAs and MDSA supervisors who have their own laptops simply because we have spare castoff 4/5/6th gen devices. They will have to stop having laptops unless our Trust allows the use of a LTSC edition to tide them over until the next scheduled round of replacements of teacher devices in 2027/8.

[jezi55]

Is anyone in the same situation as us where we have some devices that will only work on W10 and only about 30% of our hardware which is compatitble with W11. I was looking to make a W11 image during the summer and upgrade what can be upgraded and then purchase new hardware a little bit at a time to replace the old W10 devices. I have been told that W10 and W11 ADMX templates do not work together, has anyone had a way to overcome this?

[mavhc]

They fixed the admx conflict problem, just make sure you have the latest files

 

Only change I had to make was onedrive on win 11 not using proxies, had to ssl exclude the custom per school domains, and set the wpad.dat js to send those domains DIRECTly

[thimon]

How does this work with pupils (and staff) who treat equipment like poop? Or are you lucky enough not to have too much of this?

 

The last time I had accidental damage was about 5 years ago, when a member of staff wanted to work by candle light and melted the screen by having their laptop too close to a candle. Other than that our staff and students look after their devices.