Is it just me, or is Windows no longer suitable for Education?

[_techie_]

As per the title, it might be my age, but Windows seems to give me more and more daily headaches... Certainly in shared computer suites, and shared laptop trolley scenarios...

 

Also the experiment that is Intune seems to be a bit of a backward step in a number of areas, such as speed and enforcement of restrictions needed for student use, as well as App installs not letting you see what you included in your package as a point of reference.

 

Examples include:

 

Store Apps that get stuck updating during a lesson including: Snip and Sketch and Photos which are useful/necessary for learning, are updating whilst a lesson is in progress. The apps then don't work as they are updating.

 

OneDrive Client Sync...(where do I start)

Fine for 1:1 user scenarios due to the nature of login process, and then just Delta file updates (I use my own USB-C laptop, and it does work well). With the fast paced use of computer suites and logging in and out, students don't often wait for their files to upload after saving work, and sometimes files get lost).

 

Intune "speed" (or lack of) to apply settings plus the reporting of installed apps seems slow. We are slowly moving all our computer suites over to full domain join GPO enforced setup. I've even started looking at LTSC 2021 since it doesn't contain the store apps, and junk!! However, thinking ahead, Win11 doesn't include a junk free version like LTSC..

 

User installable apps (yes I know Applocker can block these, but Intune slowness means the settings aren't enforced immediately making it useless!)

 

Some solutions we have put in that don't seem to have caused too many issues:

 

Moving to Chromebooks for our laptop trolleys and

using the browser versions of O365, autosave enabled by default and no syncing...

 

We also do this for loan laptops for students safeguarding enforced with the Smoothwall filter extension, and Senso too.

 

We did try a surface SE but the performance was dire... Sticking ChromeOS flex on and much more useable

 

Is Microsoft listening to Education? I don't think Windows is suitable for much longer, certainly for student use...

[free780]

It comes back to the 1:1 issue.

 

If you can do that then a lot of these issues go away.

 

I would actually seat towards SCCM with co-management due to the Intone speed issues.

 

If you have a requirement for win32 Office and/or Adobe then you need to go for Windows and the sync client.

 

Shared devices may need Fslogix to deal with roaming users and the OneDrive Sync client.

[_techie_]

I've been doing some testing with office 365 in shared device deployments and the OneDrive Client seems to work more reliably at signing in... We do use Adobe Creative Cloud but we have advised that each student use/reuse the same laptop to try and alleviate these issues.

[Steve21]

It’s interesting you say that, we are currently looking at a new build project and thinking about going full intune, but as you say even a few test devices we seem to be getting similar

 

Things like a policy/app fails to apply 3 times and then just seems to sit there broken, until you manually update the original package/policy, rather than just retrying again after a restart etc

 

I’m not sure if it’s just because you’re “supposed” to put in all the remediation rules etc in case and they would resolve it, but it certainly seems more long winded than previous SCCM/gpo etc

 

Similar with the OneDrive sync. Great for 1:1 but again a pain for roaming users to ensure things finish syncing and with fslogix it’s then back to on-site server requirements which kind of removes the purpose with InTune

 

Would be interesting to see if anyone has shared devices working well on InTune, specially around suites etc

 

Steve

[DrCheese]

Intune = Brilliant for 1:1 devices. Lifesaver during the lockdowns when we had the DFE laptops as we could deploy them onto our setup & (with smoothwall cloud) filter the students at home. Meant we didn't have to faff about getting the laptops back in once the DFE safety stuff expired.

 

But yes, as you say it has some fairly major blocks for using it properly in any kind of shared environment.

My biggest bugbear is the lack of NPS/802.11x support for machine authentication. So running intune on shared windows laptops is a non-starter, because you either have to use user authentication certificates (Which um, won't work) The bodge I use on our Chromebook devices doesn't work either, without faffing about deploying a wifi profile via non standard methods (For Chromebooks, we put them on our Smoothwall 802.11x wifi using a unique Username/Password for each trolley)

Yes, you can do some bodges to make 802.11x machine auth work but why haven't MS just made an NPS extension to fix it? All needlessly convoluted for no reason.

 

 

Your point about policies being applied sporadically is also true.

I found some policies (once applied) are "Tattoo'd" onto the machine, so it's not just a case of taking the policy off (like on AD) - You have to do a separate policy that removes it.

I also found this would be the case if I applied some policies at user only level, it would apply it to the machine & then take forever to take it off when a user that has a different policy applied.

 

Autopilot is a hot mess & can sometimes fail for no reason. During our DFE rollout we'd do 10 at a time, all exactly the same process but 1 or 2 would fail & have to be restarted. We never get this with MDT.

 

 

We did try a surface SE but the performance was dire... Sticking ChromeOS flex on and much more useable

Is Microsoft listening to Education? I don't think Windows is suitable for much longer, certainly for student use...

 

No, they're not at all. I had some hope when they started to talk about Windows 10x (That morphed into 11) but they still think running full on Windows on machines is the best way - 11SE is an utter trainwreck & the Surface SE is hot garbage. It's slow & still requires full fat Windows updates.

 

I gave up & converted all our shared laptops to ChromeOS via Flex & it just works.

[Michael]

Is it suitable = Yes, depending on the version used. I have to agree, LTSB/LTSC are definitely more suitable and lightweight.

 

Is it less applicable = Yes also. Why? More and more services are becoming cloud, so are perfectly accessible within a Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge browser. We don't necessarily need a full blown OS anymore, as the browser becomes the OS.

 

I'm yet to meet a single person, IT Professional or not who gets excited about Windows Features.

[_techie_]

I'm getting the impression that Windows running in a virtual machine might be a better way to operate for students....certainly for things like Python and computing type stuff 😂.

Maybe Azure hosted desktop is a solution here?

 

Thoughts please?

[dmj]

Suitable - yes if you have the budget, technical expertise and an army of technicians to support it.

practical - not so much. I introduced a 2000 Chromebooks to my school back in 2016 and the BYoD scheme is still running strong. There's no way we could have afforded to do that with Windows. The 100 windows machines we had took up enough time to account for 1000 chromebooks. Web page applications are just way more simple to deal with.

 

I'm getting the impression that Windows running in a virtual machine might be a better way to operate for students....certainly for things like Python and computing type stuff .

Maybe Azure hosted desktop is a solution here?

 

Thoughts please?

 

Thought: You don't need windows for programming, you need an IDE and a runtime environment, the most popular IDE (vscode) is written in javascript (electron) and runs on pretty much anything, including a browser.

[FN-GM]

It does seem the UK education system is behind the times with their technology. !:! seems to be the norm in western countries. Australia for example, students have their own device from primary school age.

 

When I think if it. I stared high school over 20 years ago and schools seem to have the same approach to student devices. Seems a little antiquated.

 

Technology and it's implementation has moved on, the UK hasn't (on the whole) and now issues are starting to surface.

[PotNoodleTech]

We're now 80% Chrome/ChromeOS devices here including 1:1 for staff and pupils.

[maark]

We're now 80% Chrome/ChromeOS devices here including 1:1 for staff and pupils.

 

Do you find that this cuts down on printing worksheets etc?

My last school of 1200 students were printing/copying 2 million pages a year.

[free780]

It does seem the UK education system is behind the times with their technology. !:! seems to be the norm in western countries. Australia for example, students have their own device from primary school age.

 

When I think if it. I stared high school over 20 years ago and schools seem to have the same approach to student devices. Seems a little antiquated.

 

Technology and it's implementation has moved on, the UK hasn't (on the whole) and now issues are starting to surface.

 

I think in Australia they also allow students to have phones.

 

Back to the original question. Microsoft is mainly concerned with business customers and maximising licensing.

 

They recently moved some features to addon licensing for Teams. They’ve done the same with Defender and Intune.

 

I guess it comes back to the argument that education needs to prepare students for the real world. In a lot of workplaces this is not chromeOS. In a lot of cases 1:1 is the norm. Shared devices will exist in call centres etc but with a single purpose.

 

Perhaps it’s not Microsoft that are the problem but budgets not large enough to provide 1:1. There is a school of thought that students are you customers and should the business be providing devices for customers?

[localzuk]

Education has clearly become more and more of a niche for Microsoft. The effort put into EDU SKUs seems to reduce year by year, with most things they do for us being an afterthought.

 

Honestly, I am looking at Autopilot and InTune and wondering how it could possibly do what we want with a shared environment.

 

The big issues with moving to 1:1 are primarily cost, and then training and integrating them into the curriculum. We ran 1:1 schemes for our children for 3 years, and end result? We had increased disruption in lessons due to children forgetting to charge their devices, broken devices etc... And no noticeable improvement in academic performance.

 

So, whilst "Technology and it's implementation has moved on" but the question is - what is the value of it if it is effectively just a cost and not a benefit?

 

Schools should be dictating their needs of technology, not technology dictating the way schools work - and Microsoft (and to an extent Google) need to listen to that.

[foofighterjim]

Schools should be dictating their needs of technology, not technology dictating the way schools work - and Microsoft (and to an extent Google) need to listen to that.

 

Couldn't agree with this more, we have looked into the possibility of 1:1 several times over the last 10 years and we keep coming back to the same conclusions:

 

• Our pedagogical approach does not require 1:1 technology for the majority of lessons.
  
• We do not have the ability to fund such a project ourselves.
  
• Parental contribution schemes have always been a non starter with our student / family demographics.
  
• Our results and progress scores without 1:1 are very, very good.
  

 

With this in mind we simply must retain our ability to have shared devices and Intune (on its own) just doesn't cut it. I'm actually looking at the compliance logs of the devices we have on loan to students and a number of them are non-compliant, reporting that Windows Firewall is not running, I have had one in and it is fine. Good one MS.

[ThatBoringBloke]

The actual OS platform is becomming less and less a concern for us.

 

We have moved from 7 Windows IT suites when I started here to now just two. The majority of students now access a Chromebook far more regularly than a PC.

 

They log on and open up a browser to do their tasks. Thats just how it is.

 

Google Workspace allows us to manage this simply and effectively from their management console. I'd imagine that if we had gone down the 365 route MS would allow us to do the same.

 

All I need looking to the future of our physical Windows PC infrastructure is the ability to authenticate logins (GCPW?) and restrict changes made to the system (Deepfreeze?) and I no longer need to worry about whether I use GP or Intune.

[Koldov]

Not Windows itself, but I have to say I wondered if 10 was suitable when I found all the Candy Crush and Xbox junk etc. I know it isn't a popular choice on here, but I thanked $deity that there was an LTSB/LTSC version, as I didn't have the skill/confidence/time to deal with removing it all back when I needed to deploy.

 

There is obviously nobody in the R&D team in MS that has a clue about what my EDU needs are, but also I take the point that what my version of education looks like is very different to what someone at MS might think education looks like... Also when I think of what goes into trying to make a newer OS version, I doubt anyone with any real say in the matter would even be thinking about what an 'EDU version' needs to look like (criticisms that can equally be levelled at Google or Apple although retrospective steps have been taken - Google Workspace/Apple Classroom). We are a segment of the market, but I don't think a big enough of one to warrant being thought of at 'ground-level'.

 

There are those who bemoan the fact that I'm depriving my teachers (of Paint 3D, store and modern apps - Photos/Videos, Calculator etc.) but the core OS is becoming less important now as we use 3rd party software to accomplish those things as we have done for browsers, media players etc.

 

As many have said here, with cloud (O365, Google) offerings being used by more and more establishments, meaning Chrome OS becoming more useable, cloud MIS and other browser based software becoming a 'thing' the underlying OS to run them is becoming less important. It relies on being 'what we've always done', however scalable, manageable it is and yet others are becoming more of an equal as any Google evangelist will tell you (even if you didn't ask - are they the I.T. vegetarians?)...

 

1:1 isn't affordable for us and as has been said BYOD is a lottery. Preparation for the 'real world' may pertain to higher KS levels, but it isn't really necessary at ours. I can see the argument for CAD/Graphic designers needing industry 'standard' software, Sound Engineers to know the most popular DAW, or anyone working in administrative/office roles to know the MS suite of products. I'm not sure many of those employers will be overly impressed with a C.V. listing Paint 3D, Audacity, or Google Sheets as their weapon of choice... at least not for the foreseeable future...

[Alis_Klar]

I have been having exactly the same thoughts since I rolled out 1:1 Chromebooks at my large primary. Chromebooks were the only choice during the pandemic for rapid roll out. No way could we have deployed 500 windows devices and my confidence/experience with InTune Azure etc is poor. Google admin is slightly frustrating in terms of surfacing user activities.

 

We have the same issues with breakages and not bringing them into school. They are still seen as free time devices primarily by teachers.

 

I'm pretty tempted to convert our existing Windows shared machines to Chrome too as the log in times are fast enough.

[PotNoodleTech]

Do you find that this cuts down on printing worksheets etc?

My last school of 1200 students were printing/copying 2 million pages a year.

 

We don't allow printing from the chromebooks, so yes.

 

Teachers still print a lot from their classroom teacher PCs though - infact some of them seem to try and make up for it by printing as much as they can when they are in front of a PC.

[sigma]

Not Windows itself, but I have to say I wondered if 10 was suitable when I found all the Candy Crush and Xbox junk etc. I know it isn't a popular choice on here, but I thanked $deity that there was an LTSB/LTSC version, as I didn't have the skill/confidence/time to deal with removing it all back when I needed to deploy.

 

There is obviously nobody in the R&D team in MS that has a clue about what my EDU needs are, but also I take the point that what my version of education looks like is very different to what someone at MS might think education looks like... Also when I think of what goes into trying to make a newer OS version, I doubt anyone with any real say in the matter would even be thinking about what an 'EDU version' needs to look like (criticisms that can equally be levelled at Google or Apple although retrospective steps have been taken - Google Workspace/Apple Classroom). We are a segment of the market, but I don't think a big enough of one to warrant being thought of at 'ground-level'.

 

There are those who bemoan the fact that I'm depriving my teachers (of Paint 3D, store and modern apps - Photos/Videos, Calculator etc.) but the core OS is becoming less important now as we use 3rd party software to accomplish those things as we have done for browsers, media players etc.

 

As many have said here, with cloud (O365, Google) offerings being used by more and more establishments, meaning Chrome OS becoming more useable, cloud MIS and other browser based software becoming a 'thing' the underlying OS to run them is becoming less important. It relies on being 'what we've always done', however scalable, manageable it is and yet others are becoming more of an equal as any Google evangelist will tell you (even if you didn't ask - are they the I.T. vegetarians?)...

 

1:1 isn't affordable for us and as has been said BYOD is a lottery. Preparation for the 'real world' may pertain to higher KS levels, but it isn't really necessary at ours. I can see the argument for CAD/Graphic designers needing industry 'standard' software, Sound Engineers to know the most popular DAW, or anyone working in administrative/office roles to know the MS suite of products. I'm not sure many of those employers will be overly impressed with a C.V. listing Paint 3D, Audacity, or Google Sheets as their weapon of choice... at least not for the foreseeable future...

 

Not just schools. I would have thought that much of this is unsuitable for the more lucrative business market also. Windows devices are also becomming less attractive to consumers who seem to be served by phones and tablets, so just who are Microsoft targetting their products to?

[localzuk]

Not just schools. I would have thought that much of this is unsuitable for the more lucrative business market also. Windows devices are also becomming less attractive to consumers who seem to be served by phones and tablets, so just who are Microsoft targetting their products to?

People in Silicon Valley and similar areas - ie themselves.

[dmj]

People in Silicon Valley and similar areas - ie themselves.

 

Don't think even that's true. saw a recent developer survey that put windows desktop on less than 50% marketshare for developers. (71,000 respondants)

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-popular-technologies-operating-system

[Koldov]

Somebody has got to be using it though (some of the figures aren't recent)....

 

Desktop, Laptop - Windows - 86.92% (all versions).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#:~:text=ultimately%20Linux%20remains.-,Market%20share%20by%20category,-%5Bedit%5D

Edited January 24, 2023 by Koldov

[dmj]

Somebody has got to be using it (some of the figures aren't recent)....

 

I was talking specifically about the point with regards to silicon valley

[Koldov]

Ah yeah I see.

 

Actually I can't see many developers wanting to use Windows unless they are developing specifically for it.

 

Same for a lot of the other professions where the 'industry standard' software is heavily Mac based.

 

I wonder how many big companies/web servers/mainframes apart from MS use the Windows Server OS (aren't they always IBM/Apache/Unix/Linux)?

[dmj]

Same for a lot of the other professions where the 'industry standard' software is heavily Mac based.

 

I think it's fair to say that the (technology) industry is heavily *nix based especially with regards to hosting web applications/services. It's not necessarily mac based, but of course macos itself is *nix based so I see what you mean.