[22h2] Windows 10 extended support licences

[bknaggs]

https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2024/04/windows-10-end-of-support-updates-for-education

 

Education pricing looks very un-Microsoft for those devices that can’t be updated (officially) to Windows 11.

 

$1 per device for year one, $2 for year two and $4 for year three.

[mavhc]

I've seen this chess board before

[3s-gtech]

The economics of this may work for us, as we only need 1-2 years. Really don’t want to go on to LTSC. Year 1 should be less than £200.

[Olliedawg]

Interestingly cheap. May consider this closer the time as we've got 3 whole IT suites to do still, and some staff laptops. Spent up on budget too

[free780]

Nothing like kicking the Windows 11 can down the road.

 

We had to purchase Sophos licenses for 2008 R2. Why is it so hard to stay current?

[psydii]

The reality is that if a school bought a four core i5 since SandyBridge there is a good chance it is still a viable machine for office and web applications today.

 

And kaby lake or newer will probably even run Creative Cloud suite without issue. (And a dirt cheap 1030 will allow even Haswell to have photoshop running without complaint)

 

The windows 11 requirements cut off a vast number of excellent, reliable, performant machines.

 

I completely agree that a line had to drawn (particularly around security capabilities) but where it landed cut off machines sold into education, that the education users had reasonable expectations of keeping in service for 10 years (ryzen 2400/2700g with your glorious vega gpu cores, I’m looking at you!)

 

This change gives schools enough wiggle room to sweat out the assets.

 

I do wonder if this announcement is six months too late though..

 

Schools have the assets they do to deliver the course they offer. If they can’t replace the devices they can’t run the course, and they don’t need those specific teachers or departments anymore.

 

I imagine some institutions have already taken some hard (irreversible) decisions to deal with the August 2025 deadline.

Edited April 4, 2024 by psydii

[dmj]

Schools have the assets they do to deliver the course they offer. If they can’t replace the devices they can’t run the course, and they don’t need those specific teachers or departments anymore.

 

There are no requirements to run windows for any courses, perhaps with the exception of the ECDL.

It's all a choice, and a lack of training.

[3s-gtech]

WJEC IT course requires Adobe CC, so it’s either Windows or Mac (the economics of that are interesting!)

[psydii]

There are no requirements to run windows for any courses, perhaps with the exception of the ECDL.

It's all a choice, and a lack of training.

 

There are no requirements for google to run its services on Linux either, but here we are.

[dmj]

There are no requirements for google to run its services on Linux either, but here we are.

 

I was making the point that its a lack of training; that schools won't pay to train staff to use other applications/systems, so just end up paying more on hardware and software to keep up with microsofts sales timetable - and then get faced with the choice of ditching the course and teachers anyway because it's all too expensive.

[psydii]

Given we make a point of recruiting staff with skills from outside the education sphere to deliver our very broad curriculum, its not a "schools wont pay for training" issue but that wider industry (outside of cloud-scale/devops stuff) still predominantly favours productivity/creative apps that run on Windows or macos.

[2ilent8cho]

Remember back in 2015 when Microsoft said "Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows" ?

[dmj]

Given we make a point of recruiting staff with skills from outside the education sphere to deliver our very broad curriculum, its not a "schools wont pay for training" issue but that wider industry (outside of cloud-scale/devops stuff) still predominantly favours productivity/creative apps that run on Windows or macos.

 

*Imagines loads of physicists, mathematicians, data scientists and software engineers becoming teachers and demanding "industry standard" linux apps.

Perhaps that's why they are shortage subjects, the media department runs the school IT policy.

[psydii]

*Imagines loads of physicists, mathematicians, data scientists and software engineers becoming teachers and demanding "industry standard" linux apps.

Perhaps that's why they are shortage subjects, the media department runs the school IT policy.

 

I haven't encountered any courses kS1-5 where outcomes for students would be better if they had access to Linux only research/science development tools.

 

Your final point though is genuinely food for thought.

 

FWIW I went to a school that had tens of millions pounds of investment in its science department over the 30 years before I was a student. About 30% of form sixth form students took a science course at A level but only a fraction of that went on to study a science at university. That said I am meeting up with some old school friends next week, two of them have Physics PhD's. One only codes on Windows platform - because when he commercializes the software it needs it to run on the desktops/laptops of customers (yeah yeah old school pre cloud thinking - but true). The other, well lets just say his stuff runs at scale and it ain't on Windows.

[dmj]

I haven't encountered any courses kS1-5 where outcomes for students would be better if they had access to Linux only research/science development tools.

 

Fair, but i did work in a majority linux school that had some of the best KS3-5 results in the county.

Not keeping up with the latest MS fad and the hardware to go with it does have benefits in terms of money for the rest of the curriculum. That's where student outcomes are improved.

[Tefters]

Remember back in 2015 when Microsoft said "Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows" ?

The last version... Before 11...

[mavhc]

Given we make a point of recruiting staff with skills from outside the education sphere to deliver our very broad curriculum, its not a "schools wont pay for training" issue but that wider industry (outside of cloud-scale/devops stuff) still predominantly favours productivity/creative apps that run on Windows or macos.

 

Most new apps are web apps, or mobile apps.

 

If I'm teaching someone to deploy a website, it's going to be on linux.

 

The lock in between Onedrive, M365 and MS Office is even greater than it was before though

[mjhardisty]

Fair play to Microsoft. Gives schools some wiggle room I suppose. Even the last non-Windows 11 compliant device will be 8 years old by the end of the ESU period so they should be replaced.

[Sheridan]

I'm looking into this as I've just taken a new role which has 600 W10 machines - half are upgradeable, half are not. Budget is zero. So limping the 300 one for a year or so would help but this looks like its only for US customers, has anyone seen anything that would suggest it will be available to UK education customers?

[mavhc]

There's always a budget, saying it's 0 is a lie from your bosses, they just don't prioritise it. They could get rid of one employee and have a spare £30k/year, over 2 years that's 300 refurbished desktops

[PotNoodleTech]

I think buying extended licences just to postpone the inevitable is burying your head in the sand.

 

Your pupils deserve to have access to modern equipment and software.

[Sheridan]

Unfortunately we're in a odd position - a new build due in early '26 - therefore we'll be getting mostly new kit as a lot of stuff here is old. So spending money on refurb kit might be a waste of time

 

If we weren't moving, or had better kit then W11 would be rolling out - I'm reluctant to use extended support but in our scenario it might be the only option

[mavhc]

Ah, the stupidity of funding, you can't buy stuff when you need it, only when the random winds of chance allow it

[PotNoodleTech]

Unfortunately we're in a odd position - a new build due in early '26 - therefore we'll be getting mostly new kit as a lot of stuff here is old. So spending money on refurb kit might be a waste of time

 

If we weren't moving, or had better kit then W11 would be rolling out - I'm reluctant to use extended support but in our scenario it might be the only option

 

I understand that scenario - only thing I would say is that the move is something that's coming anyway and being funded anyway - your current pupils that are with you right now deserve the best you can deliver right now, rather than possibly being disadvantaged (overly strong word) just to hopefully save some money from some arbitrary budget somewhere at some stage.

 

The X million your school turns over yearly should be spent in that financial year on staff and pupils every single penny of it?

 

[bknaggs]

I'm looking into this as I've just taken a new role which has 600 W10 machines - half are upgradeable, half are not. Budget is zero. So limping the 300 one for a year or so would help but this looks like its only for US customers, has anyone seen anything that would suggest it will be available to UK education customers?

 

There's a footnote talking about regional pricing. I definitely took it to mean that it will be available in the UK.