Windows 7 Early Adopters' Forum

[twynham]

Hi. I thought it might be useful to share a little information about a session I was involved in today at Microsoft Reading. Twynham School hosted an "Early Adopters' Forum" to try and get as many schools as possible together who had deployed Windows 7 within their schools. The day was very enjoyable and I have posed a number of presentations and a summary on my blog which I thought some people may find useful. They are from a variety of schools and Local Authorities as follows:

 

Twynham School Windows 7 Deployment

 

West Hatch School Windows 7 Deployment

 

Warwickshire Windows 7 Deployments

 

Lodge Park Technology College Windows 7 Deployment

 

Top Reasons and tips for deploying Windows 7 in schools

 

I hope this is useful for some. If you would like any further information please do contact me by email at [email protected]

 

Mike Herrity

 

Twynham School

[GrumbleDook]

Gutted not to have been able to make it .. but some good links and info there. Well done to all schools involved (especially Lodge Park )

[irsprint]

Its been going well for me, just been starting in non essensial areas, runs like a dream! but doing baby steps

[john]

Very useful slides thanks Those that phased in the deployments do we know how it went for them, I said I felt it may be problematic but has that been the case does anyone know?

[twynham]

Nyall Monkton was present at the day and produced a presentation which we unfortunately did not get to before he had to leave. I have added the presentation to the blog and thought I would make it known to people on here:

 

Dean Close School Windows 7 Deployment

[DrCheese]

I don't understand this tip tho,

 

"Don’t use redirection of folders as this grinds log-in times down."

 

How else are you supposed to redirect startmenu's/desktops/home directories?

 

Also, how have the early adopters managed the whole "libraries" feature? Even if I redirect a users documents to a share, it still insists on dumping a local path in the library by default and users can add/remove folders from the library

[featured_spectre]

redirecting the start menu is a beast, that truely does clog down log in times. I did a trial as my suite isnt up and running yet. Took it off and it works fine. The only issue I have is start menu redirecting, but hell i just did a GPO and took off everything I didnt need.

[t_h]

Thanks for those links. I'm literally just about to (this week) start the process of evaluating Windows 7 for our network. I've been using it at home for a few months and it works very well - now to start testing it properly.

 

In regards to the folder redirection tip that does seem a bit odd. Fortunately I'm not bothered about the Start menu just the Desktop and My Documents folder will do for us.

 

I've decided to go with a phased approach myself as it seems the best way to do it with minimal impact, in my opinion. After evaluation by myself the teacher's laptops will be treated to Windows 7.

 

The theory behind this is that staff will be able to get used to the interface in their own time before it starts appearing on classroom computers. They will be encouraged to have a tinker with it and give me feedback which should be useful to me before I start rolling it out fully. The other advantage of using the laptops is that they are the least tethered to the network - most of them aren't joined to the domain and some are even running Vista Business already. It's all about managing risk...

 

That's my logic anyway and I'm sticking to it!

[featured_spectre]

You'll find that the kids are much more adept at picking up ANY os faster than anyone else.

[SimpleSi]

As an early adopter of bashing Vista (and lets face it - I was right on the money there ) I feel I should wade in early on Windows 7 and its gives its acolytes the online pasting they surely deserve (all in the best possible taste )

 

5 Reasons to move to Windows 7

1. Improved Performance and Speed.

2. Helps sustain Hardware (better than Vista and even XP).

3. Vastly improved security features.

4. Search and User Interface give a very intuitive experience.

5. It is not Vista!

1. Any facts and figures on a real world school machine (less than 4TB of RAM and 12 zillion core-processor )

 

2. ..and even XP .. - really - can we assume you've found some esoteric circumstances to justify this one!

 

3. I'll give you that one - i'd certainly hope it was and its a good reason to "upgrade"

 

4. As someone who still reverts XP back to basics and disables any fancy "intuitive" interfaces that have been invented since Win 3.11 thats not a winner with me but I know that some people like new shiny toys

 

5. Never a truer statement was said

 

regards

 

Simon

 

PS But I wished I worked in a place with the time and money to play with the new toys

[davecoleman146]

We have indeed had many problems with redirected items in Win 7 which did not happen with XP the biggest problem was the start menu we even decided to run with local start menus for a week which took the login speeds on our oldest computers from 5 -10 mins down to 1.5 mins. the workaround we found was to write scripts to delete the local start menu and copy over the start menu we wanted from the server to the local machine. This is not ideal but worked and i am hoping that Microsoft will look at this problem and come up with a fix. We also had the same problem with the redirected desktop folder. But was the pain worth it? Definitely we now have a consistent windows experience for staff and students on all workstations/laptops/netbooks and zero adoption problems from students which I can only guess is due to students now having Vista at home.

[Ric_]

@SimpleSi: You might find Microsoft UK Schools News Blog : What does Windows 7 run on? interesting

[SimpleSi]

Definitely we now have a consistent windows experience for staff and students on all workstations/laptops/netbooks and zero adoption problems from students which I can only guess is due to students now having Vista at home.

 

I can clearly see that Windows7 (whats going to be the abbr - Win7? W7?) could cures Vista's ills and I can see that poor people who tried Vista should move on but I'm going to try and put my finger in the dyke and stop the other lemmings from drowning

 

regards

 

Simon

[SimpleSi]

You might find Microsoft UK Schools News Blog : What does Windows 7 run on? interesting

 

Thats full of posts from some idiots from something called Edugeek - what do they know about quality OSs

 

Next thing you'll be quoting from some guy called Balmer

 

regards

 

Simon

[mrbios]

Interesting, some very usefull information here, we're looking to move to windows 7 next year and im currently in the phase of testing things out, i've got a VMware ESXi server running a few instances with a DC, exchange, Server related apps like AV management and one client PC to test policys and software on...

 

...I'm interested in this problem with the start menu redirection though, as we wouldn't be able to do without it! do many of you have work arounds for this? I'd be interested in the different ways people are implementing it

 

how are you lot doing your start menu redirection too? is it coming straight from a single source like a file server or are you pulling it off a DFS share?

Edited October 8, 2009 by mrbios

[g3f0rc3]

redirecting the start menu is a beast, that truely does clog down log in times. I did a trial as my suite isnt up and running yet. Took it off and it works fine. The only issue I have is start menu redirecting, but hell i just did a GPO and took off everything I didnt need.

 

 

Dunno if this helps anyone but we redirect our Start Menu but never experienced the slow logon part, for us it was a case of getting it working in that 1st logon worked then wouldn't work again. Sorted that then had mixed start menu from All users and our predefined one, simple policy change sorted that. The only thing i can maybe suggest on the slow side of things is if you still run mandatory profiles like we do rather than use the new options in group policies under User Configuration>Preferences>Control Panel Settings>Start Menu to tweak the look and what shows do it in the profile and leave that policy empty. Works perfectly for us no slow speeds and just leaves it as a simple redirect and nothing else.