Dos_Box Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 (edited) I've just received a reply to an email I sent to Ray Fleming at Microsoft letting him know that more EduGeek members now use Windows 7 than Vista to view the site, and he told me that the expectation was for Vista to be upgraded first then XP. However the opposite has been found to be true with XP getting upgraded first. I suggested that this could be because many schools now run Server 2008\2008 R2 and want their older clients to be able to use the advanced feature set of the latest server offerings. So which are you upgrading first? Vista or XP, and why exactly? Edited January 25, 2010 by Dos_Box 1
Netman Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 I think that can be explained by the fact that many of us took a good hard look at Vista and decided to stick with XP - hence leading to an eventual upgrade of systems from XP to 7. 1
BrianG Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 I think that can be explained by the fact that many of us took a good hard look at Vista and decided to stick with XP - hence leading to an eventual upgrade of systems from XP to 7. That's the same for my schools. We didn't bother upgrading to Vista so we'll be upgrading to 7 from XP later in the year 1
glennda Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 I think that can be explained by the fact that many of us took a good hard look at Vista and decided to stick with XP - hence leading to an eventual upgrade of systems from XP to 7. I would prefer to work with xp on a network anyway, i like windows 7 for use at home etc, but i don't like the idea of it on a network (same as with vista) mostly because they have moved everything and it will take a lot longer for us to get used to finding everything again!! 1
Dos_Box Posted January 25, 2010 Author Posted January 25, 2010 What Ray was suggesting though was schools with both Vista and XP were choosing to upgrade XP first rather than the 'flakier' Vista.
tmcd35 Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 XP to 7. Why? Because we wouldn't touch Vista with barge poll so it's not installed anywhere
DMcCoy Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 XP -> Vista -> 7 (in the summer). 7 was too late in the holidays to go directly to it, so we had to go to Vista instead. The jump between Vista and 7 is minimal for apps/deployment etc seeing as 7 is only a revision of Vista and not new technology.
Michael Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 What Ray was suggesting though was schools with both Vista and XP were choosing to upgrade XP first rather than the 'flakier' Vista. The more logical explanation is that Vista and Windows 7 pretty much use the same set of GPOs or ADMX files, and profile versions whereas XP uses older ADM files and a slightly different profile format. From a network management point of view it makes sense. I'm pretty sure however Vista also would quickly get upgraded to Windows 7 and won't last as long as XP.
Diello Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 Planning our migration from XP to 7 at the moment, will probably go out March/April time when Capita officially support 7 for SIMS (why they won't support 64-bit though is ridiculous). We took a look at Vista, but were never going to subject our network to it! Windows 7 on the other hand, is superb!
SYNACK Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 Went to Vista ages ago and most of the features and benifits of 7 are already in there. There are a few speed improvements but there is not massive rush as we already have/use most of the featureset. There is also little interface/GP change and no profile change so it is easier to have a staggered upgrade of some machines initially allowing for a gentler deploy. I think that the difference in uptake is due to the feature disparity, 7 is a vast improvement featureset wise on XP where as it is more like a revision of Vista so its not such a big deal. That said I am in the process of switching over the machines to 7 (64bit where avalible) as every little bit of speed helps, well without the penalty of dealing with some of XPs more antiquated subsystems (Offline files, MSI installation integration, network stack etc.).
BrianG Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 As DMcCoy said, Windows 7 is more of an improvement to Vista rather than a complete change as with Windows XP. Maybe that's why people are opting to upgrade Windows XP first. They probably see having a Vista/7 network preferable to an XP/7 network. Too many differences
Quackers Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 Just out or curiosity, what percentage are the OS's that people viewing edugeek are running? Is the loverly, brilliant, "just works" XP still king?
Michael Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 I would say XP is still king for the time being. I think what browsers people are using would be a more interesting statistic
enjay Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 Just out or curiosity, what percentage are the OS's that people viewing edugeek are running? That might not indicate what our schools are running though. I had Vista and now have 7, but the rest of the school is still XP and will be for another 18 months at least. Same goes for browsers; I'm Firefox here, but the normal PCs are IE7 and IE8. Oh, and I have a different Office version too :-) The statistic which is very difficult, if not possible, to gather is how many Win7 users went via Vista, and how many went straight up from XP. That would be interesting to see.
Kitkatninja Posted January 25, 2010 Posted January 25, 2010 We tried a small run with Vista and it failed... The majority of machine run XP (a handful of teacher/staff machines are running 7 & vista), so we'll be upgrading machines to 7. -Ken
BrianG Posted January 27, 2010 Posted January 27, 2010 Where I work at the moment, they seem very Anti Vista and ANti 7 but that's more because the people in charge don't know much about IT and a very scared of change. That's a question.. how many peoples decision on when or if to upgrade to Vista or 7 has been affected or even stopped because of management being scared of changing from what they know?
broc Posted January 27, 2010 Posted January 27, 2010 I would say that at my school more than 50% of our XP based client workstations would struggle to run Vista, so the time to change for us would be when we get all of our hardware to a level that is capable of running Vista/Windows 7, by which time it will be a no-brain decision to go to Windows 7 as most new purchases would come with a Windows 7 preload. Or at least that is what I would have said were it not for the fact that the decision is no longer ours to make because of BSF
enjay Posted January 27, 2010 Posted January 27, 2010 I would say that at my school more than 50% of our XP based client workstations would struggle to run Vista Doesn't mean they can't run W7...
broc Posted January 27, 2010 Posted January 27, 2010 (edited) Doesn't mean they can't run W7... Indeed, as long as there is driver support, and they meet the minimum performance criteria.... which for some at 5 years old they may not.... plus we would need the money to pay for the licences to upgrade and BSF has wiped out the budget. Edited January 27, 2010 by broc
featured_spectre Posted January 27, 2010 Posted January 27, 2010 I only have the physical staff desktops to upgrade to Windows 7 and we are done across the school. I am waiting for the physical desktops as SIMS isnt supported yet. When it is, I will upgrade.
enjay Posted January 27, 2010 Posted January 27, 2010 Indeed, as long as there is driver support, and they meet the minimum performance criteria.... which for some at 5 years old they may not Obviously with those caveats, however the point I was trying to make was that the min spec for W7 is quite a bit less than that of Vista (a 5-yr-old P4 2.8Ghz with 512MB did just fine in testing here) so you may find that even your older ones are up to it. Doesn't help with the licensing costs, of course!
garethEds Posted January 27, 2010 Posted January 27, 2010 I think that can be explained by the fact that many of us took a good hard look at Vista and decided to stick with XP - hence leading to an eventual upgrade of systems from XP to 7. We are tied in with what the LEA offer us - they are still Windows 2003R2 domain controllers but plans are in place to upgrade to 2008R2 - we will then be moving our XP network (which works fine) over to 7 - missing Vista. I'm sure there may be some schools in the LEA that run Vista somewhere on their networks, but it isn't really supported by the LEA. Gareth
broc Posted January 27, 2010 Posted January 27, 2010 Obviously with those caveats, however the point I was trying to make was that the min spec for W7 is quite a bit less than that of Vista (a 5-yr-old P4 2.8Ghz with 512MB did just fine in testing here) so you may find that even your older ones are up to it. Doesn't help with the licensing costs, of course! Point well made..... thank you. As it happens we had decided to skip Vista & Office 2007 because of the demands it would have made on the ageing hardware; previously under our rolling program of replacement we would have probably reached the point now where we would have been well positioned for migration from XP to Vista or Windows 7 were it not for BSF. If we had carried out the replacements it would have made no sense for my school to migrate to Vista with Windows 7 being available.
Netman Posted January 27, 2010 Posted January 27, 2010 Point well made..... thank you. As it happens we had decided to skip Vista & Office 2007 because of the demands it would have made on the ageing hardware... Yer, we skipped it because of the demands it would place on our ageing staff
broc Posted January 27, 2010 Posted January 27, 2010 Yer, we skipped it because of the demands it would place on our ageing staff That was why we skipped Office 2007
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