When will you deploy vista

[steve]

You forgot the poll option of:

 

When hell freezes over

 

We're looking at 2008 for a complete revamp of our system.

[kingswood]

What's the matter with you guys? Vista is out on Jan 31st, and we need to be deploying it on Feb 1st. Have you seen the new deployment stuff? Maaaaaan! No more Ghost, no more MSIs, no more different images for different machines, gazillions of new group policies to make locking down machines much more flexible.

Have a look here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2006/11/Deployment/default.aspx

 

Can't wait.

 

(BTW, we're on that license that allows us to use the latest version of Ms products on their release "software assurance" I think it's called, - I know that that is not applicable to a lot of schools)

 

True. The imaging tools look very nice. But slapping the OS on straight after release would make me blood chill. Let us know how it goes

[Jake]

I'm using Vista at the moment on my gaming rig at home (gives me a 5.0 rating, 5.9 for graphics ), must admit the performance of my games is better than on xp. Though that could just be due to my xp being filled with a few years worth of crap before I switched to vista.

 

However, I doubt we will roll it out at school for a while, certainly not immediately

[dezt]

I've only just managed to upgrade to XP, there's no chance Vista will be allowed anywhere near the school until at least 2008, maybe 2009.....

[john]

Trialing now, with a possible easter roll out, and yes the imaging stuff is amazing, looks very very good cannot wait for it.

[contink]

Erm.. the poll seems to make the mistake of assuming that Vista will actually make it out before or even during 2008..

 

My money is going with SP1 being out and the bugs being removed.. Oh and my schools deciding they can't live without it. Sooo.. 2009 maybe?

[bossman]

Need to look at upgrading servers to 2k3 yet but would imagine no large probs there, before looking at deploying Vista around 2008 maybe slightly later 2009 when all the immediate bugs are ironed out to a satisfactory level.

Teachers are a worry cos they won't have the same colours and appearance as XP so they will be totally lost hehe.

[eejit]

Erm.. the poll seems to make the mistake of assuming that Vista will actually make it out before or even during 2008..

 

My money is going with SP1 being out and the bugs being removed.. Oh and my schools deciding they can't live without it. Sooo.. 2009 maybe?

 

Of course it's really good fun to knock Microsoft and for many of us it's a difficult habit to break - it's just a natural thing to do. There is no way that Vista will not be coming out in Q1 2007 though, it's going RTM on November the 8. I've been using it on my own personal machines for quite a few months now, as I'm sure a lot of you have, and it's solid as a rock and looks great. It's even surprising how dated XP looks and feels when you go back to it. While this will not be the huge jump forward that home users were hoping for and a lot of the features that Microsoft have dropped is very disappointing, for the techies out there it is part of a whole new Microsoft strategy that'll make our lives so much easier.

[ThatBoringBloke]

Probably 2008.

 

Need the hardware that will run it first, plus I need to spend a good few months learning it myself before it goes anywhere near our network.

 

RC1 Runs great on a MacBook in Parallels though!

[beeswax]

as we're all MS here, it'll come eventually, but not until at least SP1, and all the machines are up to spec.

[GrumbleDook]

I have been looking at dual booting 2 rooms but we have some other stuff to complete first ... give me 3 weeks and I'll have decided (and maybe even have a RIS image ready to go)

 

I may look at the new deployment system first (or get Stephen and Sean too ... the pleasures of having minions). I've mentioned this to a few people already but time to go public.

 

After having a few conversations with some people at Microsoft they are quite keen to find a few schools, outside of the usual partner initiatives, to try a room or two of Vista and/or Office 2007. They would like to see how it affects what happens in the calssroom as well as seeing how easy techies find it to roll out and support.

 

There will be support for this from a number of places including here and directly from Microsoft. If you are interested please PM me and I will pass on your details.

[NetworkGeezer]

I have been looking at dual booting 2 rooms but we have some other stuff to complete first ... give me 3 weeks and I'll have decided (and maybe even have a RIS image ready to go)

 

I may look at the new deployment system first.

 

I thought RIS could only support booting from the first partition on disk. Is Vista RIS more flexible in this repect?

[GrumbleDook]

We would be using DeployCentre (formerly from paowerQuest, now part of Ghost from Symantec ... but we are still licensed for the old version) to roll out the initial two partition image (Vista on the first partition and XP on the second) and then keep duing updates to the Vista side of things via RIS ...

 

It means more work but I'll have to see how much more.

[OverWorked]

Trialing now, with a possible easter roll out, and yes the imaging stuff is amazing, looks very very good cannot wait for it.

 

To all those who mention using the imaging tools:-

 

Does this mean you are using Longhorn Server too for the imaging, instead is RIS on Server 2003?

[GrumbleDook]

At the moment no ... Server 2003 R2, but we will be looking at the new deployment kit to see what else it offers.

[PiqueABoo]

it is part of a whole new Microsoft strategy that'll make our lives so much easier

 

Uh huh.. and what did **zero admin** do for you around the turn of the century?

 

.MS said every release of NT was utterly fabulous on all counts and I don't recall my relationship with it changing that much in the 13 years since v3.1. What usually happens is they make make feature X easier for the GUI-bound, but then there's some essential (hah!) new feature Y that takes up the time you just saved.

[john]

The new imaging tools come with SP2 for Server 2003, but you can get an RC of it from the MS site. Its called WDS (windows Deployment Services) I think.... I have just read up on it so far and not played but it looks good, so Vista will deploy off Server 2003 using WDS, but not RIS.

[tosca925]

I'd need to read up on it more, but the earliest we would look at it is Sept 2007, we have a new build supposedly finishing then so with that would come a load of new PC's. SO this is when i will have to give it some serious thought.

[OverWorked]

The new imaging tools come with SP2 for Server 2003, but you can get an RC of it from the MS site. Its called WDS (windows Deployment Services) I think.... I have just read up on it so far and not played but it looks good, so Vista will deploy off Server 2003 using WDS, but not RIS.

 

Thanks. Is there any benefit to deploying XP with WDS?

 

I'm not planning on using Vista for a couple of years, we just don't have the hardware; but I'm interested in the new deployment tools if they're any use to me at the moment with XP.

[john]

I have not tried them, but will be doing maybe over crimbo.

 

If you currently use RIS you will get them with SP2 for Server 2003 as it is the replacment for RIS, but as far as I gathered from reading the MS blurb, before I got bored of the usual MS waffle, is its basically RIS just with a bit more intelligence, and hopefully some more common NICs integrated in it such as the Broadcom ones that all the big names like such as HP.

 

Every HP Business Desktop in the last 4 years is Broadcom based (yes I know there will be odd models with that as an exception) and the new range of G5 servers are Broadcom based now as well so its about time MS integrate that into it without me doing it.

 

When you think about it RIS is a windows 2000 carry through fine its been tweaked slightly but I suspect this will be like changing SUS to WSUS, a big difference hopefully! I will try and read more this week if I get chance and try it on our admin network maybe as I don't want to upset my RIS box as its puring like a dream again.

[OverWorked]

Thanks. I may try it. I've had problem with RIS installing on machines with SATA controllers. I was wondering if WDS might fix that.

[john]

I have had no probs with RIS and Sata, any make or model or mobo / chipset or pc that you can give us to help?

[OverWorked]

Thanks for the offer John, but I eventually sorted them out after a lot of effort. RIS works with some SATA controllers OK, but others were tricky. I was just hoping that the new system would work better with them.