Creating a case for Windows 7 and Office 2010

[ranj]

Hi All

 

I am going to soon be presenting to the schools senior team on a Windows 7 and Office 2010 rollout.

I have a number of reasons why we are in a position to be ready for Windows 7 and Office 2010 which are 1) Our Back office servers are more or less Windows 7 ready 2) we pay for an annual schools agreement which already licenses us to use Windows 7 and office 3) 95% of our machines meet or exceed the specification for Windows 7 & office 4) As a school we want to be more stringent with the use of USB sticks and have an encruption policy for confidential data to be secure and Windows 7 will enable us to do this and manage it appropriatly with Bit Locker.

 

Whilst I am confident we will get the go ahead what would seal it would be if I somehow I can show that the use of 7 and office will enable us to meet the framework for Ofsted in a far better way than we do currently. Having looked at the framework it seems Ofsted don't have too much to say on IT in general but more how the school utilise ICT for teaching learning. I may be wrong though and thought it would be worth asking here if there are any good whitepapers to support my case.

 

I know Becta have a lot on good use of ICT but with there position now I am not sure if it would be worth me quoting them in my presentation.

 

Thanks

[zag]

Office 2010 is great, its far easier to do lots of stuff.

 

Bitlocker is useless in my opinion, I wouldn't base any justification on that. But windows 7 again is much easier to use.

[Arcath]

it looks shiny and the buttons glow when you hover

[cookie_monster]

They're already paying for them and unless they want to move away from Windows in the next few years then they really have no choice. More and more hardware and software won't support XP so the OS will need to move at some point Office is a different matter we are still on Office 2003 with few issues BUT if you refresh the OS you might as well do Office especially if they're already paying for the updates. Other than the cost of your time it's a no brainer really. Keep in mind that certain MIS products i'm thinking of one beginning with S don't yet support Office 2010 though I've seen some on here have already tested it.

[dhoward_westexetc]

Keep in mind that certain MIS products i'm thinking of one beginning with S don't yet support Office 2010 though I've seen some on here have already tested it.

 

Does it support Office 2007 then, I though that and Office 2010 were fairly similar? I presume they will get round to proper Office 2010 support at some stage soon?

[zag]

Yes Sims supports Office 2007, and works mostly with 2010 as well. There are a few problems though.

[m25man]

Have a look at the out of the box Power Management and Policy features that's always a good positive spin for the Win7 upgrade case.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/5/4/854F66B6-8C09-4F8A-986E-38E9EBAC1677/Windows7_Power_Management_Whitepaper.pdf

 

Obviously to capitalise on all of the power saving features of Win7 Management you need the hardware to support it but there are savings to be made if you implement it correctly which of course you would.......

[john]

. Keep in mind that certain MIS products i'm thinking of one beginning with S don't yet support Office 2010 though I've seen some on here have already tested it.

 

For the record its not SERCO that has 2010 issues as that works with all Office Productivity Suites

[Gatt]

To date, I have not yet found any problems with SIMS & Office 2010 other than the fact that Capita will not support it until around XMAS :|

[SYNACK]

Office 2010 makes it much easier to share work via its web features and also gather content like youtube videos directly from the web easily. Coupled with either internal free sharepoint of windows live drive also allows for the students to easily view and edit their stuff from anywhere with a web browser.

 

For research OneNote is epic and if you have not looked into it I would recommend it, that has got to fit into some framework. Windows 7 directaccess is also a really good selling point, being able to provide seamless access to staff laptops wherever they are in the world as if they are on the LAN.

 

There is also the cost saving from the time saved not hunting down XP drivers and the increased automation of everything in 7 including repair.

[srochford]

You don't say what version of Office you're currently using. If it's Office 2007 then it's not a big change to go to 2010 but if it's 2003 then it's a major change and a key thing that needs to be in place is an opportunity for staff to get familiar with it well before next term starts.

 

There's a need to migrate at some point (eventually even HP and Dell will stop shipping XP drivers!) but it needs to happen at a time when it won't disrupt teaching and learning but will benefit it. That time might be now - it would be good to talk through with teaching staff the sort of benefits that they can get from this.

 

I like Windows 7 but there are very many differences in the way it works - are you ready for the new style profiles? Will you be able to move every machine to Windows 7? If not, how will you cope with 2 sets of profiles? What are you doing about libraries? How will you configure search indexing? Have you checked all your apps to see how they cope with user access control?

 

Have you let key staff see what the machines will look like with Windows 7 (you want to get the keen staff on your side; there are always going to be a few who don't like any change and you can't do much about them)? Get them to try out a dummy build and let you know what they think.

 

If it doesn't work (because in spite of your best efforts something just doesn't work!) have you got a rollback plan - how quickly could you put XP back on the machines?

[cookie_monster]

I've got it running well on my Atom netbook with 1Gb RAM but that's about as low as is usable.