gshaw Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 Just a quickie, what flavour of 7 are you running on your networks at the moment?
jamesfed Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 x86-64 on Windows 7 and x86-32 on any of our XP PCs. Will be pure x86-64 by end of April. The primary we look after is pure x86-32 Windows 7 (mainly due to legacy software compatibility).
gshaw Posted February 27, 2012 Author Posted February 27, 2012 Cool, just thinking x64 will make life easier at least from a printer perspective as we won't have to worry about the whole x86 \ x64 driver version business that seems to have caused quite a few grey hairs for Server 2008 R2 admins Was going to push a few PCs up to 4GB RAM as well with spare stuff we've taken out of old computers so would be a bonus there as well
AngryTechnician Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 We're on x86 here, and have deliberately only bought machines with 3GB RAM the past two years as a result. Will look seriously at going x64 with Windows 8, especially as we've recently scrapped all our shoddy HP printers that had naff x64 drivers. I know at least a couple of machines that may have to stay x86 due to older software. I seem to recall our Finance software still has some 16-bit code, unbelievably.
enjay Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 x86, because that is the PCs we had at the time we moved to Windows 7. So far, the only x64 computer I've bought is a laptop which gets configured differently anyway. I am sorely tempted to re-image any other new x64 machines with x86 for the time being though, because of the pointless insistence on having "Program Files" and "Program Files (x64)" folders, meaning all shortcuts need to be duplicated and everyone can see two of every shortcut, only one of which works (still not figured out how RM hide invalid shortcuts on CC3, must try and work that out...).
3s-gtech Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 About 5 Windows 7 x86 PCs (couple of Core Duo tablets, some that need redoing and an old Xibo box). Otherwise pure x64, though we have plenty of XP clients still on x86 here.
AngryTechnician Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 still not figured out how RM hide invalid shortcuts on CC3, must try and work that out. They are recreated from scratch at every logon, and only those pointing to valid targets are created.
jamesfed Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 They are recreated from scratch at every logon, and only those pointing to valid targets are created. One of the reasons I love App-V so much! Only shows the shortcuts for the programs the user has access to. Anywhos back on track - its possible to load x86-32 printer drivers onto Server 2008 R2. We still have a fair few old brother printers still cluttering up the place with their dusty rubbish drivers - just wish we could move to the world of a few good photocopiers dotted around the site and nothing else.
gshaw Posted February 27, 2012 Author Posted February 27, 2012 We're on x86 here, and have deliberately only bought machines with 3GB RAM the past two years as a result. Will look seriously at going x64 with Windows 8, especially as we've recently scrapped all our shoddy HP printers that had naff x64 drivers. Any chance of naming and shaming said printers? Ours are mainly 2420, P3005, P2015 and 4250s so hoping they'll be fairly standard fayre... however I remember the great HP driver debacle of 2006 so don't trust their software developers one bit as far as printer drivers go!
Dave84 Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 I run both here. Id prefer x64 throughout but we still have some old avervision visualizers in use that only have x86 drivers.
Michael Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 All networks I support are running Windows 7 SP1 x86 along with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, which of course is only available in x64. Why if you're wondering? It's to make sure as many applications as possible are compatible and secondly, there is no real need for x64 yet. Clearly Microsoft still think x86 has a place too as I believe they'll still be Windows 8 x86 and x64 versions when it's released. Servers will only be x64 from now on however. I still upgrade workstations to 4GB of memory (or 2GB for netbooks) and Windows 7 will see 3.5GB on most x86 systems. The wasted 500MB isn't really an issue and it means users can multi-task with many more applications quicker. Anywhos back on track - its possible to load x86-32 printer drivers onto Server 2008 R2. It is possible to install x64 and x86 print drivers onto a 2008 R2 server. The x64 version must be installed/added first, then the x86 second. It also has to be the same driver language PCL5, PCL6 etc... and the same version number of the driver. Windows will then intelligently use the correct version of the driver it requires.
6Foot2 Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 (edited) Windows 7: 64 bit [for the most part] Those stations that are not 64 bit are limited by software requirements [EG: Canteen EasyTrace software requires 32 Bit Windows so that the 32 Bit SQL reporting software can run] One legacy station running XP in network Support to run Ringmaster [controls wireless access for students/staff/visitors] 10 or so legacy XP stations in The Music department [running XP based music software] [@gshaw: You could have attached a poll to this post and thus could have seen a summary of the responses as a bar graph at the top of the post] Edited February 27, 2012 by 6Foot2
SYNACK Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 Depending on the school, all 64bit or a combo of 64 and 32 for schools who have older machines that only have 1GB of RAM and no upgrade budget. Anything with 2GB or over gets 64 as it is just more stable and slightly less vunrable to certain exploits.
MYK-IT Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 What are your preferences for Microsoft Office 2010? x86 or x64?
Michael Posted February 27, 2012 Posted February 27, 2012 Office 2010 x86 is recommend, as it's compatible with a lot more add-ons. I don't believe Office 2010 x64 is any better, faster or more secure. Some applications won't ever benefit, unlike the likes of Photoshop which do perform better in x64 mode. I've read online that many users of Office 2010 x64 complain about the amount of memory it uses compared with Office 2010 x86 which does the same thing! It looks like future versions of Office will mostly be cloud based anyway, so x86 or x64 will be irrelevant.
Dagaz Posted February 28, 2012 Posted February 28, 2012 99.5% x64 and thats only cause about 2 clients i have can't take x64 OS, hoping to get rid of them this summer. also i agree with the office x64 comment. have found the x86 to be lot easier and less memory hungry.
glennda Posted February 28, 2012 Posted February 28, 2012 Currently using X86 but will be moving to X64 in the summer and then from then onwards any machine reinstalled will be running X64.
mrbios Posted February 28, 2012 Posted February 28, 2012 Running 32bit windows 7 everywhere bar our IT office pcs, Once windows 8 is out we'll probably look at rolling on to x64 then. Done it this way mainly due avoiding any issues with old educational software. Slowly over the years been replacing software though so hopefully by the time windows 8 is out and i do another test run with all our school software we won't have any of the old crap left (or if we do the relevant departments can be told to upgrade it or lose it)
Roberto Posted February 28, 2012 Posted February 28, 2012 We're migrating to Windows 7 this year, and it will be x64 everywhere except for one or two devices connected to peripherals that will only work on a 32 bit OS (our phone system's switchboard operator's console springs to mind). 32-bit office 2010 for us; Microsoft themselves recommend using this version unless you have an edge case situation where you will see some benefit from x64 office.
JRowley Posted February 28, 2012 Posted February 28, 2012 Running x64 on all hardware which will support it, with only a handful (20 or so) being x86.
Duke5A Posted February 29, 2012 Posted February 29, 2012 I maintain both a x32 and x64 image of Windows 7, but only x64 is deployed. I've got about 200 or so workstations out of 1500 running Win7x64 and the rest are either XP or 2k. We haven't had any issues with software incompatibility on x64 yet so we're pressing on with it.
Arthur Posted February 29, 2012 Posted February 29, 2012 I don't believe Office 2010 x64 is any better, faster or more secure. Even Microsoft recommends most people stick with the 32-bit version of Office 2010. The whole point of the 64-bit version, is to enable add-in developers to create and test 64-bit add-ins ready for when Microsoft discontinues the 32-bit version of Office (probably when Office 16/Windows 9 are released).
pete Posted February 29, 2012 Posted February 29, 2012 Initial push was 32-bit (testing and shims came back clean, not the case with 64). A bit later on, I've got two small rooms running 64-bit without issue and I'm about to push the main rooms to 64-bit.
mrbios Posted February 29, 2012 Posted February 29, 2012 This thread has given me a kick up the arse to get x64 tested again, looks like we still have 4 bits of software that won't work but one of those I'm already told isn't needed. Soon as I get an answer on the other 3 I can start deploying that said...got to sort the WDS driver store first which will no doubt take a while.
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