Who is using Vista at school?

[joem]

Hi all,

 

I work for a test house who deal with lots of educational software developers.

People are asking us more and more what versions of Vista schools are using.

From research, our gut feel is that probably almost no schools are using it (yet), and probably Business or Enterprise versions if anything.

 

Are any / many schools actually using Vista (apart from that machine in your office with Ultimate and if so which ones?

 

Thanks all,

 

JoeM

[webman]

Here are the results of a recent poll of 287 members - 'Vista. A priority for schools or not?', over 88% said no.

 

Personally I believe educational software developers should be concentrating on platform-independent web-based solutions.

[contink]

Personally I believe educational software developers should be concentrating on platform-independent web-based solutions.

Erm.. that's probably a different topic so I'll nix my opinion on that

[joem]

Cheers for the link Webman,

 

We were really wondering if anybody at all was actually using Vista in earnest yet.

 

As for the developers issue - That's outside my sphere of influence!

However we also test lots of web and browser-based applications, and the range of browsers, platforms and plug-ins multiplied by the ever-increasing security options means that even the web-based solution present a complex set of cross-compatibility options, and making something work on everything is a hefty challenge.

 

Products that launch office applications, for example, behave quite differently with Vista and Office2007 - a fair few things just don't work at all.

 

Still, at least it's never dull!

 

JoeM

[_Bat_]

I -think- I can speak for 95% of primary schools when I say we will not be getting vista for quite a time yet. I work for two primary schools. One of my schools has only just (in the last few weeks) upgraded from windows 2000 to XP, so an upgrade to vista in the forseeable future is extremely unlikely. My other school has only within the last year and a half upgraded to XP so again, with a primary schools budget, it will be very unlikely we'll be migrating to vista any time soon. From how I understand it, a lot of other primary schools are in a similar situation.

 

Plus vista is too dodgy even for home use at the moment, let alone on a network.

[CyberNerd]

@joem

Becta are recommending schools stay clear of all versions of Vista and Office 2007 versions until their final report:

http://publications.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=28199

 

web-based solution present a complex set of cross-compatibility options, and making something work on everything is a hefty challenge.

Not if the right design decisions are made in the first place.

[Halfmad]

No intention of installing Vista here yet, I have a copy for testing but I simply won't roll it out until I have reasons to do so. At the moment XP works brilliantly in the schools and I just don't see why I should lump on top a bloated OS which offered next to nothing that's worthwhile presently.

[webman]

I agree with CyberNerd. The educational software market seems to be dominated by applications written by ex-teachers with a 7-year-old copy of Visual Basic for Dummies. Well, going by some of the stuff we've had to have put on the network before.

 

There are some real gems though - such as Careerscape, JED, Create! technology range, Make Your Mark etc. which are all HTML/flash and work perfectly.

[Norphy]

We're not using it at the moment. In the future, possibly. When we do, it will be Business. As much as I'd prefer to use Enterprise, we don't have SA so we can't.

[contink]

I -think- I can speak for 95% of primary schools when I say we will not be getting vista for quite a time yet. I work for two primary schools. One of my schools has only just (in the last few weeks) upgraded from windows 2000 to XP, so an upgrade to vista in the forseeable future is extremely unlikely. My other school has only within the last year and a half upgraded to XP so again, with a primary schools budget, it will be very unlikely we'll be migrating to vista any time soon. From how I understand it, a lot of other primary schools are in a similar situation.

Certainly the case for my three schools...

 

One only just got updated to Win98 but that's down to very poor, rip off consultancy support from a previous company.

 

I suspect we may be looking to upgrade in about 2 to 3 years time but only once the actual hardware and network infrastructure is in place and then only if the key software used has been updated accordingly.

[joem]

Wow! Someone is actually using Vista Business in their school (according to the poll)

 

If that person who voted "Business" was you - What was the motivation to switch to Vista? Have you had many problems? (a bit Off topic, I guess...)

 

Meanwhile - thanks all for your responses so far,

 

JoeM

[elsiegee40]

Working on the two theories:

1. If it ain't broke don't fix it

2. Never trust version 1 of anything

 

and combining with "we've not got enough money in the piggy bank to upgrade our hardware"

 

We'll be with Windows XP Pro for some time yet.

[Guest Guest]

^ About sums it up

[Guest]

we have 1 laptop running vista at the moment ( not including IT's pcs ) and since we are buying 100+ pcs this year and they only come with vista business, we may have a big trial run :twisted:

mind you i have read you can downgrade new vista pcs to xp, just needs a phonecall to microsoft,

still not sure what we will do yet

[Anglo_Jaxon]

I've had a play on a test PC with Vista and Office 2007.

 

I cried....

 

How long have I spent teaching children and staff how to use XP and Office 2003...

 

The children will switch easily, but the staff!!

 

I think if and when we convert any machines to Vista I will seriously think about changing the whole school to Office 2007 as soon as possible. The staff will find it hard to use 2 different Offices.

 

J

[Sylv3r]

We will be running Vista on our admin workstations once CAPITA have fully tested it out with SIMS.net.

 

I dont think we will be taking the plunge to use VISTA on the curriculum network just yet.

[kingswood]

That is probably how we would do it- Vista on the admin network machines and not on curriculum for at least another year. We have the luxury (right now) of sharing the same infrastructure for admin and curriculum but having separate domains- so doing this gives us ample time to test Vista in the real world. There are already laptops for staff coming through with Vista on them...so the inevitable strikes in any case.

[contink]

There are already laptops for staff coming through with Vista on them...so the inevitable strikes in any case.

On the basis that I have to support those staff laptops I've been reinstalling any Vista laptops with XP... I don't need the headache right now.

[alan-d]

No to Vista at this time. We are in the process of upgrading memory in our PCs to enable XP to run better. Don't see the point of putting Vista on which offers no real improvement, but is heavier on resources.

[zag]

No way I would even touch vista for another 24 months at least, I tried it on one of our laptops the other day and it must have been at least twice as slow as XP on the same hardware.

 

It just doesnt offer anything over xp in a corporate environment yet. Maybe when server 2008 comes out we will see the advantages.

[mrforgetful]

They've removed Solitaire and Minesweeper from the Business edition, so no not migrating until we have to

[Netman]

They've removed Solitaire and Minesweeper from the Business edition, so no not migrating until we have to

 

Oh heck - the nurse and the librarian will be inconsolable Maybe I will have to deploy to them after all

[tscnmuk]

They've removed Solitaire and Minesweeper from the Business edition, so no not migrating until we have to

 

Oh no they haven't, just disabled them by default. If you go into the control pannel and use classic view, click on Programs and Features, down the left hand side there will be a Turn Windows Features on or off option. Go into that and tick the Games box, simple as that.

 

Not that I spend my day playing solitaire

 

Tom

[elsiegee40]

Never mind Solitaire... what about mineSweeper?! * Looks panicky! *

[mrforgetful]

aaahhh genius thankyou lol. I don't have Vista on any machines like but I'll remember.