Windows 7 - Taking the plunge

[Simcfc73]

Evening all,

 

I have decided I need to take the plunge to W7, I love XP but the current new crop of machines and laptops don't have all the drivers I want and the wireless extras on W7 mean I need to do it over this holidays.

 

I have around 40 machines I am going to coexist, I have mandatory pupil profiles and open profiles for staff and redirected start menus... I copy the menus to the clients C: drive and redirect to there... seems to work okay and I might try to drill this down even more at some point.

 

I have read the gotchas and loads of articles.. (shame someone couldn't come up with a definitive library killer).. and done a bit of testing so am 80% happy but does anyone have any stuff I should watch out for or some font of knowledge/advise they can give. I've got a full week to get these up and running.

[Naughty_Nigel]

There isn't too much to be afraid of with Windows 7. Once you get used to it you will find it much better, smoother running and more stable than Xp. Boot times are also noticeably faster.

 

However, you will probably come across one or two peripherals where drivers simply don't exist for Windows 7, even though they were produced for Vista and Server 2008. (We had this issue with a simple SCSI card, but eventually got drivers through this forum.)

 

Likewise, drivers for some on board devices (such as Intel System Management functions) are somewhat obscure, but can be found with perseverance.

 

You will find that many older scanners and inkjet printers are not supported by Windows 7, (their manufacturers having used the opportunity to 'EOL' them.)

 

If you are using a Server 2003 or 2008 as a print server also expect problems with printers and drivers, as the two just don't seem to be compatible.

[mattobrienit]

I agree with Nigel, once you are moved over you will actually enjoy W7 a lot. The boot times are great and once you get past the unsupported devices things will be nice.

[ricki]

The bigest problem I had when we started with windows 7 was the deployment of printer drivers and I had to move to deployment through gpo instead of a script.

 

Richard