I have been playing with Vista a little bit.  Something that I have
found that may make it easier for students is changing the control panel
and the personalized settings (old display) to classic view.  It makes
the toolbars and menus look more like something we are all familiar
with.

John Peters
Network Administrator
Morristown School District



-----Original Message-----
From: School Information Technology Discussion
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bob Wickberg
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 11:51 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Vista vs XP

I recently bought a batch of new machines for the lab I most directly
supervise, so I figured that was good place to get my feet wet with
Vista.
 

Pros:

1) One issue we have with XP laptops all the time is when kids log into
their own accounts in the students domain on a laptop, then close the
lid
on the laptop and put it back in the cart, without properly logging off,
the next kid who opens that laptop gets a message saying the machine is
locked, and only an administrator or the first kid can unlock it.  The
workaround is to yank the battery, crashing the machine, then restarting
it.  Kind of a dumb approach, though, huh?  There is a workaround where
I
can set them up not to lock when the lid is closed, but then the second
kid would have access to the first kid's account (which is his own
fault,
but...)

In Vista, user switching is supported even when the computer is joined
to
a domain, so if the machine is locked, and the screen says someone is
logged in, you can hit control-alt-del, and either log in to your own
account without logging the other person off, in which case the first
user
is still hogging a bit of RAM, but you'll probably never notice, or you
can restart the machine.

2) in Vista, ordinary users can set up local printers.  In XP, you need
admin privileges.  This is a real problem with teacher machines, where
they have a hundred different kinds of printers at home, and want to be
able to use them, and I really don't want to give them local admin
privileges, just because of the time required to do this for 100
teachers,
if for no other reason.  Since we haven't deployed Vista laptops yet,
I'm
not sure if this solves this problem 100%, or only for printers where
Vista has the drivers built in, but we'll see.

3) I like the enhancements to the toolbar, where you see snapshots of
the
windows when you move the mouse over the open apps, instead of just
showing the titles to the window.  I think it'll help make a crowded
desktop easier to navigate.

4) I like the spot on  the start menu (do they even call it the start
menu
any more?  It doesn't say "start") that does double duty as the search
and
the run functions.  I do File , run all the time in XP, it's one less
click now. 

Cons:

1) you have to work harder to find the logoff start menu item, that was
a
real dumb move on MS' part.  I'm forever logging kids off now after
they've left the lab, cause they couldn't figure out how.

2) MS is tightening the licensing process, the keys you buy under select
agreements will only work  N times, where N is the # of licenses
purchased.  When hard drives die and the OS has to be reinstalled, this
will result in phone calls to MS to get them to reset the license count
(if they even will, I don't know).

3) We did find one courseware site a kid is taking a course on that
relies
on Java, that worked fine under XP, and  didn't work right on Vista, so
the kid can't work on that course in the lab any more.

4) We use First Class for e-mail, the installer doesn't  install the
spelling dictionary in the right spot under Vista.

5) It's just different, so things hide in different places.  My Computer
is now just Computer, for example.  Also, there are directory entries
that
are really pointers to other directory entries, kind of like symbolic
links in Unix.  Nothing I can't get used to, but....   

6) an issue on machines folks bring in, that aren't domain members, who
want to connect to our with our wireless network -  A few security
settings have to be changed from the defaults, and these were fairly
easy
to find in XP, but are harder to find in Vista in order to change them. 
Once you've found the right dialog box, it's the same as XP, but finding
it in Vista is harder.

7) it's kind of a resource pig, isn't it?


Let's face it, if you're a PC shop, Vista is pretty much inevitable,
unless you really can convince your faculty, administration, board,
whoever, to convert to Linux.  I like Linux, really I do, I'm writing
this
on my Debian machine at home, but we're a long, long way for taking that
kind of a plunge at school.  So it's not so much an issue of whether
you're switching to Vista, it's just a matter of when.  If you're a
Novell
shop, the answer would seem to be, "not yet", but for our environment,
it
seems to work OK, and I'll support it.  Unlike the 2000 to XP switch,
where I found built in support for CD burning, and for zip files, to be
compelling reasons to prefer XP to 2000, as long as the hardware was
sufficient, I really haven't found a killer reason to make this switch,
though.