[senit] Vista compatability

hi, with regard to getting school laptops with vista

Im gong to opt out of a Vista v Mac debate as they always drive me
insane 

My fundamental advice to those looking to purchase is - try it out -
each school or organisation will have a combination of issues to
consider and will need to look at the pros and cons for themselves. I
think im just wary of over generalising in advice on Vista deployment -
like all key investments its an important decision  

David Banes
Director of Development

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-----Original Message-----
From: senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Alex Hammerstein
Sent: 05 December 2007 16:43
To: senit at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: RE: [senit] Vista compatability

David  

I certainly agree that Vista has some very nice features, and will in
due
course be a very good and stable product. I think that the forthcoming
Vista
SP1 pack is probably where MS should have been before they released the
program, had they not been in such a rush for last year's Christmas
market.

However I think it is very bloated - twice the size of XP which itself
had
the legacy of earlier windows versions in it.

I know that many people got caught out last year buying new laptops for
Christmas and then finding that they needed to slam in more memory to
get
many of Vista's features to work properly.

I recently purchased an iMac with the new Leopard OS, and I am so
impressed.
If Apple can write a decent, slim and fast working OS, why cant MS?   If
there was a Mac equivalent for MS Access then as far as I am concerned.
Put
the Mac and Vista machines alongside each other and boot them up, there
is
no contest, the Mac is up running and made a cup of tea before Vista
finished loading.  

Just IMHO anyway

Alex

-----Original Message-----
From: senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of David Banes
Sent: 05 December 2007 16:18
To: senit at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: RE: [senit] Vista compatability

Im going to walk a middle ground here as ever 

I really want to warn against making gross over generalisations re Vista
- it has some real benefits to those with SEN not least of all the VR
module is effective and can help with a wide range of needs

Ive seen Vista rolled out successfully in many places - but you need to
consider carefully which version of Vista you want - I upgraded Business
to Ultimate because the additional multimedia functionality and
applications like DVD maker were beneficial to me  

Upgrades on current systems are always more difficult - but I would take
care not to confuse issues with upgrades with issues with OEM builds -
the issues are often different

We've run a series of workshops this year on Vista and our own team use
two partitions one with Vista + Office 2007 and one with XP with 2003 -
both are valuable at different times 

Well be running more Vista workshops and courses in 2008 do watch out
for them 

David Banes
Director of Development
AbilityNet 

-----Original Message-----
From: senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of Alex Hammerstein
Sent: 05 December 2007 09:46
To: senit at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: RE: [senit] Vista compatability

I can vouch for this - even though our laptops were high spec.  We have
just
ripped Vista off of them all and reverted to good ol' XP pro!!

Think I shall wait for SP2 to be released before returning to Vista

Alex

-----Original Message-----
From: senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senit-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of David Colven
Sent: 05 December 2007 09:41
To: senit at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: Re: [senit] Vista compatability

Most of the commentaries that I have read warn against putting Vista on
a 
laptop unless it is a very high spec. one.

They end up very slow, some taking up to 4 minutes to boot.

David

At 08:35 05/12/07, you wrote:
>hi, with regard to getting school laptops with vista
>on , i have been told that vista business edition is
>the best version. .............
>
>
>
>       __________________________________________________________
>Sent from Yahoo! - the World's favourite mail http://uk.mail.yahoo.com

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