[K12OSN] OT: thoughts on running vista through K12LTSP

[Todd O'Bryan]

Kentucky passed a huuuge bond measure to get back some of the
technological prowess we lost. (As a result of reform in the early 90's,
we were ranked among the top ten states for technology; and then the
legislature got the idea that they had "done that," and we found
ourselves back in the forties. I can't believe how impossible it is to
explain to people that anytime you buy something technological you have
basically committed to a new recurring expense just to maintain current
levels of service. It's not like buying a new scoreboard or building a
new school; it's like replacing a roof. Except that instead of lasting
15 or 20 years before you need a new one, you should expect it to start
giving out in 5 or so. OK, enough of that rant; I'm talking to people
who *know* what I'm complaining about.)

So, we're getting a bunch of new computers. And they have Vista on them.
And Office 2007. Which is a problem because all of our applications
curriculum uses Office XP. And we can't buy new textbooks for five years
because that's when the cycle comes back up. Anyway, you get the point.

Oh, and mention thin clients as a way to spend all this state money and
you get nowhere because they're not on the state's technology bid list.

This is the same state technology department that set up a Windows
Exchange Server that is performing so badly that it regularly takes
teachers 45 seconds to *delete* an email, never mind actually read it.
And that's when you can connect to the webserver at all.

They've done the following: deleted all emails in our mailboxes over 30
days old (probably in violation of laws requiring that those emails be
archived), deleted old email addresses from the system in place before
the new one started, and optimized our inboxes (whatever that means).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, things aren't much better, yet. They've taken
the system down for another weekend, but we won't know if that did any
good until everyone tries to access email after spring break.

Can you tell I'm annoyed?

Todd

On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 10:06 -0500, Shawn Maggard wrote:
> I don't want to turn this into a "Vista blast zone", but several
> clients here have went out and bought HPs and Dells and brought them
> to me just to show me the horrible performance and ask to purchase XP.
> I think Vista will be "better" in about 3 years when the hardware
> catches up. But for now, I see nothing in it that is worth the upgrade
> except for drivers that don't exist and horrible performance.