Gaming Windows 7 in schools?

[Rydian]

Some schools are just more up to date on technology than others.

My school's got windows 7 on it's computers at the main campus... last I checked the regional center I took a few classes at originally still had Vista, but the computer lab I'm in at the main campus had it's older windows 7 PCs (a mix of Dells/HPs with P4s and C2Ds) replaced with some new Lenovo machines with i5s a few weeks ago and we were told the old ones were being sent elsewhere in the system, so I assume they might have gone to the Rockbridge center... I might just drive down there and check some time.

Anyways one of my classes is literally about Windows 7 (from all the types of network/unattended installation to making and applying disk images, even to Aero and new IE8 features), so I've gotten to learn a lot about how they actually do the installs in various scenarios. For example in the lab I'm in, those were the only new computers coming in so they just had some interns (one of whom is in some of my classes) do it manually... so we had to get one of them to unfreeze a few computers so we could install the graphics drivers properly, since their main mission was getting the computer networked and all the additional software students use installed (such as the packet tracer, putty, multimedia suites, and for some reason they even put itunes and realplayer on there).

It's actually pretty chill, they don't have any sort of filter whatsoever on the internet (content-wise, or device-wise, my PSP browses fine on it) and we've got (local) admin rights on all the computers (because of course we'd need to be able to change settings and such to explore our lessons).

 

[Originality]

To add, Windows 7 is free for school in the UK too, and I believe America aswell (who, IIRC, started the whole scheme). Furthermore, students who take an IT related course can get a copy of Windows 7 for free too (whilst students who aren't in an IT course get a heavy discount - only paying £30 for W7 Home or Pro).

In response to blackacidevil, I've only got 2 comments. Firstly, it's difficult to read your posts (sounds like english is not your first language), but that's unimportant because most of your points are valid. Secondly, XP is damn easy to tear apart by kids with even a slight bit of talent in technology. Certainly easier to break into than Windows 7, which is a newer OS with a rehauled security structure. It may have flaws as you rightly point out, but the main reason why it's stronger is that it's newer and many kids won't have much experience in using it.

On the other hand if schools used the same security as my college used - completely freezing all non-user files, directories and registries, most kids will find it impossible to break through security because they won't be able to change anything or run their home-made batch files. It'll also help because the myriad of viruses kids will ultimately download off the internet will not be able to seed themselves in the systems. The only problem is that all required programs for school use (office, photoshop, moviemaker, etc) will have to be fully installed and set up before each system is frozen in order to be used without errors. I believe most IT techs should know how to do this, but I've seen far too many simple mistakes made in the past in public schools - back when I was just a student who knew a little bit too much about technology and enjoyed pointing out flaws in network security every month.

 

[.::5pYd3r::.]

My school has pirated Windows 7 xD
or at least, the IT teacher sells pirated copies to students

 

[Acheron]

@Rydian, Yeah i'd imagine every school is fairly different. I've only been in my IT job for ~18 months so i'm fairly new, so much to learn. Studying for the MCITP (Enterprise Desktop) exams nowadays. Unattended installation is a big component in the MCITP, i've just recently learnt how to do alot of windows deployment stuff at work, very good stuff.

 

[Rydian]

Furthermore, students who take an IT related course can get a copy of Windows 7 for free too

That's a common misconception.
Dreamspark and such don't offer home versions of windows. They offer a wide variety of microsoft and production software, but not a home OS. Now, they DO offer server OSes (2003 and 2008), but those are the XP/Vista-based server OSes, there's no 7-based one out yet (and even then a 7-based server OS isn't going to be the same as a client's OS so it's not the best for testing lessons on).

 

[Minox]

Furthermore, students who take an IT related course can get a copy of Windows 7 for free too

That's a common misconception.
Dreamspark and such don't offer home versions of windows. They offer a wide variety of microsoft and production software, but not a home OS. Now, they DO offer server OSes (2003 and 2008), but those are the XP/Vista-based server OSes, there's no 7-based one out yet (and even then a 7-based server OS isn't going to be the same as a client's OS so it's not the best for testing lessons on).

Windows Server 2008 R2 is based on Windows 7.

 

[Rydian]

Furthermore, students who take an IT related course can get a copy of Windows 7 for free too

That's a common misconception.
Dreamspark and such don't offer home versions of windows. They offer a wide variety of microsoft and production software, but not a home OS. Now, they DO offer server OSes (2003 and 2008), but those are the XP/Vista-based server OSes, there's no 7-based one out yet (and even then a 7-based server OS isn't going to be the same as a client's OS so it's not the best for testing lessons on).

Windows Server 2008 R2 is based on Windows 7.

Ah, I wonder why they did it like that? It's not evident.

... then again I guess it doesn't need to be to the general public.

 

[plasma]

I just wonder from time to time why arn't there many schools
that have windows7 installed on the computers.
Since windows xp isn't going to be supported soon, and there
won't be new service packs for it, why stick to it?
Price,
if it is too expensive, then at least save those ict vouchers from tescos so that you can afford 100 licenses or so.
Compatability
windows cones with a compatability troubleshooter so, old programs should work.
Teachers
if they used xp for years. Then windows7 should be easier to use.

So, what are your thoughts?

we have it its cool and helps the yr 7s learn how to use it lol

 

[Kwartel]

Many teachers couldn't handle the change to Win7. XP is the only OS many people have ever used in their life, and would not know where to start on a new OS. Money also plays a huge part. Although they would probably get a pretty big discount, it would still be massively expensive to upgrade to Windows 7.

And just to make things even better, our school still uses IE6. What the hell?! I almost cry every time I am forced to use it...

USB with portable google chrome with my favorite extensions FTW!

 

[DJ91990]

Well you have to take into consideration that the school systems are called school systems for reason.

It is like a corporation, if one thing is done to one school, ALL OF THE OTHER SCHOOLS MUST DO THE SAME THING.

Also I don't know about you but if you take a look around in our USA Public schools, they are not in the best of all conditions; I.E. Lack of school books, school programs being dropped like art and music, the bad selection of teachers, and the lack of funds.

The entire state would have to cough up some heavy dough to Bill Gates and also pay for the IT techs that would need to come into every school and update every PC. Because Windows 7 may not agree with Windows XP during the update process NO PCS CAN BE ACTIVE. This is because all of the PCs in EVERY SCHOOL are connected to a network grid. What teachers do on their PCs are NOT STORED ON THE HDD OF THEIR MACHINE, instead they are "accessing" a "core PC" at the HQ for the said school system.

Also it would cost a ***** or two.

We could afford it if Government where a little more careful with domestic and international wealth management and the people be a little less ignorant. We would have had desks with touch top PCs in Middle and high schools! Textbooks and paperwork would be a thing of the past!

 

[MeritsAlone]

You wont believe me when i say this but the gymnasium near me won a 2mil lottery and bought Mac books (cheap ones, still good) for every single student in their school, that they can keep.
They also have windows 7 on some of their computers, mostly used for programming and art and stuff like that.

 

[Originality]

The entire state would have to cough up some heavy dough to Bill Gates and also pay for the IT techs that would need to come into every school and update every PC. [...]

Also it would cost a ***** or two.

Why pay someone else to do what you can do yourself? The IT techs at my high school would just put a DVD in the drive, start the install then let it run whilst moving onto the next comp. It would take a couple hours to install, but it's easy to do an IT suite at a time in that way (and my school had a total of 6 IT suites at the time and 2 laptop suites), just as someone has already described in this thread. EDIT: Said person being Archeron.

 

[The Catboy]

In my old school's case, it was simply because they haven't pirated a copy of it yet.
All the computers in my old school use a pirated copy of XP or Vista

 

[Issac]

My school... a part of a university located in another town, has upgraded most computers to windows 7. and we also have about 25-30 iMacs... and 25-30 linux computers

It's fun!

 

[shamiko_]

well after school I spoke to the teacher
who is in charge of our schools ict dept.
he said that yes we can have windows 7
but firstly it would take time to update the schools
network (my school uses comunity connect 4) authough
it is the latest afaik but maybe there us something I don't know.
also it would take time to install of the software back again.
( no problem, i'll ask my parents if they let me install all
there software for them)

takes 2 days

 

[shamiko_]

Did you miss the message, you quoted something fast. again

Windows 98 is the same as XP, just a different Kernel that runs everything on the same OP level and security level, so in your case none is better than the other when you have a bunch of fouled mouth, juice drinking, sippy cup straw loving koolaid fans.

Now im saying that because you wrote like you knew something in the DS forums, but my respsect is out the window if you cant work a cd \ . Or find a book on this.

you mean like a cd player? haha
no, of course I know what the command cd /. does it allows navigaton of a given dir

also, there is this thing called school, soo that why i couldn't answer your "long rant"

 

[macgeek417]

- It works dont fix it
- Its highly reliable and has good security (Risk to Reward ratio), meaning theres no point installing Windows 7 (ill skip vista thats ajoke)/ Windows 7 requires much configuration and time to setup with premissions and domain status, that can be pulled by down by the sound of a grade 8 click, that will eventually take over an object (example a directory in the computer c:\windows , c:\windows\system32 ) that will now completely defeat the idea of having windows 7 over windows xp. As there is no longer a reason one is better than another in a network setup when your basically logging on tons of inexperienced users without a good group policy.

What next, are you going to say "We still use IE 6 because it's secure" ?

 

[Rydian]

blackacidevil's post is mostly BS.

Spoiler: Long explanation here.

You have the historical UNIX security model. This is what Vista's model with UAC tried, and failed, to be. Applications, also, usually do not require administrator (root) privileges, while their Windows counterparts do. This is because of historical reasons - running your daily life as root in any sort of UNIX environment is extremely strongly discouraged, by everyone. The end result is that developers are well aware their users may not have root privileges.
In contrast, almost everyone I've ever seen runs Windows using an Administrator account. Developers know this, and thus choose to, for instance, write their program data to the Program Files directory, which shouldn't be used for such purposes (Chrome, for instance, gets it right, as far as I know). This means that applications usually need administrator privileges to install (and sometimes even run), but for no particular reason - developers are just being lazy and not security conciencious.
Why is this important? If a virus enters your machine, for some reason, on OS X (and, for instances, all Linuxes) in all likelyhood you'll be running as an unprivileged user. This means the most damage a virus can do is the same damage you could do - delete your home directory, infect files you own or can write to, etc. It can never, for instance, add a new account to your machine, infect binaries that you can't write to (includes most privileged applications in the system), etc.
On the contrary, if this happens on Windows and you are, like most people, running as an administrator account, the virus can do pretty much anything it wants - it has your implicit permission to roam around free in your computer. This means raising its priority, killing processes (such as antiviruses), infect core system files, etc. This is clearly a much worse scenario than in OS X or Linux.

In escence, it's a problem of inertia - lazy Windows application developers (I'm speaking about third-party applications here, like Adobe's Flash) require administrator privileges needlessly, and this in turn makes your machine much more vulnerable to attacks. In a *nix's case, since it's much less common you'll even have these privileges in the first place, very rarely will applications need root for no good reason, and thus you'll have less places where the virus can do a lot of damage.

Mind you, in both cases, getting a virus and running it implies it has the same privileges as you, so you may have to kiss your data goodbye (the one you can modify). However, unlike in the case of an administrator-level infection, you don't need to reinstall to be secure (if the virus has gotten administrator level privileges, from a security standpoint, you can never trust this installation again - every binary you run may be part of a rootkit. There's nothing you can do that the virus can'tve thought of and planned for - it's a cat and mouse game and you are playing against, very likely, a team of well-trained russian programmers

). You simply need to run an antivirus (and hope it catches the infection) from an administrator account.


If you're curious, the differences in practical usage stem from UNIXes being mostly used, historically, for multiple users at a time, as a time sharing service. In Windows' case, it's been mostly used as a single-user machine (and, in fact, early versions of Windows had no actual concept of user accounts, at best they had different desktops, but it was single-user).

 

[purplesludge]

Furthermore, students who take an IT related course can get a copy of Windows 7 for free too

That's a common misconception.
Dreamspark and such don't offer home versions of windows. They offer a wide variety of microsoft and production software, but not a home OS. Now, they DO offer server OSes (2003 and 2008), but those are the XP/Vista-based server OSes, there's no 7-based one out yet (and even then a 7-based server OS isn't going to be the same as a client's OS so it's not the best for testing lessons on).

Many universities including the one I go to sign IT and CS students up to the MSDNAA which gives access to xp,vista, and windows 7 professional in 32 and 64 bit along with various other programs.

Also every computer at my University has Windows 7 except the macs.

Edit: My university also gave the CS students vmware workstation.

 

[Rydian]

I'm not saying that doesn't happen, I'm saying it's not automatic/universal (like dreamspark).