What Microsoft OS is best for business?
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Remember "buying software" means buying a license. The box at the store means nothing. The disk means nothing. Windows is a free download. The license is where the money goes.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
So the consensus is buy 7 or 8 on a prebuilt?
I am still buying 7 on my prebuilt machines "just because." I do agree 8.1 is more stable and secure...my users here live off of short cuts and not really the start menu, so going to 8.1 won't be hard if they still just want shortcuts...I really wish "Threshhold" was coming out this fall...
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I agree with Scott, for a business environment you should go with mainstream manufactured laptops/desktop specifically business models.
As for the OS, most if not all of us should be reimaging the computers as soon as they hit our floor - ditch that OEM installed crap! Moving on - I love Windows 8(.1), but if you have legitimate compatibility issues, then by all means use WIndows 7, but I have yet to find anything that won't run on Windows 8(.1) that will on Windows 7. Granted you may have to ensure you have x86 vs x64, but when you reimage you can take care of that. -
Dash is completely correct. Prebuilt, enterprise hardware with our own, standard images. That's the way to do it for business. Even pretty tiny businesses.
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@Dashrender said:
most if not all of us should be reimaging the computers as soon as they hit our floor - ditch that OEM installed crap!
I've never done that, and have never really understood the reasoning behind it. I can see that creating a custom image might save time if you're setting up dozens of PCs at a time, but like a lot of SMEs I tend to only buy PCs a handful at time, if that. I've had headaches in the past installing the correct drivers after doing a vanilla OS install, whereas the pre-installed OEM image always includes the correct drivers.
I also buy from the bottom end of HP's business PC range. I don't think these models count as enterprise hardware. The range has a much shorter lifecycle, for example, so a model purchased today might be replaced with a different model in 6 months time with different components, making it impractical to use standard images.
So, as usual, I'm probably the odd one out on ML. Well, it's worked for me
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Can an AD system push out a fresh install? Or must that be done physically?
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@Mike-Ralston a fresh install of what?
AD is a directory and authentication system. That's all that AD does. AD doesn't have any "actions".
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AD can be used to remotely install programs and updates on a whole network of PC's, can it do fresh Windows installs?
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As @scottalanmiller mentioned, AD doesn't do those things, the add-on components do. Does Microsoft have tools that can deploy a Fresh OS to machines, yes it does, several in fact, and they are free. Windows Deployment Services, Microsoft Deployment Tools, etc. Of course they have paid tools, and the names have all changed since I used them, so I won't name any.
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But you really don't need MS tools for image creation.
You can build your base machine, sysprep it, then create an image copy of it using Clonezilla (FREE) or setup a FOG server.
With Clonezilla you can have a USB 3.0 drive, put your image on there and attach it to the new units when you need to reimage. I store my images on a network fileshare.
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@Mike-Ralston said:
AD can be used to remotely install programs and updates on a whole network of PC's, can it do fresh Windows installs?
AD can't. You can use GPO for that but not AD.
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Ahhhhhhhh, okay.
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Think of AD literally like a directory like a phone book or card catalogue. Other services go to AD and look things up like names, IDs, group membership and telephone number. All four of those are items stored in AD. Also stored in AD is your password. The only thing beyond just a directory lookup that AD provides is a password lookup in a secure way. It's still just a directory lookup, though. That's literally all that AD does. It's just a really neat, but actually quite basic, directory.
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Thanks for clarifying that, I thought it was quite different than it actually is.
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Everyone does. You'd be shocked how many long time IT pros can't separate AD and NTFS.
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So it's a common misunderstanding? Hmm...
@scottalanmiller Which version of Office do you prefer to work with? And is Libre Office decent alternate software? -
@scottalanmiller said:
Everyone does. You'd be shocked how many long time IT pros can't separate AD and NTFS.
OK that's a new one on me.
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@Mike-Ralston libre and OpenOffice are effectively identical and both very awesome. They match MS Office in all core functionality. Only very specialty features demand MS Office.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Everyone does. You'd be shocked how many long time IT pros can't separate AD and NTFS.
OK that's a new one on me.
Read any NAS discussion where someone says "AD integration", universally they mean NTFS ACLs. Everyone thinks that AD controls permissions and filesystems.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Mike-Ralston libre and OpenOffice are effectively identical and both very awesome. They match MS Office in all core functionality. Only very specialty features demand MS Office.
The functionality may be there, but the formatting sure isn't. If you have a ton of files already made in MS Office, you should definitely test many of them with the alternatives to ensure recreation isn't required. Also, if you share files .doc .xls files with outside companies, test, test, test to make sure you don't have formatting problems on their side.
