PCs & screens >Which Windows?

Which Windows Operating System to Choose?

The purpose of this page is to help you decide which version of Windows you would like installed on any new PCs or laptops that you purchase.

All new Beebug computers are supplied with a licence for Windows 7 Professional. This licence entitles you to have either Windows 7 Pro or Windows XP Pro installed onto your computer.

Most, if not all, of the existing school computers will have Windows XP on them and so staff and pupils will be very familiar with it. However, XP is already 10 years old and Microsoft will cease all support for it in April 2014. For these existing computers we would not recommend upgrading them to Windows 7 as you would need new licences, a complete installation and possibly more RAM.

Printer Problems

Windows 7 printer drivers are not available for all existing printers. This means that if you have printers that are more than a year old they may not work with Windows 7 or they may have limited functionality. If you contact us with details of your printers we can provide advice.

Office 2003 Compatibility Problems

Any existing computers at the school will probably already have a licence for the 2003 version of Office. We have found Office 2003 to be unreliable with Windows 7 and so you will probably need to purchase a new licence for Office 2010 if you plan to use Windows 7.

Older Software Compatibility Problems

If you are using old software titles it is possible that some will not be compatible with Windows 7. The software producer may have released newer versions which you would possibly need to purchase. We are keeping a list of software that we have found to be incompatible. It is available on request but is by no means a definitive list.

Curriculum PCs and Laptops

The Beebug Security v7 program is now available and so it is possible to have Windows 7 PCs locked down on your Curriculum network running side-by-side with PCs running Windows XP. The Windows 7 Desktop and Start Menu will look quite different from the existing computers and so we would recommend making the move to Windows 7 when you upgrade a whole batch of computers. For example when you replace all of the PCs in the Suite, rather than when replacing one or two classroom PCs.

Admin PCs

SIMS is now fully supported on Windows 7, and so unless you are very attached to Windows XP we would recommend that you use Windows 7 on any new Admin PCs.

Please do note the sections above highlighting compatibility issues with Office 2003 and some printers on Windows 7.