Microsoft has released Windows Vista to the public, but Vista will not be officially supported within the EECS department until such time as we can overcome certain licensing and technical issues.
The EECS department purchases the Windows OS and other Microsoft applications as a volume-based purchase from academic reseller TRC (now CDW-G). While we have complete OS images for other versions of Windows, our participation in the Microsoft Consolidated Campus Agreement at this time may only provide us with upgrade versions of Vista Business. To comply with our current licensing structure, a CIF-paying user would have to upgrade to Vista from a volume-licensed version of XP which has undergone Microsoft Validation. This also prevents us from offering network installation of Vista via Windows Deployment Services (WDS).
Perhaps more importantly, Vista Business edition is currently unable to mount Windows shares from our network fileservers coeus and project, meaning that Vista clients will for now be unable to mount one’s home directory or project space. IRIS staff will be working with Microsoft and Network Appliance as needed to see resolution to this issue. It is worth noting that Windows XP was not supported within EECS and had similar incompatibilities with our NetApp fileservers until XP Service Pack 1 was released.
IRIS will not be providing Vista via download or Helpdesk loan until it is ready to be officially supported within EECS. Those who have their own copy of Vista are free to use it at their own risk; we may not be able to provide direct assistance if any problems are encountered.
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