The Information Technology department has been thoroughly examining both Vista and Office 2007 since they were released a few months ago. In fact, every member of our department has been responsible for part of a detailed project plan that would help us determine whether or not we would be upgrading to Vista and/or Office 2007 this summer. Here is what we examined and some of our conclusions:

    We evaluated the requirements to run the various versions of Vista (memory, disk, video drivers) and we evaluated every piece of our campus equipment inventory for Vista and/or Office 2007 readiness. This analysis demonstrated to us that very few of our existing computers are able to easily run Vista 2007, but many are able to run Office 2007.

    We examined technical training sources and purchased extensive training for several members of our staff. While some of this training has already taken place, much of the training will continue throughout the month of June.

    We contacted all of our existing software vendors (over 100 vendors) to determine their readiness for Vista and/or Office 2007. As of the date of this newsletter, both Blackboard and Lotus email are unable to successfully support Microsoft Vista.

    We worked with the School of Management to obtain a list of publishers that they use to teach software-related classes. We then contacted each of these publishers to determine when they would be moving to Vista demonstrations in their books. We determined that many book publishers are providing Vista information in books that will be published in July and afterwards. This is a precarious date because most professors would not have enough time to adapt their curriculum and used books would use a different version of Windows. We recommend that professors double-check with their publishers.

    We have installed Vista/Office on a variety of testing machines in I.T. to understand how it reacts with older campus models and the newer models. Our testing has yielded poor results. Even with memory upgrades, older model PC’s are not able to run Vista with ease.

    Preparing a step-by-step installation guide for uniform installs across campus. Our technicians are working on this as they attend training and we will proceed further once we have some machines that are certified Vista Ready.

    Preparing a list of the new Vista features that are most likely to be used by the campus community. We have prepared this list and will highlight these in demonstrations and communications during the fall semester.

    We have investigated some of the newer features in Vista, including hard disk encryption, backup features, VPN quarantining, and group policy changes that may affect our campus information security. We are also investigating other features like virtual PC’s, and private profiles (for ‘home’ use vs. ‘Carlow’ use). While Microsoft has offered many of these features, many of them are not yet ready to be used by consumers. We will continue to monitor these features over the next several months.

Office 2007:
    We investigated a plug-in for Office 2003 so that it can read Office 2007 documents. We thoroughly tested the plug-in that Microsoft provides for compatibility. It is readily available on the Microsoft website and works well. We encourage campus users to download and install this plug-in.

    With regard to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, we examined the major differences, tested these products with Blackboard and our printing environment, and we are preparing training classes and documentation for our end users. We will be offering classes during the Summer of 2007 and the Fall of 2007 to show users the many new features and to start to get people acquainted with the products. See below.

Office 2007 Conclusion: With regard to Office 2007, we will proceed ahead with some upgrades on campus as follows: We will encourage staff and faculty to attend demonstration classes during the summer and fall of 2007. We will also offer hands-on classes during the late summer and fall of 2007 to teach our users about using Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Once you have attended a demonstration class and at least one hands-on class you can have your computer upgraded to Office 2007. If you are already using Office 2007 at home, and have experience with it, you are also eligible to immediately have the upgrade at work. We will not upgrade computers to Office 2007 unless either of these criteria are met, so do not fear that you will return from the summer break and have an upgraded computer.

Office 2007 offers so many wonderful new features including easy professional formats for documents and an easy way to provide APA citations. We strongly encourage faculty to learn about these features by coming to one of our classes as they will help both you and your students with their assignments.

If you would like to provide feedback on this plan regarding Vista or Office 2007, please contact Karen Sturgeon at sturgeonkm@carlow.edu.