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Migrating computers to XP

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by deeda

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I am wondering how your company Migrates your computers? Do they go buy the seniority rule or do they say that since they still have 95 they should be moved to a new operating system first. I am trying to figure out a logical way of doing this at the company I work at. Right now my side-kick tells me whose next to switch out a computer, but I dont see the logic to the way he is doing it. It seems he is going by seniority, but then sometimes by operating system. Please let me know what you think is more important Seniority or operating system? We have people on 95, 98, 2000, & XP!

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

4 replies

by tturner33

We migrated our users based on need. That is, the users that would benefit most from the new OS were migrated first. Users whose apps "hung" or crashed and were still on Win95 went first. Those users whose sole function on a PC is e-mail, were migrated last. The one exception was the General Manager.... office politics dictated that his was first...

by oldefar

Business requirement should be the deciding factor.

If the decision to upgrade was made based on specific capabilities in XP that do not exist in the other OS, then the order of upgrade should follow which users will get the greatest benefit from the new capabilities. This maximizes the ROI.

If the decision to upgrade was made based on loss of support for the older OS, then the order of upgrade should be based on which users result in the greatest negative impact from being down. This should be determined with the inherent initial loss of productivity that comes with change factored in as well.

If you cannot make those determinations, consider a departmental order. Upgrade by the organizational or virtual groups of users so that these regain group productivity. This also supports a more logical change to platforms and domains as a general rule.

by mark_archer

We're in the throws now of implementing XP. Our tact is to first ID "low hanging fruit" (the easiest users) and low impact users. This way we show progress quickly. From there we're working up the line toward the hardest or more complicated users. By the time we get to the last group we're showing 95% complete and the pressure is off so we can take the time the last group will require. Hope this helps!

by thechas

We do neither.
In fact, our IT department only supports 3 versions of Windows for network connectivity.

We have a minimum system specification for installing W2K onto ANY PC.

While the requirements go up often, right now they are:
400 MHz or faster CPU
256MB or more RAM.

If the system does not meet the minimum configuration, the requesting department has to buy a new(er) PC for the user.

You should start by determining a minimum supportable configuration.
Perhaps
500 MHz CPU
256MB of RAM
8GB HDD
ALL other hardware must on the XP HCL.

Unless you do a lot of hardware upgrades, your W95 systems are at least 5 years old.

These PCs should be phased out rather than attempting to install XP on them.
For these older PCs, moving to XP WILL be a major headache.
First, you WILL have un-supported hardware.
Then, some applications just will not run under XP.

Chas

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