University of Kent

Activating a Vista licence is required within 30 days of installing otherwise the PC will stop functioning. This can be done with a licence code which can only be used a specific number of times or via a license server. We are currently installing a license server on campus. This will allow silent and automatic activation of licences without codes having to be made available. Until the server is ready if there is an urgent need to activate a copy then Helpdesk can arrange for a member of IS staff to visit and activate manually. The Vista media can be obtained from Gill Donaldson. For staff who are entitled to install a copy on a home PC we shall need a different method of activating. When this has been decided upon Gill will be able to tell you how to do this.

Vista includes IE7 and some of our corporate systems are not yet able to work with IE7.

Security: F-Secure anti-virus and spyware software will not support Vista until it's new release (due out in May). The University network security policy states that all computers should run virus protection software, so departments should not deploy Vista widely until F-Secure Anti-Virus Client Security can be installed. We appreciate that IT Support staff may feel that they need to go ahead on a small number of PCs in order that they can become familiar with Vista before it becomes more wider used by the staff they support. If you plan to do this you will need to make your own arrangements for anti-virus protection.

We can't give any guarantees that printer drivers currently installed on the printer queue servers and written for XP will work when printing from Vista. Some do work, most have not been tried and may or may not work. As yet there are no Vista drivers available for many printers. For the time being we will not be installing Vista drivers.

Download user guides for using Vista on the Kent network, eg connecting to the network, using the VPN and connecting to the wireless service.