Assuming it's the version with the full GUI, it should just work.
I've heard of it being done on other 'server' versions of the OS. I imagine it may be possible to do with this version.
One problem I've heard about, though, is that there is a lot of badly written 'utility' software out there that will REFUSE to install or work on a server OS since they only "support" desktop versions. So if you want to use such bad 3rd party software you may have some problems in getting it to work properly.
Maybe even some Microsoft SW might behave like that, I don't know.
It could be that some device drivers could also give such problems.
I would not be surprised if anti-virus packages were often like that.
Stick with Windows 7 in my opinion (which you can still buy). It will be supported until at least January 2020. Windows Server just introduces services and features you're probably never going to use. I run Windows Server on a server here which does some RADIUS auth./Certificate Services/Active Directory stuff and it's still overkill. It won't necessarily offer you any more stability. With Windows (depending on the version), proper hardware is the key to stability, not the version of OS you're running*.
If you're having issues with stability or uptime, it's not Windows 7 that's causing you dramas, take a look at your hardware. It might not be faulty, just a little bit crap.
* Unless you're running Windows 95a, Millennium Edition, Vista, 8.x... then you're on your own.
The server versions of Windows have horrible licensing requirements. You can't install Office, you need the "special" server version of Office for twice the price. Every user needs a user CAL, every user who wants to remote desktop in needs a remote desktop CAL, every device that wants to talk to the computer needs a device CAL, etc. Using a Windows server OS in a desktop environment will likely require many hundreds of dollars in additional licensing that is not required for the desktop version.
I actually had / used Server 2008 R2 for a few years, with the freebie student license i got, back in '09 or '10 :)
Apart from having to edit the Kaspersky .msi file to fool the OS check, i don't really recall having any (serious) issues. Even migrated (read: drive-cloned) the OS across three laptops since then :D Finally ended up installing Win10 about a year ago, using the Win7 license that came with my latest laptop though.
Server 2008R2 still works quite well, but if you want the latest virtualization support with latest tech and want no Cortana spyware as you stated, then def. go for Server 2016 or at least Sever 2012R2.
The MS student licenses are very generous (free), so I would def. go for server in this case.
When I was at school for a brief 2 years, all Operating systems on the school lab computers were Windows server 2012R2.
The server versions of Windows have horrible licensing requirements. You can't install Office, you need the "special" server version of Office for twice the price. Every user needs a user CAL, every user who wants to remote desktop in needs a remote desktop CAL, every device that wants to talk to the computer needs a device CAL, etc. Using a Windows server OS in a desktop environment will likely require many hundreds of dollars in additional licensing that is not required for the desktop version.
Edition | Price | Description | Licensing Model | CAL Requirements | Suitability for Workstation usage |
Datacenter | ~$6000 + VAT + CAL | For highly virtualized datacenter and cloud environments | Core Based | WS CAL | Can be used as Workstation but makes no sense to pay extra for things that you don't need |
Standard | ~$900 + VAT + CAL | For Physical or minimally virtualized environments | Core Based | WS CAL | Can be used but makes no sense to pay extra for things that you don't need |
Essentials | ~$500 + VAT | For small businesses with up to 25 users and 50 devices | Processor Based | NO CAL Required | Can be used as a Workstation and has all the basic but enhanced server like features Windows 10 has built in |
Multipoint Premium Server | Depends on Volume license agreement with Microsoft | For Volume Licensing Customers in Academic segments only | Processor Based | WS CAL + RDS CAL | If you own your own School and need a lot of licenses then you can get this, else not. Can be used as a Workstation though |
Storage Server | Included in the harware price when purcasing a storage server computer | Standard and Workgroup editions available in the OEM channel only | Processor based | NO CAL Required | This edition is design to be a File Storage server and makes no sense to even attempt to use it as a Workstation |
Hyper-V Server | Absolutely Free | Free Hypervisor | Absolutely Free | Absolutely Free | Can not be used as a Workstation as it's only intended to serve as a container for virtualized environments |
Windows server does not have to cost much. You dont need to purchase Windows Server 2016 Datacenter if you are going to use it as a workstation OS. The price consist of the additional services you setup for your server.
There are multiple editions of Windows Server (2016):
Edition Price Description Licensing Model CAL Requirements Suitability for Workstation usage Datacenter ~$6000 + VAT + CAL For highly virtualized datacenter and cloud environments Core Based WS CAL Can be used as Workstation but makes no sense to pay extra for things that you don't need Standard ~$900 + VAT + CAL For Physical or minimally virtualized environments Core Based WS CAL Can be used but makes no sense to pay extra for things that you don't need Essentials ~$500 + VAT For small businesses with up to 25 users and 50 devices Processor Based NO CAL Required Can be used as a Workstation and has all the basic but enhanced server like features Windows 10 has built in Multipoint Premium Server Depends on Volume license agreement with Microsoft For Volume Licensing Customers in Academic segments only Processor Based WS CAL + RDS CAL If you own your own School and need a lot of licenses then you can get this, else not. Can be used as a Workstation though Storage Server Included in the harware price when purcasing a storage server computer Standard and Workgroup editions available in the OEM channel only Processor based NO CAL Required This edition is design to be a File Storage server and makes no sense to even attempt to use it as a Workstation Hyper-V Server Absolutely Free Free Hypervisor Absolutely Free Absolutely Free Can not be used as a Workstation as it's only intended to serve as a container for virtualized environments
For students all of the above products and many more are absolutely free if your school has made a DreamSpark agreement with Microsoft.
For small business startups you can also apply for a BizSpark agreement from Microsoft. You will be entitled to all the above operating systems and many many more for free for the agreement period. After that you can purchase licenses for the product you want to still use for a fraction of the price.
When going into details about the CAL and CPU licensing models it gets a bit complicated and that information was left out from this post intentionally.
So there you have it! Hope it helps.
And your school doesn't need to sign a Dreamspark (Now called Microsoft Imagine) agreement. If they do, you get more software, but even homeschoolers with proof of homeschooling can get Imagine software for free, and this includes Server 2016.
Win NT was so amazing at the time. I'm glad win 7 is basically the same except for the crappy web browers. Who writes that code? Rabid Monkeys?
Win NT was so amazing at the time. I'm glad win 7 is basically the same except for the crappy web browers. Who writes that code? Rabid Monkeys?
Yes Windows 2000 was the first Workstation OS that was based on NT tech. After that they abandoned the DOS based systems. Only Windows ME was not NT based, and that was a total flop, fast but completely unusable for most.
I ran Win Server for some years - but have given up.
Not because it is not super stable - but because a lot of 3rd party software looks at your installation and says - uhh this is a SERVER - so you need to buy a 10-50x cost SERVER license. So anything like backup, image software and many others ended up with "can't use" without paying 10-50x what a normal "consumer" license would cost.
Win NT was so amazing at the time. I'm glad win 7 is basically the same except for the crappy web browers. Who writes that code? Rabid Monkeys?
Yes Windows 2000 was the first Workstation OS that was based on NT tech. After that they abandoned the DOS based systems. Only Windows ME was not NT based, and that was a total flop, fast but completely unusable for most.
That's completely not true. NT 3.1 was a workstation OS. That's why the main version of it had Workstation in the name, and why it was used on high end workstations.
Windows was just a renamed NT 5, it has no real drastic improvements over NT4 that make it stand out. NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, and 4 all had workstation versions, and so did Windows 2000.
In fact you could even argue Windows 2000 was less of a workstation version than NT3.x and 4 since it doesn't have a "Workstation" version, and instead uses the title of Professional.
EDIT: Slight correction, NT 3.1 doesn't have a version named Workstation, NT 3.5 does, NT 3.1 is still a Workstation OS though.
I ran Win Server for some years - but have given up.
Not because it is not super stable - but because a lot of 3rd party software looks at your installation and says - uhh this is a SERVER - so you need to buy a 10-50x cost SERVER license. So anything like backup, image software and many others ended up with "can't use" without paying 10-50x what a normal "consumer" license would cost.
The server versions of Windows have horrible licensing requirements. You can't install Office, you need the "special" server version of Office for twice the price. Every user needs a user CAL, every user who wants to remote desktop in needs a remote desktop CAL, every device that wants to talk to the computer needs a device CAL, etc. Using a Windows server OS in a desktop environment will likely require many hundreds of dollars in additional licensing that is not required for the desktop version.
This is not true, and sorry for the slight necropost, but this is important information to the topic at hand for anybody who wants to try what I'm doing.
Long story short, Microsoft office installed just fine for me, check.
(http://prntscr.com/du6579)
There was no additional fees to be paid, it's just standard office as supplied by my school. There is no special server stigma to it, and as far as I can tell,
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28649763/installing-microsoft-office-on-a-windows-server (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28649763/installing-microsoft-office-on-a-windows-server)
There is absolutely no restriction on Microsoft Office for Server 20xx
And it doesn't make sense the other way either. From the standpoint of Microsoft why would they charge extra for the 2 people who want to install office on an operating system that barely needs a desktop UI?
And there is no certificate anything to connect to another machine. Samba shares work fine, and remote desktop does to. I can even terminal into Windows Server 2000 which has 0 security, and vice versa if I set the settings right.
Yes the licensing for Windows server products gets quite complicated and expensive in the long run. If you buy anything with a CAL license required, you pay a lot extra every year.
This is why I love Linux, it's free and it works (assuming you can get it to work), and has quite good range of software too, but could be better though.
Windows was just a renamed NT 5, it has no real drastic improvements over NT4 that make it stand out. NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, and 4 all had workstation versions, and so did Windows 2000.
In fact you could even argue Windows 2000 was less of a workstation version than NT3.x and 4 since it doesn't have a "Workstation" version, and instead uses the title of Professional.
XP on the other hand was very little more than Windows 2000 with chrome (i.e., XP is Windows 5.1, 2000 is Windows 5.0).
One caveat for the OP is that some desktop software, for example for backups, frequently don't work on server platforms, they are often deliberately crippled.
One caveat for the OP is that some desktop software, for example for backups, frequently don't work on server platforms, they are often deliberately crippled.
Server comes with it's own fairly decent server grade backup software. It also comes with a fairly decent server grade antivirus. Most of the utilities you can't use on server, server already comes with.
One caveat for the OP is that some desktop software, for example for backups, frequently don't work on server platforms, they are often deliberately crippled.
Server comes with it's own fairly decent server grade backup software. It also comes with a fairly decent server grade antivirus. Most of the utilities you can't use on server, server already comes with.
XP on the other hand was very little more than Windows 2000 with chrome (i.e., XP is Windows 5.1, 2000 is Windows 5.0).
Absolutely correct!
XP is short for EXPERIENCE --> Windows 2000 with added chrome and some other minor tweaks = NT5.0 --> NT5.1
Then came NT5.2 --> Server 2003 and x64 version of XP/Server 2003 R2
After this we got 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 and now with Windows 10/Server 2016 we arrived at NT10.0
I think the biggest change between Win2000 and XP was DirectX and bad GPU compatibility. I remember running a lot of games on Win2000 on a dual core system, and they were slow. Tested same game on Linux and it was 10-30x faster and very smooth. The gap got a lot smaller for the same game once XP was released, and has improved even more for every new Windows release.
Agree Once Windows 10 is stripped down of all the bling-bling, what you have left is really good and stable. But MAN Windows 10 has issues regarding UWP and any function that uses it. I'm currently on Preview build 15002 and it simply just does not work or just breaks the whole system. :-)
Yes that is the equivalent of Windows Server 2012 Essentials and now Windows Server 2016 Essentials. You pay for the OS, and after that no extra cost. Good product for home use.
Microsft has a Fileserver version too.
This is the problem with Windows users in general, they have no idea how to use Windows and always want to find a 3rd party app to do exactly the same stuff Windows does internally without the extra overhead.
I used to be one of those people, but I took the time to understand Windows and 99% of all stuff ever needed for managing big computer clusters/groups can be done with Windows internal tools only. The other 1% requires 3rd party app but most users never need those features anyway.
The only issues I have had are with problems with Windows 10 anyways over 7.
Examples: DSR doesn't work on Windows 10
Touhou 6 doesn't want to work Either :(
The only issues I have had are with problems with Windows 10 anyways over 7.
Examples: DSR doesn't work on Windows 10
Touhou 6 doesn't want to work Either :(
Yes there are a lot of issues with Windows 10, especially when it comes to GPU drivers. For the DSR issue, nVidia fixed that in their drivers for Windows 10. I can't verify this as I don't currently own any nVidia cards.
The latest issue I have had with Windows 10 (latest insider preview) is that some native win32 applications with built in memory protection does not work. Get Memory Acces Violation error. :-D
Anyone still on Windows 7 should stay there if it works great, until Windows 10 matures a bit ( maybe in 1-2 years, or never ;-) ) :-DD
The backup in 2016 Essentials is MUCH improved, although the one in 2012 should be pretty much like the one in WHS, which I find to be totally transparent, I never see it, yet all my machines are backed up. And I sometimes am awake at odd hours so it's not just that I happen to always be away when the machine is backed up. I haven't used Essentials in any version, but for WHS, you can just pick any of the backups and mount it as a drive to copy files off - also doesn't matter that the backups are all differential, it automatically retrieves all the files as of the date of the backup you are trying to restore from. It also does an automatic dedupe, so that 15GB of Windows system files on each of 5 desktops doesn't consume 45GB of backup space.
And remote access is slow? Over what sort of like? RDP is pretty darn fast with almost no lag over the connection speed most people can get these days. Locally, as in over a LAN connection, it's utterly seamless. I probably do 80% or more of my job via RDP so I'm not constantly driving around to client locations (or flying, since I support clients as far away as Las Vegas, and I live near Philadelphia).
Granted I've been working with this since before Windows 3.1, but the WHS (and I can't imagine Essentials is any worse - it was designed for use by non-IT people) is absolutely hands off. Once in a while I may peek in on it to see how it is running, but the client will notify me if anything goes wrong, so there really is no reason for me to log in to it unless I want to add another drive.
The backup in 2016 Essentials is MUCH improved, although the one in 2012 should be pretty much like the one in WHS, which I find to be totally transparent, I never see it, yet all my machines are backed up. And I sometimes am awake at odd hours so it's not just that I happen to always be away when the machine is backed up. I haven't used Essentials in any version, but for WHS, you can just pick any of the backups and mount it as a drive to copy files off - also doesn't matter that the backups are all differential, it automatically retrieves all the files as of the date of the backup you are trying to restore from. It also does an automatic dedupe, so that 15GB of Windows system files on each of 5 desktops doesn't consume 45GB of backup space.
And remote access is slow? Over what sort of like? RDP is pretty darn fast with almost no lag over the connection speed most people can get these days. Locally, as in over a LAN connection, it's utterly seamless. I probably do 80% or more of my job via RDP so I'm not constantly driving around to client locations (or flying, since I support clients as far away as Las Vegas, and I live near Philadelphia).
Granted I've been working with this since before Windows 3.1, but the WHS (and I can't imagine Essentials is any worse - it was designed for use by non-IT people) is absolutely hands off. Once in a while I may peek in on it to see how it is running, but the client will notify me if anything goes wrong, so there really is no reason for me to log in to it unless I want to add another drive.
:-+
RDP is fast enough, there are however some screen transfer protocols that require much less bandwidth due to much better compression. I use RDP daily over LAN, WLAN and LTE, and in some rare cases over some slow HSDPA, no issues at all. Sometimes I use VNC and Teamviewer too, all 3 perform essentially the same.
And remote access is slow? Over what sort of like? RDP is pretty darn fast with almost no lag over the connection speed most people can get these days. Locally, as in over a LAN connection, it's utterly seamless. I probably do 80% or more of my job via RDP so I'm not constantly driving around to client locations (or flying, since I support clients as far away as Las Vegas, and I live near Philadelphia).
Granted I've been working with this since before Windows 3.1, but the WHS (and I can't imagine Essentials is any worse - it was designed for use by non-IT people) is absolutely hands off. Once in a while I may peek in on it to see how it is running, but the client will notify me if anything goes wrong, so there really is no reason for me to log in to it unless I want to add another drive.
Someone said slow remote access.
RDP didn't exist before Citrix - my history with this goes back to the days of having a rack mount chassis with multiple single board systems in the backplain each running DOS and Windows 3.1 connected to a similar rack chassis full of modem cards, using stuff like PC Anywhere. And then the very first Citrix product, WinView - which was OS/2 based. Stuck with Citrix through the years, I even was at their Florida HQ for training when Winframe (that one used NT Server) was beta. At the time, it would sell itself - we build a demo box good for 5-10 users and would loan it out as a trial to prospective clients. I built a new one probably a dozen times as once most clients had it that just wanted to buy it and not give it back. We also did joint presentations with Citrix people where we had a WAN simulator with selectable speed from 9600 all the way up to full T1 to like the two routers, and compared Citrix client to a normal fat client.
The came Microsoft with their own version of the Citrix ICA protocol - RDP. It was a bit of an unsure period until Microsoft and Citrix joined in cross licensing agreements and the end result was you had RDP included for free (but had to pay for licenses) if you wanted just the basic functionality, but if you really wanted the better protocol plus better management of multiple users - you added Citrix (and still had to pay Microsoft for the remote user client CALs...). That's pretty much the way it still is, native RDP and the Remote Desktop role on the servers is usualy equivalent of a version or 2 back on Citrix, Citrix meanwhile has greatly expanded into other areas like virtual desktops and content delivery.
It is interesting. I also want to do so.
We also did joint presentations with Citrix people where we had a WAN simulator with selectable speed from 9600 all the way up to full T1 to like the two routers, and compared Citrix client to a normal fat client.