King's College London plans Windows 10 rollout

IT director Gareth Wright tells Computing the university is impressed with Microsoft's new OS

King's College London is already trialling Microsoft Windows 10 and plans to complete an upgrade to the new operating system by next year, Gareth Wright, the university's head of IT has told Computing.

The institution recently deployed 1,700 Dell OptiPlex 9030 All-in-One desktop PCs as part of an improvement programme and Wright believes the "tablet interaction on a desktop based device" will lend itself well to the recently released Windows 10 operating system.

Wright described how the combination of Windows 10 with the Dell units has boosted computer performance in noticeable ways.

"We're piloting Windows 10 at the moment and I think the key to performance improvement is moving to solid-state drives which has improved the performance of the device and the log in times are much, much lower," he said.

According to Microsoft, 14 million PCs were running Windows 10 within 24 hours of the operating system's launch.

King's College London's student computer laboratories currently run on Microsoft's Windows 8.1 operating system and Wright described how this simplifies plans to upgrade to Windows 10 - something he plans to do in the not too distant future.

"Now we have that consistent Windows 8.1 estate we can move to Windows 10 and we can plan to do that from the New Year," he said, adding "we want to go to the latest version of the operation system".

Wright suggested that with King's IT estate already running on Windows 8, the transition to Windows 10 should be relatively simple.

"I'm hoping the transition to Windows 10 will be more straightforward than say going from 7 to 10," he said.

Computing's Peter Gothard has been using Windows 10 since launch and has outlined what he likes and dislikes about Microsoft's brand new operating system.

The full Computing interview with King's College London director of IT Gareth Wright will be published in the near future.