Rumour has it that XP OEM licenses will be phased out in January. Some TELA laptop vendors are certified for Vista, but these models aren’t yet being offered to schools for lease. We have some laptops coming up for renewal in September, and I don’t think Vista will be available before then. It may be available by the time more renewals come up in November.
On the other hand, we have yet to receive the Vista DVDs from Datacom on the Microsoft Schools’ program – we can only test on unactivated evaluation installations of Vista until we get the DVD. Since it has only just been released, the MOE is probably right in holding back on laptop deployment until it is more widely available in schools, and perhaps more stable.