First of all all the Python developers are doing an amazing job, and none of the comments should be taken as a critique but only as a suggestion.

On Feb 9, 2012, at 3:34 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
[...]

In the meantime, if the python.org packages for Windows aren't up to
scratch (and they aren't in many ways), *use the commercially backed
ones* (or one of the other sumo distributions that are out there).
Don't tell your students to grab the raw installers directly from
python.org, redirect them to the free rebuilds from ActiveState or
Enthought, or go all out and get them to install something like
Python(X, Y).

This is what I do now. I tell my students if they have trouble to Enthought. Yet there are issues with license and 32 (free) vs 64 bits (not free). Long term I do not think this what we should encourage.