Win 8 Tablet FAIL

[EmptyTimCup]

Windows 8 tablets: Not open for business

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | April 22, 2012, 2:24pm PDT

Summary: I’d thought Windows 8 tablets one shot at the business market because IT administrators could deploy and manage them with Active Directory. Guess what? They’re not supporting Active Directory on them.



I think Windows 8 is doomed to failed on the desktop. But, much as I dislike Windows 8 and its Metro interface, I thought it had a chance on the business tablet. Oh, forget about Intel and Microsoft’s dream that the first wave of Windows 8 tablets will push the iPad’s global market share to below 50 percent by mid-2013. That’s not happening. But, Metro’s designed for tablet-sized displays and, I presumed, IT would be able to deploy and manage them with their existing Active Directory (AD) tools. Guess what? Microsoft won’t be supporting AD on Windows 8 on ARM (WOA).

When I first heard that Microsoft wasn’t enabling AD on Windows RT–the ARM-specific version of Windows 8–I thought there must be some kind of mistake. AD isn’t just a directory service, it’s the heart of business Windows authentication, authorization, security, and management. Every Windows system administrator, since Windows NT’s domain system was put out to pasture, knows AD. It’s what they use, just for starters, for:

Adding new users to Active Directory
Changing passwords
Granting rights to file servers
Allowing remote access to the network
Setting login and logout scripts
Controlling when users can use the network
Creating security groups - with either static or dynamic membership

[clip]

First, it’s not a mis-spelling of Apple’s iTune. Intune is a cloud-based Windows security and management service. Eric Main, director of product marketing for Windows Intune, says the the next version of Intune, which will be Windows 8 compatible, will “cost $11 U.S. per PC, per month,” with an additional “four mobile devices per seat.”

So, let’s put this all together. You can’t use the same AD tools you’ve used for over a decade to run Windows on Windows 8 tablets. Instead, you’ll need to learn, pay, and use an additional management program. Oh, and by the way, this is a Microsoft cloud-based service so I hope you’re comfortable with managing part of your infrastructure on the cloud, because that’s the only way you can do it.

so confuse consumers even more

Windows on ARM aka WoA will be called Windows RT

and x86 and x 64 bit tablets will get Win 8

Microsoft Windows RT: An Unfortunate Name for Windows on ARM


Ever since Microsoft announced at CES 2011 that it would have Windows 8 on ARM-based processors, the question loomed large as to how the company would differentiate between tablets and PCs running x86-based Windows 8 and ARM-based Windows 8. And as it became clearer that Windows 8 on ARM would have limitations on what it could run, the room for confusion grew bigger. Earlier this year, Microsoft confirmed that Windows 8 on ARM would lack the desktop mode found on standard Windows 8 and, by extension, would not support emulation for existing x86 software.

Instead, Windows 8 on ARM will be limited to using apps created for Microsoft's new Metro interface. Given the limitations of Windows 8 on ARM, it makes sense that Microsoft wanted to downplay Windows 8 in the moniker. After all, consumers who bought an ARM-based tablet or a clamshell PC might reasonably have expected it to run the same software that works on Windows 8, in any mode, if "Windows 8" had remained in the name.

But that said, the decision to excise "Windows 8" from the name altogether and to dub the new version "Windows RT" complicates Microsoft's position in multiple ways. For one thing, by cutting ties with "Windows 8," Microsoft leaves the new OS isolated from growing public awareness of the radically different Windows 8 Metro interface that Microsoft hopes to redefine itself with.

 

[Dev]

talk about retarded...good thing I wont be able to get win 8 in my office until 202X most likely

 

[DipStick]

All but one of my computers runs Windows XP. The other runs Windows 7.