Microsoft Trying To Woo Businesses To Windows 8 442
jfruh writes "Windows 8 is the most radical rewrite of Microsoft's operating system in decades — and most of the changes are aimed at consumers and new tablet form-factors. Meanwhile, corporate IT is deeply suspicious. Over at Microsoft TechEd Europe, the company is gamely trying to explain to enterprises why they should switch, with easy-to-write enterprise apps and the ability to stream server-side x86 apps to Windows RT. Not everyone is convinced."
Re:Not convinced... (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. And the one big argument one might have for RT on tablets and the like would be integration into Group Policies, but guess what, RT won''t have Group Policy integration, so there is absolutely no reason that I can see to choose RT devices over Android or iOS. I'm still astonished that, in the one area where Microsoft could really make penetration with its devices, at least into the corporate world, they're doing nothing at all.
New: Windows 7! (Score:4, Informative)
IT departments are only just shifting to Windows 7. And they're only doing that because PCs are coming with more than 3GB of memory.
Re:Oh, Microsoft... Tales from the iPhone darkside (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone allows iPhones and iPads on their corporate net.
According to InfoWorld, ComputerWorld, and GCN, something like 80 percent of all large to mid size firms either are doing that or are about to do that.
The war is over. Apple won.
SSDs are killing the hardware upgrade treadmill (Score:5, Informative)
I still have my laptop from 2006 and it still does everything my brand new one does, it even has higher res screen.
I'll echo what you said, I have both a 2006 Macbook and Mac Mini - they are both doing incredibly well - albeit with shiny new SSDs
In fact, I'd bet my 2006 devices are faster than many currently selling desktop/laptops that don't also have an SSD for mundane tasks like booting the OS, browsing and moving files around (yeah, their video cards don't quite support HD streams without stuttering but that's what tablets and roku/appetvs are for nowadays).
Problem is BIOS, not Secure Boot. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not likely that the Canonical boot loader will allow chain loading XP.
True.
Any signed UEFI boot loader that boots an unsigned operating system will be doing so under threat of their own key being blacklisted.
That *IS* the point of the boot-loader. Being signed (so secure-boot can accept it), but being able to chain load anything the user want (custom kernel or even GRUB boot manager).
The problem lies elsewhere:
- Windows XP is *not* designed to boot from an UEFI firmware, but from BIOS. Which is not available in UEFI boot modes (and might completely disappear in the near future). And microsoft will probably never release a UEFI-enabled Windows XP. So no way to get it to boot on a UEFI machine.
- Also Windows XP in neither a linux-like bootable kernel, so no chance of it being directly chainable from a efilinux boot loader.
To get it to boot:
- either some BIOS compatibility layer has to be used like SeaBIOS (which isn't currently able to emulated everything needed for Windows XP as far as I know) and make that chainloadable by the boot loader. (that is the route that Apple went with BootCamp on Mac hardware, they install a compatibility layer above their own custom variant of EFI that gives enough BIOS functionnality to help Windows Boot).
- or hack ReactOS's osloader (which *IS* bootable from any Linux bootloader) to be able to load windows XP components and boot them. (ReactOS is supposed to be NT-Like, so that not impossible, but requires tremendous work)
So, in short, no easy way to chainload Windows XP from efilinux. Not because of security or signing, but because XP isn't designed to run on such a system, Microsoft won't do anything for that, and any other solution around the problem requires lot of hacking.
Difference (Score:5, Informative)
What's the difference between chainloading XP and your own kernel?
your own kernel does support UEFI and does support being loaded and booted from efilinux, grub2, etc.
chainloading XP would require a Legagy BIOS which isn't available at that point. Also the Windows kernel doesn't conform to the standard used by efilinux and other bootloaders so it can't be loaded from the. Currently bootloader chainload to windows XP by loading its boot sector and acting as if that (MSDOS) partition was booted. But UEFI has no concept of boot sectors or MSDOS partition (only GPT partitions).
windows xp it self is un-bootable of such a machine without extensive hacking.
Re:Metro? (Score:4, Informative)
Doesn't this make the (rather unlikely) assumption that significant numbers will be using the Win8 address book and email apps? In order for this to be significant, wouldn't one have to assume that Win8 will have some reasonable amount of penetration in the business environment? It then becomes a chicken-and-egg problem, I think.
The thing is, a conventional web app will still work, I think, even in the rather unlikely event that the user is running Windows 8 in a business environment. So again, I don't see the percentage of doing any tweaking or coding to run in Metro, and then having to maintain and test those code paths, on the off chance of having actual customers for which this would be important.
It's rather like coding a business app with Vista-specific features, when we know good and well that most businesses passed over Vista. I'm aware that at some point this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that's one of the problems when you have to bet what might be mission-critical operations on "a complete rewrite".
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
The 'Cloud computing' push is also problematic (Score:4, Informative)
for business. Businesses often require locked down computers and need to control their data in their local jurisdiction. Many of the apps channel users to the 'cloud', and much functionality does not seem to work without a 'cloud' account. The Metro file browser seems to require a cloud login just to access files in local external storage which is just ridiculous.
The 'cloud' requirment is also a problem for families. Children can not even download game apps without an email account, and how can they be expected to agree to the terms?
What about apps that business would like to use but that are outside MS's app store terms? Sorry business can have their systems ruled by the whims of MSs terms.
Some apps have a lot of consumer marketing in them, such as the the Videos app, which seem to have a fixed home page advertising consumer Videos for sale. This is all an unproductive distraction for business.
Then there is the push to the touch screen UI. This does not even suit a wide range of consumer devices. For example a remote control better suits a TV. Business need very effecient and ergonomic input devices for people working long productive hours. Even if my monitor was touch sensitive I would still be using the trackball because I can work longer hours before becoming fatigued, and the Metro UI is very frustrating to use with a trackball because buttons and scroll bars are far apart. The simple fact is that a pull down menu is much more efficient and productive for trackball and mouse usage.
Pinching to zoom, and swiping to pan, may not even be a great interface and may not be around long. I would much rather have some wheels around the tablet edge. Then there are the creative multi-touch gestures - pick with one touch and pan with another - but which hand is holding the tablet?
Further, the 'no chrome' UI, is just not intuitive. Where is the help? What are the shortcuts? Why do we need to search online just to learn how to close an app. I still haven't found the keyboard shortcuts for panning the grid UI? Perhaps people need the help that chrome can provide much more than they need the full screen content.
Windows 8 should have worked on security and isolation, not experimental UI and consumer consumption, if it wanted to appeal to businesses. How about tacking the problem of making cloud storage safe for businesses - encrpyted and split across multi jurisdictions! How about virtualising the OS environment so old applications can continue to run safely in virtual machines while not interfering with new OSs. How about bundling older MS OSs in the virtual environment - this is something only MS could do so why not exploit the opertunity? These are the things businesses need. It would also be great for families - children could install junk games etc in a locked down virtual machine and just wipe it all when done.