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Windows 8-was Microsoft wrong?
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I don't see a huge number of compelling reasons to move to 8 on the consumer side of things, except for certain needs. On the enterprise side though, there are a number of improvements that have us rolling it out to most of our clients, especially those that are laptop-heavy.
Having true Hyper-V built in is very nice
DirectAccess (available in 7 but a nightmare/expensive to deploy)
Faster boot times
VHDX native boot
Native ISO/VHD/VHDX mounting
HA printing logic when used with Win2012 server
Improved security and reduced patching
The combination of these improvements is allowing us to cut branch office infrastructure in half.
Just do it anyways. Windows 8 has a desktop mode you can still use while getting used to the tiles.
Whenever i get a Windows 8 whether it be desktop or laptop, its going to have a touchscreen.
So what about those who use desktops, and not tablets? Why should they suffer trying to use something clearly made for touch devices?
In order...
- windows 7 has virtual XP mode and app-v which is about the only reason for client machines to virtualise outside of the IT department
- directaccess is a possible win, sure
- my win7 SSD machine boots in about 9-10 seconds from cold. once per fortnight. Win8 would save me perhaps 10 seconds per month? given my machine will be out of action while the OS is deployed, and adjustment time for users to learn the new OS, if they're held up by more than say a couple of minutes that is the entire lifetime of Windows 8's 10 seconds per month benefit out the window - it will never pay for itself in terms of lost time. never mind potential application compatibility issues...
- win7 can boot from VHD
- win7 can mount ISO natively. pretty sure it can do VHD too, but i've never checked. never needed to....
- haven't checked out the printing - possible win?
- remains to be seen - i already had a heap of patches queued up in WSUS prior to official release. RTM hadn't even been officially released yet and there were already patches out for it on day 1.
How is it cutting your infrastructure in half (is it directaccess)? Seriously, I'd like to know because I'm responsible for our SOE deployment and network/AD architecture here and I just don't see it? Most of my sites are 15-30 users, with a couple having 100-150 each.
There are a number of apps that will never go metro that aren't going anywhere any time soon. Given that we're going to be stuck with the desktop for the foreseeable future, all win8 offers there is a confusing and inconsistent mashup of two different UI paradigms, depending on the app you happen to be running.
I understand why they did it - because they need to maintain backwards compatability at all costs - but it just causes 8 to be a poorly focused, half-baked OS. I don't expect to see any serious metro apps either - the development is way too different from the old win32 way, and making a metro app for an OS that isn't really doing so well means you'll be cutting off everyone with XP and 7 - chasing a fairly small market. But if you write for XP or 7 (i.e., not metro), win8 can run your app too.
There's no real incentive to write for metro, at least whilst Windows 7 is still supported - so if you're waiting for the raft of metro apps to justify running the skitzophrenic UI, I think you'll be waiting a long time. Windows 7 SP1 support runs out in 2020 (from memory?), unless they release another service pack... at which point the time will be pushed out.
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I bought the upgrade for like $10.... I was on Windows 7... If they had not marked it down so much I would never consider windows 8 vs windows 7..... Takes a little getting used to but win8 is not horrible for me. That start screen thing I almost never use... So I operate it like windows 7 for the most part.
Hyper-V is far more flexible than VPC/XP mode which can't even do x64 guests (we've had to use virtualbox for this which is a lot kludgier than hyper-v. Your users may not have the need.
"Possible win" - sounds like you haven't tried DA (or don't have many laptops, which was our case up until fairly recently - now it is almost a necessity). It rocks and 2012/8 make it deployable with 4 clicks.
Obviously you shouldn't deploy if you have compatibility issues.
I didn't say vhd, I said VHDX (we are now standardized on VHDX across all 8/2012 machines - previously we had a mix of VHD/VHDX which is inefficient and doubles storage).
Not sure why you're saying that Windows 7 can natively mount ISO files; it can't. In order to mount VHDs, you have to use Disk Management, you can't simply click and go the way you can with 8. And you can't mount VHDX files at all under 7. Not a necessity but extremely useful.
Printing is a big one. Previously we had to have a minimum of two physical machines at each branch for redundancy purposes (which practically boils down to printing since other services can happen over the WAN). Win8/2012 fixes this in a couple ways - one is that the windoze client is finally smart enough to simply print to the printer directly if the server is offline. The other is that you can centralize a print server offsite and identify printers on it as "branch" printers - in which case Win8 sends the print jobs directly to the printer and uses the server simply as a driver/provisioning center (no print jobs over the WAN). So all win8 sites can now run off a single physical server, typically with a virtualized guest that is a RODC/DNS server, print server, and branchecache server. If that machine goes down, no real impact to any critical services.
I agree with you on metro apps - it's mainly consumer-focused and going to be a very gradual thing on the corporate side. I don't really agree that it hampers use of win8 in any way though. There are many days I see the start screen once a day.
As I said, our users (and the vast majority of end users) don't need virtualisation, and our VM platform is vSphere anyway, so end user hyper-v = meh. The only end user desktop virtualisation we'd really consider is either App-V, VMware thinapp, VMware VDI thin clients, or XP-mode, which we haven't needed yet, and have been running Win7 on all new installs since early 2010 - we're probably 95% win7 now and the only reason for the stragglers is non-funding, not compatibility with apps...
For DirectAccess, I say possible win because I haven't rolled it out yet. Have had mixed reports from guys here who have, admiittedly none of them were on 2012 server so again, point there, agreed. I have a few hundred laptops (asy, 90% of our users), so don't get me wrong I definitely see the need and want to see it work. But you can work around no directAccess - we do remote support via Lync if outside the firewall and SCCM can be set up to work over the internet without IPV6 tunneling too.
As far as VHDX goes, i know you said that and not VHD, but if you're not migrating to 8 / 2012, you don't have VHDX so there's no need for 7 to mount it...
My bad, it's been ages since i worked with ISOs actually inside an OS you are correct.
Fair enough, we virtualize our file/print on a VMware HA cluster, and run updates out of hours so don't really have an issue with unavailability, but I guess that's a win.
Our WAN links are pretty crappy (remote locations with poor comms availability) so centralised printing controlled by HQ is no real gain for us.
It's not the start screen so much...
Metro just doesn't work well with a mouse and keyboard, period. And touch when i'm at a desk is no use to me, as my preferred viewing distance for my multi-monitor setup is beyond convenient arm's reach anyhow. Never mind gorilla-arm syndrome, I'm talking hunchback of notre dame.
I really think microsoft screwed up here, but I *can* see why they are attempting to force it on desktop users - because it's the only way they think they'll be able to get desktop apps written for it which will then give them a foothold in the tablet market.
But the end result is just a dysfunctional inconsistent desktop interface that breaks a lot of things to boot.
It strikes me as if Microsoft just don't have confidence in their mobile platform (and after many versions of WINCE failing, I can understand) and see the only way into the market as piggybacking off the desktop.
Which again, I think is a mistake - different form factors and screen size demand different interfaces - it's the whole reason iOS and Android are the way they are, and why they took off whereas the myriad of x86 tablet based machines running windows since the early 2000s were very, very niche and pretty much a failure.
But, they appear to have bet the farm on it and have quite a lot of money to throw after it for some time yet.
Its just a damn shame they aren't writing something BETTER that is more forward looking - the whole disjointed Windows 8 UI and much of the bloat is due to the refusal to give up backwards compatibility, as has been their way since DOS.
They have the people and the money to make something good, it seems their products just get stuck in the design-by-committee mud and compromised because of it - they're trying to be all things to all people, when what is really needed is a more focused device that is good at what it does rather than mediocre at everything.
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Touch interfaces - why move hand all other the place ?!.
I think for large tablets, there is little need to have a complete screen as touch capable. Most functions people use are available on the lower 1/3 of the screen so build the touch sensors there!. This way only the lower half will get fingerprints and 2/3 will be relatively clean!. Besides, most functions like navigation can be done on the lower right or left corners of the screen. Only exception is selecting text which will need arrow touch point to move cursor to the desired spot. A lot of screens are too small to select the right letter anyhow. SO the design aspect causes bad usability!.
Horizonal scrolls, slide up/down. PgUp/Dn slide Uptap/Dn tap. Pan - two finger slide, etc. flick left right etc. All very intuitive when using. Then the hardware can focus on precision and doing clever predictions.
In multitasking, IOS and its limits did the best compromise. The focus on great usability is strong, hence setting the standard. When I first saw the Surface demo, the fact that some gestures did not register was really bad. It would drive people crazy using it.
I think for large tablets, there is little need to have a complete screen as touch capable. Most functions people use are available on the lower 1/3 of the screen so build the touch sensors there!. This way only the lower half will get fingerprints and 2/3 will be relatively clean!. Besides, most functions like navigation can be done on the lower right or left corners of the screen. Only exception is selecting text which will need arrow touch point to move cursor to the desired spot. A lot of screens are too small to select the right letter anyhow. SO the design aspect causes bad usability!.
Horizonal scrolls, slide up/down. PgUp/Dn slide Uptap/Dn tap. Pan - two finger slide, etc. flick left right etc. All very intuitive when using. Then the hardware can focus on precision and doing clever predictions.
In multitasking, IOS and its limits did the best compromise. The focus on great usability is strong, hence setting the standard. When I first saw the Surface demo, the fact that some gestures did not register was really bad. It would drive people crazy using it.
DirectAccess on 7/2008r2 = nightmare
DirectAccess on 8/2012 = 4 clicks and works beautifully; we have dozens of people using it every day without issue
I think you missed my point about centralized printing. The infrastructure reduction comes from only having to have one machine at each branch instead of two, hence a 50% reduction.
Backwards compatibility is a pain in many ways, yes, but unlike Apple Microsoft actually has gigantic corporate and government customers to answer to, so they are hamstrung somewhat.