Anyone deploying Windows 8 now?

[rich_tech]

We have decided to ignore it for now where I work I think as a consensus and stick with 7 and office 2010, I like it though and I use it and I also use Office 2013 and like that a lot, but I can see a nightmare for us support wise with the start menu change, its just too radical for a desktop environment, I don't get why M$ rolled that out to everything, in my mind Metro should have been their mobile version (iOS compared to the OSX of the main product).

 

The fact that the consensus of people I talk to about it, have a major instant dislike to it, even talking to a few pupils at the school I work, they tell me that they hate it themselves those who have it on their new laptops, thats never a good sign for an OS I think, mass market hating the product.

[RowlandoGloom]

We are currently trailing it in a couple of the ICT Suites. Surprisingly staff and students are liking it.

 

I have 2 networks, a CC4 and Vanilla - both with Win8 - working great.

 

I have managed to convince RM to allow me to field trial it for CC4 and it managed the same way as other clients. The Start Screen is controlled through the Program Sets as usual.

 

I created a custom WIM, removing all "featured" apps via DISM - plus deploying with WDS and a custom answer file.

 

Working fab.

 

Just a shame Office 2013 is so slow, ie Excel and navigating spreadsheets etc.

 

Paul

[RabbieBurns]

Just about to roll out 100 new convertible style laptops with win 8

[abillybob]

I don't understand where all this hate is coming from on Windows 8. It's actually very well made with hardly any bugs the only problem I'm having is with IE10 and compatibility with certain websites, but apart from this I can't fault it. The apps are a good idea, though it is a touch interface and for this reason I see no use for it unless you have a touch screen computer or tablet. I have the Asus VivoTab Smart ME400c and it's great can't fault the device personally I think all the Apple stuff that schools seem to buy because Apple are good at marketing are rubbish. The fact that these tablets are cheaper and run Windows desktop with all group policies, AD mapped and students able to access home drives. It's so much easier to implement and it won't take Microsoft long to get to where Apple is. Before you strike me down we do have iPads though these were implemented into the network before I came

[squeeky]

don't understand where all this hate is coming from on Windows 8. It's actually very well made with hardly any bugs the only problem I'm having is with IE10

 

Can you tell me if you have found a way to make all sites run in compatibility mode because I cant find an option for this anywhere is GPP or GP

[abillybob]

Yes mate, click F12 to get to developer options and then click document mode and change accordingly to whichever browser like IE8. Just make sure you don't exit out of developer tools and click the minimize instead to see full screen.

[Tall_Paul]

It is somewhat daft Microsoft have given practically no GPOs to manage Metro or being able to re-enable the Start Menu.

 

I believe Microsoft need to look at my formula:

 

Lots of GPO goodness = happy admins = lots more Win 8 deployments

 

Instead we keep seeing articles about how many licenses sold. Does anyone really care Microsoft?

 

This is a big problem for me too.

 

I am being forced down the W8 route by my very keen vice-principal. However, to roll it out and support it properly I will need to upgrade SCCM to 2012 SP1 and I just can't seem to find the time to do it amongst the myriad of other refreshes we have going on at the moment.

 

Ideally I would like to look at it next year, but I suspect I won't be given that luxury.

[zag]

This is a big problem for me too.

 

I am being forced down the W8 route by my very keen vice-principal. However, to roll it out and support it properly I will need to upgrade SCCM to 2012 SP1 and I just can't seem to find the time to do it amongst the myriad of other refreshes we have going on at the moment.

 

Ideally I would like to look at it next year, but I suspect I won't be given that luxury.

 

Its pointless upgrading to windows 8 until the next "blue" edition comes out. Hopefully they will allow people to boot to desktop then.

[Tall_Paul]

Its pointless upgrading to windows 8 until the next "blue" edition comes out. Hopefully they will allow people to boot to desktop then.

 

I agree, but it's difficult arguing with your boss when they're determined they want it.

 

I've pointed out all the pitfalls and they've gone ahead and ordered an Acer slate anyway. Best thing is to let them play with it them and find the problems themselves.

[SYNACK]

I agree, but it's difficult arguing with your boss when they're determined they want it.

 

I've pointed out all the pitfalls and they've gone ahead and ordered an Acer slate anyway. Best thing is to let them play with it them and find the problems themselves.

 

If it's for a slate 8 owns 7 every day of the week and two more I have made up just for this example. For demoing and experimenting it is fine but just not manageable however testing it all out now means you aren't 5 years behind when they do ship something you want to use like xp to 7 migrations now where its a big jump not a gentle stroll.

[Sheridan]

No - Windows 8 offers us nothing but problems. Windows 7 is the upgrade path and then we will wait and see. Windows 8 works fine in a tablet environment and (at a push) on a touchscreen environment but is awful in a working environment.

 

I think MS have forgotten that people massively adopted XP in the business world because it did what it was supposed to do - i.e provide users with a simple, standardised way of accessing the applications they used. Most people couldn't give a toss how snazzy the icons appear - when you spend all day in Oracle/SAP etc!

 

I can see why MS want to bring a tablet/phone OS into the market, but why can they have 2 versions - one for mobile devices and a desktop version?

[Michael]

I think Microsoft are literally trying to make a 'one size fits all', whereas Apple use iOS on their phones and tablets, but then OSX on notebooks and PCs. I think Apple have done the better job platform by platform.

 

Granted technologies can merge between devices, but it doesn't mean they have to look exactly the same Microsoft! As it is 'apps' are written for the smaller screen, exactly for this reason.

[cromertech]

I'm finding that I have to deploy it now as we've just managed to get some HP laptops that are bios locked (secure boot and no obvious way to disable) to windows 8. This means I have had to update my WDS server to 2012, which is quite pleasant really, and get to grips with uefi deployment, which is not so pleasant.

 

Has anybody managed to get an MDT2012 Litetouch image to uefi boot on a machine with secure boot?

[Jordyboy]

Don't think we'll be deploying Windows 8 at our school anytime soon, both the staff and students are too used to working with the ordinary Windows desktop environment, and will not like all the changes that comes with Windows 8.

 

We do however have 1 member of staff who's running Windows 8 on his new laptop, and loves using it. So maybe once a new service pack or Windows 9 is released we can look into possibly upgrading...

Edited May 20, 2013 by Jordyboy

[Speculator]

Hi all,

 

We're running Windows 8 in a couple of guises here. We recently supplied all our staff with Windows 8 on a new Dell XPS-12 Convertible Ultrabook. The rollout (80 machines) is just about complete and the reaction has been very positive. The only complaints were caused by Dells drivers (which they've fixed).

 

We've also got a BYOD program running some our senior grades. A surprising number of those students have Windows 8 laptops, they seem to be getting on okay with them, and they tend to work, although we have seen a common bit of weirdness with Win 8 connecting to our wireless, it sometimes fails on the first try, then the second try works.

 

Finally, I just placed an order for 140 Hp Envy x2's to kick off our new 1:1 program in our lowest grade. In about 8 weeks we'll have this whole grade using these Win8 hybrid tablets.

 

There's a lot to work out around all this, and I have to say we're doing well given some of the issues we've had (not least of all our crap staffing). But getting back to Windows 8, we're finding that the OS is solid, it really just needs a few quirks ironing out (as did 7 when we adopted that early on). All the noise the tech-press are making trying to pretend 8 is a disaster is wrong if you use it on a device it was made for.

 

L8r.

[jcookhgs]

@witch you will be waiting a long time. Microsoft is doing away with Service Packs. If ones come for Windows 8 it will be many years down the line.

 

Maybe like 8.1 "Blue" perhaps?

[dr6figures]

I am being forced down the W8 route by my very keen vice-principal. However, to roll it out and support it properly I will need to upgrade SCCM to 2012 SP1 and I just can't seem to find the time to do it amongst the myriad of other refreshes we have going on at the moment.

 

I know the feeling. We are rolling out Windows 8 and Office 2013 this August to several of our computer labs. We teach computer courses and the selected textbooks are written for Office 2013 and Windows 8, so my boss said that we are going to it. Win 8 is not that bad when you install a 3rd party start menu app that bypasses Metro.

 

The one thing that I don't like is that the default metro apps (Weather, Sports, Games, etc...) are provisioned per user and not for everyone that logs on to the PC. This means that if person A logs on and updates the Metro apps, and person B logs on, person A has the latest versions of the apps and person B has the older versions until he or she updates them manually. And, if you try to update the Metro apps in the reference image and run Sysprep, then Sysprep fails! I'd just turn them off if we could, but the textbooks have activities for students using these default apps, so we need them. And, each student logs into the PC with a domain account, so it is a ring of setbacks. Plus, Metro apps are updated through the Windows Store and not through Windows Update, so the whole thing is a mess.

[Arthur]

Metro apps are updated through the Windows Store and not through Windows Update, so the whole thing is a mess.

Windows Update is for updates.

 

Btw, Android apps are updated through Google Play (and similar app stores), iOS apps are updated through the iTunes Store, OS X apps can be updated through the Mac App Store, Windows Phone apps are updated through the Windows Phone Store, BlackBerry apps are updated through Blackberry World, Firefox OS apps are updated through the Firefox Marketplace etc. etc. Even Ubuntu has an app store - the Ubuntu Software Center.

[Speculator]

From what I'm reading Blue/8.1 will be good for your existing hardware (desktops and non-touch laptops). It's basically an apology to enterprises who have and will continue to have loads of these machines. I'm happy about that, as I think 8 is broken for those machines.

I can't see the update offering anything else more than bugfixes and minor feature enhancements though (the preview isn't that far away now, then we'll know for sure).

 

So far our reaction from 80 teaching staff has been overwhelmingly positive, but that's down to them using it on the correct device. I think the naysayers on Win 8 are mostly mouse/keyboard users so hopefully the coming Blue update will make them happy and we can all just move on.

[Michael]

This is exactly the point - Corporate IT which are Microsoft's biggest customer are very much keyboard and mouse users, so what on earth were they thinking making Win 8 a touchscreen only OS with no options suitable for keyboard and mouse users?

 

I have a feeling Microsoft simply saw iPads gaining in popularity, but in reality, this is still a small percentage of all devices used. Corporate IT are not going to suddenly change everything to touchscreen are they?

 

A really simple fix for Microsoft is for Windows itself to know whether it's installed on a tablet, notebook or PC and select the appropriate interface, or for advanced users, allowing them to specify the default interface. This is theory could then be developed/included with Sysprep for large deployments.

[Sheridan]

And MS also need to introduce a raft of GPOs that actually let you configure Windows8 in a coporate/education environment!

[russpg]

I love windows 8 on my laptop and some of the new features it offers and I don't mind not having a start menu, on windows 7 I'd just press start and type what I wanted anyway, same as Windows 8.

The biggest problem is what someone commented on earlier, if I was using the same machine every day great this would work fine. But when a student logs on 5 different pc's a day and has to update apps through the windows store every time it becomes a bit tedious and also creating a new profile every time is slow at best compared to windows 7. Looking forward to seeing if there are new app update options are available in the next server release next week at technet.

[Fazza]

We're offering it to Staff who want it and putting it on all new laptops for them but have no plans in the immediate future to install it in the classrooms. We're currently upgrading our servers to 2012 so once that's done we'll look in to seeing what the benefits of installing it in the classrooms would be and make a decision that way.

[Arthur]

what on earth were they thinking making Win 8 a touchscreen only OS with no options suitable for keyboard and mouse users?

Have you actually used Windows 8? If you had, you would know that it is not a touchscreen only OS and it has far more keyboard and mouse shortcuts than Windows 7 ever had.

 

Corporate IT are not going to suddenly change everything to touchscreen are they?

They don't have to because Windows 8 isn't a touchscreen only OS! Touch is an additional input method, just like the keyboard, mouse and trackpad are.

 

If you download the latest drivers for your trackpad, you might even be able to use OS X-style gestures (even with older non-touchscreen laptops).

 

 

A really simple fix for Microsoft is for Windows itself to know whether it's installed on a tablet, notebook or PC and select the appropriate interface, or for advanced users, allowing them to specify the default interface.

How would that work on a hybrid laptop or touchscreen ultrabook / AIO desktop?

 

With Android, if you connect a mouse and keyboard to your tablet the interface doesn't change. Why should Windows be any different?

Edited May 29, 2013 by Arthur

[Michael]

Have you actually used Windows 8? If you had, you would know that it is not a touchscreen only OS and it has far more keyboard and mouse shortcuts than Windows 7 ever had.

 

They don't have to because Windows 8 isn't a touchscreen only OS! Touch is an additional input method, just like the keyboard, mouse and trackpad are.

 

If you download the latest drivers for your trackpad, you might even be able to use OS X-style gestures (even with older non-touchscreen laptops).

 

 

 

How would that work on a hybrid laptop or touchscreen ultrabook / AIO desktop?

 

With Android, if you connect a mouse and keyboard to your tablet the interface doesn't change. Why should Windows be any different?

 

Yes I've used Windows 8 from a very early stage. There are many shortcuts, but Jo Public isn't going to know about them are they? People want to use the GUI to use things, not keyboard shortcuts!!

 

Windows 8 is blatantly aimed at touchscreen, with keyboard and mouse as a second option. Microsoft are always promoting Windows 8 on tablets and not on desktops or notebooks in their adverts are they? And every single advert you see users swiping the screen with their finger... If Corporate IT invest in upgrading to tablets running Windows 8, is this going to make profits rise even more? Of course it isn't, which is why very few big corporations are actually using it.

 

On hybrid machines, users can choose - I think this is the biggest issue with Windows 8. It's like it or lump it. I've lost count now of the amount of machines I have downgraded as customers contact me at their dissatisfaction with Windows 8. I had a customer yesterday who said to me 'all I want is a desktop with icon shortcuts' and I think she speaks for many others.

 

So why is Windows 8 being received so badly in your opinion? And why are they having to make 'significant' changes with Windows 8.1?