Anyone deploying Windows 8 now?

[Speculator]

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?

 

I have to disagree with you there. Microsoft certainly saw a threat from tablets, but you're suggesting it's not real. They saw it three years ago, and it is definitely real - IDC predicts tablets to outsell PC's by 2015.

 

Microsoft sell a huge amount to consumers, and there is an Enterprise uptake with tablets too. They need to be part of that market, particularly if it's going to eat away 50% of their sales in only a few years. The numbers now prove that Microsoft was right to change Windows for the Post-PC era. It's just difficult to swallow the way they've gone about it if you're a traditional PC user.

 

Your solution is quite a good idea. I've often wondered about it myself. Having two or three "device modes" for tablet/desktop and/or laptop would've been good.

 

Anyway, I see some apparent leaks of the 8.1 preview have surfaced today and it does look a little like they've made progress toward something like that. I think you'll see a slightly more sensible and considerate approach now that Sinofsky is gone. Apparently his style was very autocratic, and he was the sort of personality who wanted to dictate the direction rather than listening to feedback.

 

L8r.

Edited May 30, 2013 by Speculator

[Michael]

I agree they have to be part of the tablet/phone market, but the way they've gone about it is poor. Now whether or not this is the fault of Steven Sinofsky and others... who knows, but not listening to customer feedback is just stupid.

 

The issue I have with 'tablets outselling PCs', is what is the definition of a PC? A box or tower in the corner, or does this also include notebooks and netbooks too? I have my reservations about it happening so soon, simply because tablets are still too new and too expensive for what they are.

[jugglerjoe]

I have since christmas working on bits and bobs for deploying windows 8 in september.

 

We already have it rolled out to 1 classroom of 24 pc's under heavy use for 3 months now. Just checked the ammount of users that have signed in and its 506 so far the only support calls ive had to it was someone accidentally done the "CTRL + ALT +

 

Running it side by side windows 7 is actually much harder than just rolling out windows 8 on its own due to Default profiles of win 7 and win 8 not being cross compatible and a few other things.

 

Otherwise the customizing of the start screen was the hardest bit but anyone who really does it from now on can find the info on the web easy enough rather than having to work stuff out for them selves.

 

SIMS / Solus 3 now officially support windows 8 and office 2013 has some nice new features.

 

All in All we are 100% deploying it to all desktop pcs, but staff laptops will be an optional upgrade for them as we cannot be bothered with the hassle

[arh1a]

I have since christmas working on bits and bobs for deploying windows 8 in september.

 

We already have it rolled out to 1 classroom of 24 pc's under heavy use for 3 months now. Just checked the ammount of users that have signed in and its 506 so far the only support calls ive had to it was someone accidentally done the "CTRL + ALT +

 

Running it side by side windows 7 is actually much harder than just rolling out windows 8 on its own due to Default profiles of win 7 and win 8 not being cross compatible and a few other things.

 

Otherwise the customizing of the start screen was the hardest bit but anyone who really does it from now on can find the info on the web easy enough rather than having to work stuff out for them selves.

 

SIMS / Solus 3 now officially support windows 8 and office 2013 has some nice new features.

 

All in All we are 100% deploying it to all desktop pcs, but staff laptops will be an optional upgrade for them as we cannot be bothered with the hassle

 

I totally agree with this, im starting to roll it out in the schools I work in and no one has complained. Once people learn the basics its straight forward to use with a mouse/keyboard or touch screen.

[jugglerjoe]

I have the upgrade ready and fullly automated from group policy even have a script to install solus 3 agent/wireless profiles/specialist programs and some random fixes for certain models of PC onto computers i need >_< cant wait for august =]

 

we had a little training thing for people to see windows 8 within our staff 12 came along and all happpiliy got along with it.

[Speculator]

I totally agree with this, im starting to roll it out in the schools I work in and no one has complained. Once people learn the basics its straight forward to use with a mouse/keyboard or touch screen.

 

Yeah, I agree with the last couple of posters really, anyone who's spent some time with it finds Windows 8 has no major failing. The complainers are mostly just big enterprises who're way behind everyone else anyway (still on XP in a lot of cases) and people who don't like change. I don't know whether I mentioned it, but we have BYOD program and the students in that bring a lot of their own Win8 laptops, they like them just fine. Also, I had a staff member who's laptop normally runs Win 7 loaning one of our Windows 8 Dell XPS's recently, she loved it so much she didn't want to give it back, and now she wants to get one of her own permanently.

 

If anyone's interested, I'm blogging some of our Win8 and BYOD experiences at - blog.hald.me. So far, nothing has been negative enough to justify our worries about it all before we started (with Win8 or BYOD).

 

L8r.

[ADMaster]

I've spun up a few VM's to test settings. My two issues with it are the store apps, and folder redirection. I will have a 2012 DC later this summer so that may fix the folder redirection.

 

I will also be looking at SCCM this summer.

 

Those of you that are rolling it out, how are the store apps installed and updated, does every student need a Microsoft ID. We have GAFE not O365.

 

Thanks,

[Speculator]

I've spun up a few VM's to test settings. My two issues with it are the store apps, and folder redirection.

 

Yeah, the store apps are my biggest annoyance right now. What is the problem with folder redirection? Our redirection of My Documents and other library folders still seems to work.

 

L8r.

[ADMaster]

The desktop redirects, but when I try to access a folder it doesn't open, no error it just doesn't open.

 

The documents appear to redirect, but the documents library only has public documents. Trying to add my documents gives an error.

 

Hopefully it is just something off in my policy that I can correct once I get 2012 DC.

 

The store apps is an issue. On one hand I want to just disable the store, and on the other I would want to push apps. I know the minute I disable the store some teacher will say they need store app xyz.

As said before it's just not corporate / education friendly.

 

I have w8 on my home PC and it works nice.

[jugglerjoe]

You must be redirecting documents wrong. server 2008 r2 network here and works perfect. even have different appdata folders setup for users depending whether they are on Win 7 or Win 8. If you would like to chat about it pm me.

 

The deal withs appps... GRRR.

Right, with regards to normal Windows 8 treat apps as if they are invisible, unless you want a management nightmare.

 

I have had no secess using dism or powershell to actually update an app. I am not going to find it now but there is microsoft documents saying that "Updates have to be user initiated".

So if you are wanting apps, wait untill windows 8.1 comes out. There is a group policy that will come out called "Allow store apps to automatically update".

 

If you want windows 8 policies using a 2008 r2 DC just need to update the group policy store. Look it up online youll find lots about updating ADMX/ADM Files.

 

We dont let students have Windows Live ID's. But what it does is give them their internal full domain name = 07dibblesy would be 07dibblesy.. and that pics it up in office and stuff.

 

with SCCM, I do have experience however my boss is against doing it at the moment, would be nice but TBH i managed to make a Task sequence in the MDt to sucessfully upgrade a PC from the windows 7 OS to the windows 8 OS. Most of stuff is MSI. and stuff that isnt is either in MDT Database or as tickboxs to install

 

Any other questions, feel free to ask.

Edited June 7, 2013 by jugglerjoe

[Sheridan]

I am unfortunately stuck in the badly financed UK education sector, where you're lucky if you have a schools agreement. So we would only upgrade to Windows 8 as part of a hardware upgrade, and from testing with some Win8 laptops we've found 8 to be buggy (especially IE10) and offering nothing over 7, apart from the fact you have to learn a new way to find your Apps.

 

I'm all for progress - but this isn't progress, for a desktop OS its change for changes sake. As a tablet OS it works fine, and the fact the MS want to compete in the tablet/touchscreen market is understandable. But 8 on a standard desktop (that was probably running XP or 7 previously) is just not worth doing. If people are finding 8 works for them then great, but students using BYOD devices is an easy test for 8 - stick on their wireless access and they can do what they like on their laptop. Managing them on a 2008 domain is a different matter and we've found the policy side isn't good enough to configure them easily. We don't have the luxury of setting up spare servers running MDT etc to mass deploy so using WDS to dump Win7 images is our better choice for the next 12 months or so.

[jugglerjoe]

wow. I was almost waiting for someone like you. First of all MDT is as small or as big as you like it and is installed on the same server as WDS and is tiny, untill you add in your truckload of drivers. So thats that.

 

IE 10 we have had no problems with as of yet. (except our virus scanner was not allowing java to run, which has now been fixed) In IE 10 you need to set trusted sites, intranet sites using the zone assignment policy or some of them with display messages.

 

We dont have the best funding either but enough for a volume licencing agreement and enough to keep everything running smoothly.

 

Windows 8 in general for students should not bother offering apps as they, 1) are under developed 2) cannot be managed properly

 

As for managing them, import the ADMX/ADM files on to a 2008r2 DC and its all go. Policies work fine and everything is groovy. I have yet not find a way to do something. I would say the only annoying windows 8 change is no custom logon background but i changed our from the purple to nice bright blue which is our schools colour and it seems to have gone down well.

[Sheridan]

Nice and patronising. We have issues with Win8 and you don't. Well done you.

[jugglerjoe]

As i have said in my previous posts. Mail me if you want help. I am more then happy to help anyone that needs it Sheridan. but also i dont like people saying that Windows 8 is so bad and horrible when it does work and seeems to on the most part be faster than windows 7. not to say has WAY less trouble with print drivers which i like

[3s-gtech]

Vista did work, and in many ways was superior to XP. Didn't stop people hating it. I've got a few Windows 8 machines here - it's a pain IME. IE10 needed a hack to manage, WU seems to break pretty readily, managing the Start screen is a pain, and the interface is not well suited to a keyboard and mouse (so we only have it on tablets). It's a good OS really, with some bugs and problems. 8.1, like Windows 7, should address many of these.

[jugglerjoe]

IE10 needed a hack to manage.

I am interested why a hack was needed for this?

 

Do you run WSUS for windows updates on your client computers? IF not i'd recommend this. I used our default WSUS policies for win 7 and it seems to work fine.

 

The idea is not to manage the start screen but to give a default customization. We give our students our base programs that are installed on every pc eg Office 2013 and Live essentials 2012 Movie Maker and Photo Gallery. Then links for their network area, shared drives, desktop and a couple of other links to get on to their google drive and our horrible VLE. They can then customize as they see fit. If you do not want to give student this customization then a mandatory profile can be used. If you use GP to do a file copy of a shortcut needed in a particular profile on a class of pcs then copy to the start menu in %PROGRAMDATA%. This i think is how it seems to work but i have never used mandatory profiles so this may be inaccurate

 

You say that its not suited for a keyboard and mouse however, once you know many of the shortcuts its much quicker to do things than in win 7.

Edited June 7, 2013 by jugglerjoe

[gshaw]

The next release of Win8 should sort a lot of the issues that tbh should have been ironed out well before it was released. What with the delays on the release of the Surface Pro a few extra months development time may have been better rather than rushing out the OS to try and compete with the forbidden fruit but then making a right mess of it and all the negative feedback that's come as a result.

 

The sad thing is that the OS itself does perform well and it's poorly though through \ stubborn design in some places where they've come unstuck. For example the search, MS were defending splitting it up in the initial release now have backtracked and putting it as a unified search, much easier to just do it first time as everyone wanted

 

If enterprise app distribution isn't sorted on 8.1 MS really do deserve a kicking, not being able to centrally deploy Metro apps to the Start screen (even with MS flagship management tool) is really, really poor at the moment imo.

[Quackers]

Vista did work

 

yeah but not until it hit SP2. The RTM version could not even access our shared drives on Windows Servers without taking minutes to load, and file copying was reported all over the internet as taking twice as long as XP at doing the same task, and thats just for starters of why Vista did far from work.

[zag]

If enterprise app distribution isn't sorted on 8.1 MS really do deserve a kicking, not being able to centrally deploy Metro apps to the Start screen (even with MS flagship management tool) is really, really poor at the moment imo.

 

Maybe they realize that nobody is using metro apps and everyone just wants the desktop improvements

[zag]

Vista did work, and in many ways was superior to XP. Didn't stop people hating it. I've got a few Windows 8 machines here - it's a pain IME. IE10 needed a hack to manage, WU seems to break pretty readily, managing the Start screen is a pain, and the interface is not well suited to a keyboard and mouse (so we only have it on tablets). It's a good OS really, with some bugs and problems. 8.1, like Windows 7, should address many of these.

 

Vista had a huge bug with file copy speeds for a long time. We never went near it.

[jugglerjoe]

If enterprise app distribution isn't sorted on 8.1 MS really do deserve a kicking, not being able to centrally deploy Metro apps to the Start screen (even with MS flagship management tool) is really, really poor at the moment imo.

 

I 100% agree with this. even if you have to do it through scripts or powershell or GP. I dont care but they need to do it one way or another!

[3s-gtech]

I am interested why a hack was needed for this?

 

Do you run WSUS for windows updates on your client computers? IF not i'd recommend this. I used our default WSUS policies for win 7 and it seems to work fine.

 

The idea is not to manage the start screen but to give a default customization. We give our students our base programs that are installed on every pc eg Office 2013 and Live essentials 2012 Movie Maker and Photo Gallery. Then links for their network area, shared drives, desktop and a couple of other links to get on to their google drive and our horrible VLE. They can then customize as they see fit. If you do not want to give student this customization then a mandatory profile can be used. If you use GP to do a file copy of a shortcut needed in a particular profile on a class of pcs then copy to the start menu in %PROGRAMDATA%. This i think is how it seems to work but i have never used mandatory profiles so this may be inaccurate

 

You say that its not suited for a keyboard and mouse however, once you know many of the shortcuts its much quicker to do things than in win 7.

 

Ha, yeah I'm not saying I even deployed Vista! We skipped from XP to 7 - not used Vista in anger on anything.

 

IE10 cannot be natively managed using GPP on Server 2008R2 GPMC. Yes, you can use other methods (such as customising it before deployment, WTH?) but with IEM gone, GPP is the easiest way. Not supplying the updates to Server 2008 R2 to allow it to manage IE10 GPP, even though that OS can run it itself, is stupid.

 

You say that its not suited for a keyboard and mouse however, once you know many of the shortcuts its much quicker to do things than in win 7. We use WSUS. Windows 8 has been flakey on it. Not had a problem with 2000, XP or 7 before it. Usually only needs fixing once - a domain rejoin on the affected machine prompts it to start updating again.

 

We deploy a default customisation for the Start screen. This should be manageable by GPP or just GP. The current method of deploying the customised file is ridiculous - what is the point in having server management if you need to configure a basic element of the OS using a hack?

 

Now, I work in a school. Some users struggle with right-clicking. Teaching them shortcuts instead of easy icons and links will cause their brains to melt and slip out of their ears.

 

Don't take my post as an argument, it's a discussion on Windows 8 as it is. I feel it's at a similar stage to Vista on release - shows potential, but isn't ready yet. I've used it extensively, I've prepped my management systems for it, and I've played with the hardware. I still have no intention of deploying it other than to touchscreen devices - even stylus enabled tablets are staying on 7.

[jugglerjoe]

hmmm I didnt see the GPP for IE10 as a hack because the first thing we done before even installing Windows 8 was update our group policy stores with the ADM Templates from the ISO. and we also use the IEAK anyway and have a comprehensive list of what neeeds to be controlled that is written by my boss. However sometimes have found the branding msi's to be unstable. But i have not tested them or even seen them be created and he didnt know i had done a lot in GP either so probably just getting gay over nothing....

 

I believe the idea is that your left hand isnt used much when your just generally using your pc so they have made it more ineractive, if you choose to be so your thumb/finger can sit on the windows button ready to do the required shortcut.

 

We have staff laptops for every staff member who we are going to keep as windows 7 but the rest will be windows 8. All out Admin staff will have windows 8. we ran a small training session the other day and they all seemed to really enjoy it and were almost excited. me and my boss were absolutly stunned anyone turned up ahaha.

 

indeed the start screen should be manageable and its highly gay its not done easier. I have to make our fully final start screens for windows 8 next week >_<

What is your procedure at the moment for deploying a start screen?

I used to use an automated task sequence to do mine but now, i login with an Admin account. Customise the start screen as we see fit (unpinning ABSOLUTLY everything that was there and starting from scratch, this puts a shortcut in the users roaming appdata) after that get up sysprep, boot to audit mode, sign in with built in admin account, copy files from the customised account to the default account, boot up back through the OOBE make a new user account sign into that and see hwo it is then trial and error.

I have found you need to copy:

- %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

- %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\ All 3 files that start with "Apps"

 

and i believe thats it.

[SovietRussia]

hmmm I didnt see the GPP for IE10 as a hack because the first thing we done before even installing Windows 8 was update our group policy stores with the ADM Templates from the ISO. and we also use the IEAK anyway and have a comprehensive list of what neeeds to be controlled that is written by my boss. However sometimes have found the branding msi's to be unstable. But i have not tested them or even seen them be created and he didnt know i had done a lot in GP either so probably just getting gay over nothing....

 

I believe the idea is that your left hand isnt used much when your just generally using your pc so they have made it more ineractive, if you choose to be so your thumb/finger can sit on the windows button ready to do the required shortcut.

 

We have staff laptops for every staff member who we are going to keep as windows 7 but the rest will be windows 8. All out Admin staff will have windows 8. we ran a small training session the other day and they all seemed to really enjoy it and were almost excited. me and my boss were absolutly stunned anyone turned up ahaha.

 

indeed the start screen should be manageable and its highly gay its not done easier. I have to make our fully final start screens for windows 8 next week >_<

What is your procedure at the moment for deploying a start screen?

I used to use an automated task sequence to do mine but now, i login with an Admin account. Customise the start screen as we see fit (unpinning ABSOLUTLY everything that was there and starting from scratch, this puts a shortcut in the users roaming appdata) after that get up sysprep, boot to audit mode, sign in with built in admin account, copy files from the customised account to the default account, boot up back through the OOBE make a new user account sign into that and see hwo it is then trial and error.

I have found you need to copy:

- %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

- %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\ All 3 files that start with "Apps"

 

and i believe thats it.

 

Windows 8 start screen customization -

 

Customize the start screen

Copy the msdata file or w/e from %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs to a central location

Setup GPP Files to copy that file to the local machine when the user logs in.

[jugglerjoe]

so is that just an apply once policy? or do you only let users have a certain layout?

 

I use GPP Files to copy to Default Profile on the PC rather than applying on login. This then builds the profile around the 3 *.itemdata-ms files and the default set of programs. I have not tried your way but i was not aware there is a ms data file in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs? I guess you meant the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows ?

 

I copy the 3 itemdata-ms files and then i copy the whole folder of %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs then when something installs now i just have a script to clear up the %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu location so it only displays what i want. That then sticks a link on the end of the students desktop when they login. That way i find its easier for students to find what they need, and also acts like it would at home.