[windows tablet] Surface RT - Need some advice/guidance

[Vellocet]

Were looking to order a good few of these before the end of the month to take advantage of the offer but had a few queries you may be able to help me with

 

We plan on using them for our staff, possibly students but depends on management

 

Anyone used them for staff to replace a staff laptop? Good results?

 

Can office 365 accounts be set up on them, especially in outlook on 8.1 and skydrive pro?

 

How do you manage them?

 

Do you need antivirus on them?

 

Any advice before purchasing them?

 

Cheers sorry for all the questions!

[TechieWils]

We did some investigation into the RT devices as well. Here are a few things I know/think I know:

 

The deal of replacing staff laptops it depends on what your staff currently do with their laptops. Web browsing bit of Office work etc. is fine. You can’t install any apps that are not RT based but you can set up RemoteApps on a server and run them from there and just emulate it on the Surface RT. Could be very useful and if your staff are anything like mine would cut back on the 'it’s too much hassle carrying a laptop around' issue.

 

From what I remember about the office 365 you can use that account but not use it to actually login to the device. I read that it’s not an actual Window live account or something (we don’t use it so didn’t pay much attention).

 

As for management because they are off domain the usual ideas of GPO and AD are out. I did read about Windows Intune (Windows Intune - PC and mobile device management in the cloud) which is Microsofts way of doing Meraki for iPads. It does cost but has a 30 day free trial so if you get one RT demo in or just buy one and test it you can check it out. I think it also integrates with SCCM 2012. Depending on your licensing agreement you may already have Intune licensed already.

 

Windows Defender has Microsoft Essentials built in to Windows 8 so technically no but I haven’t looked at other antivirus solutions for RT.

 

As for advice, definitely try and get your hands on one, even if it’s a demo in a shop just to have a play cause although the education deal is good, if you can’t work them into your infrastructure there useless. Also make sure your wireless is up to it and I think you might have problems imaging them for roll out. (Needs more research into that bit).

 

Hope that helps a little, and if I have anything wrong please let me know.

[plexer]

There will be an upgrade to 8.1 though which has more management features.

 

Ben

[dezt]

I've got one of these and I think they're great, I have my office 365 account setup in the mail app, but also when setting it up I used my office 365 account. This could be because i've created a microsoft account using the same credentials that it all worked, i'm not sure.

 

Antivirus is taken care of what ever comes on the tablet to begin with, I use microsoft security essentials at home so I don't have any issues using their RT built in anti virus.

 

At the moment i'm the only person using it, as they can't be added to a domain I haven't looked into how to manage them yet, i've just made sure all settings are put in correctly by me.

 

I don't have any advice on the skydrive bit yet i'm afraid, as our office 365 domain has not been upgraded by microsoft yet, so we are still on the old version.

[Vellocet]

Cheers all

 

They sound more interesting to me than ipads (which we have)

 

Just not sure on Students using them but for staff it sounds like I probably could replace laptops with these as our staff mainly just use the internet and office

 

Can they link to pcs wirelessly for projection similar to airplay with airserver?

 

Im guessing to go for the type covers rather than touch?