Little-Miss Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 If you have....how on earth did you do it? The desktop part works just fine for me. It's the bloomin Metro Start Screen nonesense thats causing me a headache!!
chazzy2501 Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 you can only lock down the metro interface with 8.1 Enterprise & RT. (NOT PRO!) I say lock down you can specify what apps appear and stop users from customising it. I exported an XML and forced a pupil to use it and only the calculator appeared
abillybob Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 I'm not going to be moving to Windows 8. I do really like it actually I know a lot of people don't but we've only just put in Windows 7 from XP this year so will wait till the Windows after as I'm sure will be a better version of what we currently have now anyway
Little-Miss Posted January 10, 2014 Author Posted January 10, 2014 so this is sounding more and more like i need to redo my image and change it to enterprise and not Pro....
sparkeh Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 Personally I'll wait until the Threshold update is released and see how the (supposedly) returned Start Menu works.
featured_spectre Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 I can only think of this @Little-Miss http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view2/3371353/you-serious-o.gif
ToffeeMan Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 We've just started rolling out Windows 8.1 - We are using Classic Shell to bring back the windows 7 start menu (which is free). This we have controlled through GPO and a quick registry edit, works really well and we've also rolled it out on several Windows 8.1 tablets. 2
Michael Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 I think the answer to your question is 'not many', which is why Windows 8 or 8.1 for that matter have hardly taken off in schools or businesses. It hasn't even left the airport... On a serious note, Windows 8.1 does allow you to boot to desktop - but it's unclear whether or not you can do this via GPO or possibly a regedit at a push. There are practically no tools or GPOs to properly manage Metro. It appears scripts may be the other way (as far as I know).
CHR1S Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 I still cant get past the proxy issues that come and go as they please, especially the metro app niggles. Sticking with 7 here for the forseeable
PotNoodleTech Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 See zero reason to move from 7 here. Zero reason.
free780 Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 @Michael It is a gpo setting. Can't remember where it is, def a user one. I've had staff asking if we are looking at it. I say no and they are glad. A few got laptops over xmas and say its a real struggle to use. I wouldnt mind it for the desktop hyperv. Since it took 2 years to go to 7, 8 seems like a waste of time unless we get any touchscreens etc.
3s-gtech Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 We will be staying with 7 on the majority of machines, just using 8.1 with touch devices. Only using Enterprise, we've found it pretty good, and it works well alongside 7 too. I really don't mind it. I have to say that 8.1 is far superior, and fixes some big problems with 8. Even IE11 seems to work well.
Little-Miss Posted January 10, 2014 Author Posted January 10, 2014 Why, you guys have made me feel SO much better. As for the classic shell and the GP to boot to straight to desktop. I may be picking brains.
MordyT Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 We have 1 PC running it. Its a admin (not student, not IT) PC and we have it booting straight to desktop with classic shell. So far I haven't heard any issues. What's more is its used by an older person who migrated straight from XP! We have 2 other potential PCs that we could run 8 on right now, but are running 7 instead. Must say, there are some stupid parts to it like it doing a force reboot for windows updates, but overall it is OK. Oh, and it doesn't play all 2 nice with impero sometime - it shows up 2x in the console (eating 2x licenses) and shows programs running when user is logged off - but doesn't matter so much.
john Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 Why, you guys have made me feel SO much better. As for the classic shell and the GP to boot to straight to desktop. I may be picking brains. Another vote for Classic Shell I use it on my laptop and that makes life so much better and makes it real again
Little-Miss Posted January 10, 2014 Author Posted January 10, 2014 Another vote for Classic Shell I use it on my laptop and that makes life so much better and makes it real again Oooh! Good idea!!
niallm Posted January 10, 2014 Posted January 10, 2014 We will be deploying Windows 8.1 to approximately 600-800 student devices for the start of the Australian school year. The base SOE is provided by our State Education Department with the schools then modifying it to include their own applications. The SOE by default is set to boot to the Desktop by default. And then the Start Screen has customised tiles from OblyTile. The end result looks a little like this (With our own customisations like CS6/Printers/Shutdown Buttons/Firefox
qcomer Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 We are moving from Windows 7/Office 2012 to Windows 8.1/Office 2013. We have some machines and tablets on it right now already (admins, office staff, etc). Imaging a little over 300 windows 8.1 pro tablets right now for our Common Core/SBAC implementation. Hopefull we will migrate the remaining 1200 computers to 8.1 over the rest of the school year and summer. We hope to be on 8.1 district wide by next christmas. We are not running any 3rd party windows 7 start emulators or anything. Booting to the Start Menu. Using GPOs to manage the start menu and such and deploying Apps with SCCM. We rely on the "search everywhere" feature a lot too but other than that, no issues with the new start menu. We are teaching people gestures on the laptops/tablets and also keyboard shortcuts but really not many people are having issues with 8.1.
russdev Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 We have 1 PC running it. Its a admin (not student, not IT) PC and we have it booting straight to desktop with classic shell. So far I haven't heard any issues. What's more is its used by an older person who migrated straight from XP! We have 2 other potential PCs that we could run 8 on right now, but are running 7 instead. Must say, there are some stupid parts to it like it doing a force reboot for windows updates, but overall it is OK. Oh, and it doesn't play all 2 nice with impero sometime - it shows up 2x in the console (eating 2x licenses) and shows programs running when user is logged off - but doesn't matter so much. what version you running? As certainly not seen that as far as I aware anywhere else? If running older version maybe issues but if on newer version..
DrCheese Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 We will be deploying Windows 8.1 to approximately 600-800 student devices for the start of the Australian school year. The base SOE is provided by our State Education Department with the schools then modifying it to include their own applications. The SOE by default is set to boot to the Desktop by default. And then the Start Screen has customised tiles from OblyTile. The end result looks a little like this (With our own customisations like CS6/Printers/Shutdown Buttons/Firefox [ATTACH=CONFIG]22269[/ATTACH] That's actually very nice. Making metro icons makes one heck of a difference to the way the UI feels. Tho.. we have so many apps we'd have pages and pages of it! As for us, personally I'd love to deploy Windows 8.1 with something like start8/classic shell installed as a lot of the underlying improvements are worth it. But getting it past my boss is another matter >.>
niallm Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 That's actually very nice. Making metro icons makes one heck of a difference to the way the UI feels. Tho.. we have so many apps we'd have pages and pages of it! As for us, personally I'd love to deploy Windows 8.1 with something like start8/classic shell installed as a lot of the underlying improvements are worth it. But getting it past my boss is another matter >.> It wasn't my initial plan to use OblyTile for aid the customisation of the start screen. But after I saw how non cohesive our own applications looked compared to the ones included in the original SOE, we decided to spend the afternoon developing Tiles for our own applications. In terms of Start8/ClassicShell. Before commencing work on my image build, for interests sake I contacted Stardock for a quote Start8 to see how much it would cost to purchase for inclusion on our SOE. The quote they provided wasn't terribly economical for school's who wished to provide a Start Menu....
MordyT Posted January 12, 2014 Posted January 12, 2014 what version you running? As certainly not seen that as far as I aware anywhere else? If running older version maybe issues but if on newer version.. 4.0.2.1
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