gshaw

I bet this one will stir up some opinions We're putting in a brand new AD infrastructure that'll sit across 5 sites and service ~3000 workstations (as well as Office 365 etc.) We're at the design stage at the moment so out come the standard ideas: 2 DCs minimum at the primary site minimum 1 DC for each branch site (connected via leased line) ADFS to be set up for SSO to Office 365 + DMZ ADFS proxy x2 Now here's the question, everything else we run is on VMWare (with replicated SANs) but a part of me says that keeping a physical DC is a sensible idea just in case of a very worst case scenario. Looking elsewhere on t'Internet for opinions leans more to the all virtual model. Your thoughts?

Quite timely for us as we were reviewing some features in Impero that looked useful but others not so much so in light of established products we already have. A mix and match approach sounds good.

@CraigM I remember hearing about this a few months back, can't believe they're charging for a version upgrade to people that own SMART hardware and it's a move that I suspect may backfire on them...

The touch experience works well on 8.1 and has its merits, however pricing is the reason the Windows tablets haven't taken off (imo). The accessory prices are obscene, all the manufactures seem to be guilty of it which is a poor show. On the lower cost end 8" devices too small and netbook clones like the ASUS T100 built a bit too cheaply to be real contenders. Still a bit miffed why no-one is selling a well built, mid-range device for under £500 with keyboard, surely touch screens aren't that much of a premium with the quantities they're being made in now?

£639 for the i3 with no cover... fail So much for the BBC article suggesting a more reasonable £475. It seems Microsoft don't want any real market share with the Surface line, just an expensive luxury product for specialised users, which is a shame really. Looks like Lenovo ThinkPad 10 for me, unless that comes in at a similarly silly price.

Maybe I'm the odd one out but I like the 16:9 on the RT I use at work. snapping two apps side by side still leaves enough space to do something useful on either but still small enough to be easy to carry around.

The i3 model has to be around £400-500 to make any dent in market share imo. Paying £600-700 for the basic spec isn't worth it, for the i5 model maybe but again I guess it comes down to whether MS want market share or just high-end ultrabook customers. Wish the manufacturers would stop ripping us off without keyboards though, they must cost peanuts to make yet being sold as a £100 accessory?!

The side by side is interesting, now let's hope MS don't rip off the UK with the dollar to pounds price conversion and one may be on my shopping list (up against the Lenovo ThinkPad 10 that's just been announced as well)

Next question is what counts as an "enterprise account" - is that an AD username or Office 365 one? Edit: looks like that setting only covers a couple of built-in apps, Store still needs the Microsoft Account http://exchange2010admin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/windows-81-remove-requirement-for.html

Well well well, an i3 version at long last - maybe Microsoft do listen after all! Is that the end of the line for RT as well? Increasing the screen to 12" does seem a touch on the large size, hard to tell without seeing one but I suspect it might just be a bit too big to be easy to carry around. The original Surface felt not much bigger than a paper notebook which was ideal, this looks more like a laptop than tablet, at first glance anyway. Don't know why but the logo \ Windows button being the portrait position just looks... wrong

Seems these days we're often on our own and it's those who are willing \ able to play around and come up with viable solutions based on vague notes on TechNet that prove the most valuable. Still amazed Microsoft didn't have a simple fix on its site for a Windows Store bug I found after 20 minutes trying to set up one of our Surface RT's a few months back. Definitely need to up their game on that front and spend less on the pointless forum reps that just parrot irrelevant "answers" and ask you to "submit your feedback for future releases"

Depends if they're the Bay Trail atom or the old Clover Leaf chips, I'll hazard a guess that they're ThinkPad Tablet2 devices? The Atom based devices only have 32-bit EFI from what I've been told, which means if the imaging engine you're using requires a 64-bit preboot OS you're a bit stuck. i3 and i5 chips don't have this limitation.

Often for us it depends how quickly external companies update their plugins e.g. TurnItIn doesn't have Moodle 2.7 support yet. We currently would to only go for major version upgrades over summer then minor point releases if there's a very good reason to do them (mainly major security flaws). Next version will need some surgery to move up to a later version of PHP so not looking forward to that! 1.9 to 2.x was a huge leap but a huge change like that isn't likely to be required for a long time. The new 2.7 is an LTS release as well so you've got some stability there for a couple of years

Since I adopted our demo Surface RT I don't take any paper notes now, so easy to do them in OneNote and run split-screen for email \ web-browsing at the same time. For consumption activities I just use my phone, screen is big enough to browse easily and does everything I want, if I need more flexibility then a hybrid device with a touchpad is much more useful for my needs. I think there's almost a split between what you might call a "pure" tablet i.e. touch-screen only, capacitative pen \ finger control only vs. the hybrid devices (usually Windows 8 for the most part) that add a lightweight keyboard \ touchpad and digitiser pen. Up until now price has really been the problem for those but that seems to be dropping by the day, mainly thanks to Bay Trail making Atom a viable option. Office for iPad definitely brings Apple devices up a notch in terms of usefulness but when I see some of the add-on keyboard covers for iPads they really do look like the afterthought they are. It probably goes against everything Apple believe in their design philosophy but if they made a stylish and well made keyboard cover for the next-gen iPad it'd be in a better position to fight off the "consumption" argument often levelled at it.

That does look interesting, just got a couple of T100 as a more affordable alternative to my current preferred tablet of Dell Venue 11 Pro, the ASUS could do with swapping the shiny back for a soft touch one though.

Yeah that did look an advantage, I wonder if it's one of those cases where the newer model is cheaper to build than the older one.

Just wondering if there's anyone on here that either sells Aruba kit or is part of their tech support team? We're expanding our AP coverage but have had an offer of a slightly different AP (more affordable) that looks pretty similar on the spec sheets bar having external aerials. Would like to confirm though before we buy a batch of them! Our current ones are AP-104 http://www.arubanetworks.com/pdf/products/DS_AP105.pdf We've been offered AP-124 http://www.arubanetworks.com/pdf/products/DS_AP124-125.pdf Is there any reason to not go for the 124, we usually put them on walls, ceiling etc. The spec sheet does mention above wall mounting for the 124 so wondering if that's significant in some way...

In Google's position trying to gain market share would've made sense to mandate a certain level of quality to distance themselves from "legacy" kit. Would've been a strong selling point if they could say the money saved on the OS was going towards higher quality components. As it stands that doesn't seem to be the case.

Does seem odd how many of these Chromebooks are cheap and nasty, considering how good the Nexus tablets are in comparison. Also those Chromebooks aren't that cheap really considering there's no Windows licence to cover in the price, someone's making a nice profit on them!

I thought I saw it but until Microsoft a) run it within the EU (currently hosted solely in US so they told us a few weeks back) and b) integrate it transparently into SharePoint I think I'll leave it disabled. Much potential but still feels like another company's product rather than one that's had the full Microsoft treatment.

Some Education spec Macs seem to be built down to a price by putting 5400rpm drives in, certainly some Mac Minis we have are afflicted with that despite having fast i5 CPUs

I can live without the Start Menu but giving users the choice to use the UI they prefer can only be a good thing imo - that said you'll always have the two camps of "I want freedom of choice" vs "it's easier for users if there's no choice aka Apple knows best" Microsoft trying to do an Apple was never a good idea imo and seems like sense is prevailing there since the change of leadership.

I'd check Device Manager and Google the HDD model number just to make sure it is what the spec says before you spend time diagnosing anything else...

What HDD does the Mac have in it? We've got some that are high-spec but Apple put a 5400rpm hard drive in so boot times and general performance aren't great as a result.

That's silly cheap, very very tempted!