gshaw

It seems the problem with the whole MS vision at the moment is that everyone is going to drop their (shared) business \ enterprise computers for 1:1 BYOD tomorrow with no overlap in between. The management issues for everything from Start Screen to Metro Apps seems to stem from this as it all seems to be "per user" rather than "per machine" Yes this might be the way it will go over the next few years, starting right now but the transition doesn't happen overnight and leaving out large chunks of enterprise management features will not go down well seeing as it's the only thing holding back their main competitor (Apple) Very odd decision imo, is there a similar rambling blog post that might explain the logic in the same way they did to justify the Aero > Metro changes?

Mobile office provided everything is in the cloud I guess (seeing as they clearly don't want RT on a domain). As a business if I have SCCM why would I want to use a separate product to manage Surface RTs? It seems a slightly confused message coming from MS on that front; either make it fully managed or as @jamesfed says make it purely consumer (although that seems to be wasting the potential of the product imo) Windows 8 SP1 and either an update to unlock local RT functionality & management or a mid-range Surface running Win8 Pro and the overall package will look 10x better imo From the input so far the messages are pretty consistent on where 8 is doing well and what needs sorting. Seems like they listened quite well during the Preview phase so MS please take note and sort this stuff in SP1

We've got 5 year old Stone PCs (BTX case towers) running flawlessly on Windows 7 with no issues apart from the odd HDD now and again. They're Core2Duo E6600s and chances are I'll run them into the ground then replace at leisure Wouldn't touch Dell with a large barge pole, Lenovo for me as the other alternative.

Being that the RT is apparently only for consumers ( ) then where does that leave business who like the design of the Surface but not spending £800-1000 per device? So frustrating as I think the 3rd party vendors are going to have a hard time creating something better from a design POV (although would like to be proved wrong on that one). Wanted MS to kill the iPad (certainly for business use) with the Surface but seems a bit of a square peg in a round hole in either RT or Pro form at the moment?

Tolerate is probably the best way to put it... LIKE - the speed and (improved from the previews) fluidity of the Metro (yes I'm going to keeping calling it that) interface LIKE - how it works on a touchscreen device DISLIKE - the Windows Mail app, just use the new Outlook.com interface as a desktop app please DISLIKE - jumping from Metro > Desktop > Metro, loading Office and Chrome particularly irritate me on that front. Just put a slide out program search panel \ launcher in Desktop mode, problem solved HATE - manual horizontal scrolling anywhere except the Start Screen (why?!) and dragging Metro apps to close (although ALT+F4 still works) HATE - Windows Store, layout is awful and app selection much poorer than would be expected HATE - what sounds like very poorly thought through enterprise support, the deployment of Metro apps and control of the Start Screen sounds messy (being generous there!) I've got a Win 7 \ 8 dual boot laptop I use in work, Win8 on my x100e for use \ portable use so trying to get used to it but my overall feeling is that this OS will need an SP1 to fix some of the irritating UI and management quirks that MS seem quite stubborn about at the moment but need to sort if Win8 is going to get user acceptance. On another note the Surface pricing needs to be more competitive if it's going to be anything more than a "trophy" product for IT geeks, Surface Pro really needs to hit the value for money sweet spot if they want to beat Apple (nothing would please me more on that front )

Unless you carry passengers who want to hear the audio I'd upgrade the fronts with a set of components instead as you'll get a more noticeable improvement in sound quality over additional fill from installing rears

SCCM, basically WDS / MDT with better reporting and automation for sending out images, along with all the other management goodies you get with it

Was impressed when this was on the feature list for 2012 and even more so from the feedback above, well done MS

This is what I was thinking, that said @Arthur tends to be pretty accurate with the Win8 stuff he's posted so far so fingers crossed...

Plenty of win if it comes out at that price, although leaves the RT in an interesting place even for home users...

I've been meaning to try that for the past year, meant to be based on ITIL so should cover Configuration Management and related items as well

There's not too much to get used to if you're already using 2010, just the colour scheme looks a bit odd but I'm getting used to the Windows 3.0 look

Hope you're right, at £700 I'd be tempted for "prosumer" use but any more than that isn't worth it imo

Sounds more like 3 desperate \ unloved manufacturers doing a deal with MS to try and shift some of their hardware which is being overshadowed by much better products from the likes of Samsung and now MS themselves. I'm very interested in Win8 tablets but not at £1000 a piece for Surface Pros and not for hardware that doesn't have the quality or design to last in an educational environment. Have to admit thus far the hardware offering from a value for money perspective has been quite disappointing, hopefully within a month or two some decent kit will start to be released.

Also to add to the post above, if you trunk 47 and 48 together to get a 2Gb link you need to tag the VLANs after creating the trunk link. If you do it beforehand the creation of the trunk wipes out the VLAN tags. Key points for HP ProCurve.... trunk = multiple ports aggregated together for more bandwidth tagged = multiple VLANs going over the same link (for switch to switch links etc). A port can be tagged in multiple VLANs untagged = the VLAN the port belongs to for endpoint devices (only one VLAN can be set as untagged on a port at any one time)

If I'm understanding it right... - port 48 needs to be tagged for any VLANs you want to pass traffic for i.e. CAMLAN (whatever number you've assigned to it) - port 1 needs to be set as untagged in the VLAN called CAMLAN (if your cameras don't have a VLAN tag defined in their settings)

Misco for us

I guess it's the fact people want the quality \ cachet of the MS Surface design & brand but aren't willing to fork out £1000 for the Pro as that's crazy money if you're buying 20+ of them for a class etc. As I read on another forum an Atom based mid-range Surface would clean up the market but I can only guess MS haven't done it either because a) they want to try and make an extra £500 from people \ businesses gullible enough to pay £1k for a tablet b) they want to take the consumer and top end business markets but leave the middle to their hardware partners to keep them sweet Either way the non-MS tablets out so far aren't doing it for me from a quality \ design perspective, the Acer one to me looks rather naff but that's personal opinion, others may see differently. Like I say, there's nothing from a technical perspective that would stop an RT being a suitable productivity device, it's purely an irritating business model that holds it back and I guess others are thinking along the same lines.

Not convinced about how long that keyboard dock is going to last, also being Acer wouldn't trust the build quality

I'd swap that out, especially if it's under warranty... better safe than sorry imo

What about if your Office 365 is set up to use Federated authentication via ADFS? In which case your Office 365 account is basically your domain account but authenticating through 365? I still reckon RT with students using Office 365 will work well as a classroom device if HP & co. can't \ won't hit the magic price \ quality \ performance sweet spot with full fat Win8 tablets

This might be one for @jamesbmarshall I'm in the Preview of the next version of Office 365, dragged some files up to my SkyDrive Pro area (easy), made some folders (easy), dragged and dropped the files into a folder (easy)... ...now I want to move a file from inside the folder to another folder but can't find a way of doing it??? The only method seems to be the old school "open with Windows Explorer" button but that's a horrible way of doing things (and doesn't work most of the time due to Trusted Sites, Windows version or voodoo curse). Is there a cut \ paste button staring me in the face I'm missing somehow? Granted it's a beta so hopefully will be fixed but unless the SharePoint core UI is being modified specifically for 365 it might not happen?

That's a biiig datastore, is that 8TB for a file server VM?

Hmmm might need to try that out to see how it works with the improved RDS role in Server 2012

Veeam does dedupe on it's backups (done at VM) level, wonder how that will work with a 2012 file server VM...