Windows 8 first impressions Part 1
Microsoft Windows 8 will be available to the general public soon enough. I was fortunate through work to receive a copy of the Windows 8 Enterprise RTM. I installed on a lower end machine I have for development and went about the standard install checking out what baseline drivers looked like , how profiles are handled , typical new operating system exploration. What happened next surprised me. The same week I was give an old box that someone was no longer using with a little better specs than my current development machine. Bare bones rig with an amd phenom. Nice upgrade to my current Intel core 2 duo. I moved my video card , hard drives , and ram over the new machine. I pulled out my windows 8 flash drive with the intent to reinstall on my new hardware. What happened next surprised me. I booted the machine and windows 8 actually loaded. The machine launched with a setup screen and proceeded to install new devices. Windows 8 actually changed hal and obtained the new device drivers and came back to life on it's own. I logged in to my normal profile and activation remained intact. Knowing about Windows to go I shouldn't have been surprised by this event , but Microsoft actually got something right. Now take this information and think about recovering workstations and your business model. No longer do we have to image and prepare a replacement machine, move user data and interrupt a half day of productivity to get a down machine back to the user. IT support is moving one step closer to that dream of leaving at 5:00 and enjoying weekends off.