Like XP or Vista: how will businesses treat Windows 8?

June 6, 2012

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Setting up the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit. Can Windows 8’s new business features justify its jarring UI overhaul?

Windows 8 Release Preview

Businesses hated Windows Vista. It required new drivers, and new security features like User Account Control caused problems with older applications. Computers that shipped before Vista often lacked the RAM and graphics hardware to take full advantage of the new operating system’s capabilities. It made extensive changes to how the operating system was customized and deployed. Businesses hated Windows Vista so much that they overwhelmingly chose to stay on Windows XP. Even after these problems were largely resolved, it took a new operating system to get companies to start upgrading.

Windows 7 is a big step up from XP, both in terms of security and features. For businesses who are in the middle of or have already completed Windows 7 migrations, can Windows 8 offer them enough incentive to consider upgrading again, or do its interface changes doom it to share Vista’s fate?

New business-oriented features in Windows 8

Back in the days of the Consumer Preview, Microsoft put out a PDF detailing the most pertinent Windows 8 features for small and large businesses (that PDF is still a good resource for the Release Preview and will remain so for the release version of Windows 8, so read up if you’re interested). Some of these have relatively broad appeal for businesses, while others will be more useful for particular niches.