Windows 10 Features Businesses Should Be Excited About
Windows 10 Features Businesses Should Be Excited About
Ah, how quickly the new world of work spins. It wasn’t all that long ago that businesses were undertaking a massive effort to upgrade their desktops to Windows 7. And while Windows 8was more of a step backward in many people’s minds, it looks like the 2015 version, dubbed Windows 10 (there will be no version 9) looks like it has some attractive features for enterprise users. Here are five of our favorites:
APP STORE-LIKE ADDITIONS
Originally pioneered by Apple for their latest desktop OS, this feature will be implemented in Windows 10, and can be very useful depending on how tightly you want to control the OS across your desktops. Windows Updates have also been restructured so that smaller businesses who don’t want to run a specialized update server can better manage their update frequency. Finally, Microsoft is setting up custom business app stores, which could be helpful for license management and app distribution.
Speaking of apps, dual interfaces are no more: windows can now be resized and dragged around the desktop. This could make also make it easier to write apps that work across desktop, laptop and mobile devices.
BETTER DEVICE MANAGEMENT
Mobile Device Management will be baked into the OS, as it is for older mobile Windows versions. This means that you can choose between MDM or the traditional Active Directory and Group Policy model on any Windows 10 device.
BETTER AUTHENTICATION
Windows 10 has more stringent user identities built in for accessing devices, applications and even websites. Think of this as baking in two-factor authentication into the OS. One thing to keep in mind: You will have to setup Microsoft Live accounts for your users if they want this feature.
THE DREGS OF DOS ARE BACK
At least, for those users that want it. Control-C and V will cut and paste again, and Alt-Tab cycles you through your open windows, just as before. Many IT administrators have longed for these features. You’ll want to show your command-oriented users the “experimental” properties sheet for the command prompt, as well.
THE BEGINNINGS OF VIRTUAL DESKTOPS
New to Windows 10 is a nifty Task View which lets you create multiple, virtualized versions of the desktop, each populated with their own set of open apps. Apple has had this for years, and it’s finally making its way to the PC. You can set up one desktop for work purposes and have another one for when you use your PC at home.
We’re still in the early stages of Windows 10, so you should install the OS inside a virtual machine (which is what I did) or on a spare desktop for testing purposes. Here are the specs for my recommended minimum configuration, which are similar to the requirements for Windows 8.1:
- Processor: 1GHz or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2 — this means no ARM/RT version yet, although Microsoft will support them by release time. If you aren’t familiar with these acronyms, now is the time to study up on what the newest CPUs can bring to the party.
- RAM: 4GB is a good idea
- Hard disk space: 50GB
- Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver
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