Joseph Fieber

Windows Server has always been a bit different. It looks like your desktop computer, and includes dozens of features that you have no interest in using.

Some would say that’s not a problem, since you can just bypass the features you don’t need. Yet, then there are the potential vulnerabilities in those unneeded services, or the need to reboot when a patch is issued for a service you don’t even use.

Apple’s new iPad is dominating the news with its Retina display that "takes your breath away." Microsoft wants everyone to know that Windows 8, said to be released this October, will support many types of displays, including Retina-like quad-XGA displays. This is to enable Metro apps to look good on both tablets and big screens, yet be easy for developers to create.

On Wednesday, David Washington, a senior program manager on Microsoft’s User Experience team, detailed on the Building Windows 8 blog how Windows 8 will accommodate not only devices of various screen sizes and resolutions, but also screen densities.

While Metro apps for both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have been recently announced, users are getting a chance to actually use the Metro app for IE10 in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Providing a full-screen browsing window and touch friendly controls, the desktop experience feels like using browsers on smartphones and tablets, even on a desktop or laptop, though less intuitive when using a mouse.

In the Building Windows 8 blog on Tuesday, Rob Mauceri, group program manager for Internet Explorer, explains the changes to IE10 and how the Metro interface is different. The new additions can be broken down into these three categories.

The iPad seems unstoppable. Pre-orders for the new iPad sold out in less than a week. But it’s not just consumers that are interested; eighty-four percent of businesses prefer the iPad over its competitors, according to a survey by ChangeWave Research. With its current lead in the market, momentum could keep demand high for a number of reasons.

The survey, done in February 2012 before the release of the new iPad, and released Tuesday, found that one in five businesses was planning to buy a tablet in the second quarter of the year. Demand for the iPad increased 7 percent since the last survey from November, while all eight competing products in the survey saw a decrease.

Businesses love Apple’s iPad. They use the tablets in myriad ways, from airline pilot flight manuals to hospital charts to point-of-sale terminals. The updated specs of the iPad, announced today, should make the tablet even better at something it already does well: enabling remote desktop access.

Tablet Limitations

Most interface changes to new editions of Windows have been minor--an icon moved here, a toolbar added there. Windows 8 will be different, using a completely new Metro interface as the primary environment, and removing important elements like the Start menu from the older but still accessible “desktop” interface. Even IT pros may need to do some web searching to figure out some features. What questions will your workers have, and will you have the answers?

Windows 8, especially the Metro interface, was designed for touchscreens. Using a pointing device like a mouse or a touchpad is generally less intuitive and more difficult than using touch-based gestures. There are usually multiple ways to accomplish a task in Windows, so the ones mentioned below may not be the only alternatives. Also, this is a preview of Windows 8, features and the way they are accessed may change in the final release.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview isn't the only new Microsoft download of interest to businesses. Also recently released was its Product Guide for Business, a 15-page PDF file that explores the most relevant Windows 8 features and technologies for businesses. Though littered with typos, the guide provides a well-organized overview of many previously introduced features, as well as details that weren’t previously disclosed.

Here are five of the areas mentioned in Microsoft's guide likely to affect companies the most.

With business workers relying increasingly on smartphones, staying connected on the road is increasingly important. AT&T announced a new “global SIM” platform at Mobile World Congress on Monday that will allow connection and management of mobile devices in over 200 countries. Though efforts like this should make things easier, choosing a phone as a world traveler can be difficult. Here are three things to consider when choosing a phone you'll need to use for business around the world.

1. The Networks

Email is still an important means of communication in business. In recent years, an increasing number of businesses are outsourcing their email to web-based services like Google Apps for Business. In a tight economic time, the money saved by moving to the cloud can be hard to ignore. There are trade-offs though. Today, for instance, iCloud email users in Germany found that push-email features were disabled due to a patent lawsuit by Motorola. Here are five things to keep in mind when considering outsourcing your businesses email.

1. Privacy

Microsoft's desktop OS has let users install additional display languages since Windows 2000. This made Windows computers accessible to billions of people, but installing and switching languages on a PC wasn’t easy. Businesses generally assigned only one language to a computer, limiting its use to those who understood that selected language.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview, likely making an appearance by the end of February, changes the way languages are handled, and should make it easier for organizations with employees that speak multiple languages to share computers. It’s not uncommon for business computers to be shared by workers, especially in workplaces open for multiple shifts. Tablets, which Windows 8 will also run on, are even more likely to be shared if used for tasks within a company.

Though Dropbox is more popular with over 45 million users, with 17 million users, Microsoft’s SkyDrive is a strong competitor. SkyDrive’s most desired feature has been 25GB of free space, much larger than that of most rivals. On Monday, Microsoft revealed its desire to be the "world’s hard drive", integrating SkyDrive with Windows 8 to make it easier to access your data from any device.

Though SkyDrive has been available for over four years, it hasn’t gain mainstream acceptance. Despite its large amount of free storage and capability to share files and collaborate with your friends and colleagues, main reasons include its lack of a desktop client and any Windows integration to access that storage easily. It appears that Microsoft has taken note of SkyDrive’s shortcomings; its Building Windows 8 blog details three ways SkyDrive will be used in Windows 8.

With smartphones and tablets quickly gaining widespread adoption, even IBM is calling this a “post-PC era”. It’s a world of portability, apps, and touch-enabled devices. This is clear not only in the dominance of mobile devices and laptops on the hardware side, but in the way that Apple and Microsoft are merging their mobile and desktop operating systems.

Apple began incorporating iOS features into OSX with its Lion release in mid-2011, and will continue adding them with Mountain Lion, announced today and due by the end of the summer. Microsoft used its Windows Phone 7 for inspiration, and will release its Windows 8 beta for both desktops and tablets--rumored for the end of February--and possibly a phone based on Windows 8 later in the year. The two approaches appear to yield similar results.