5 Great Reasons for IT to Love Windows 8
We’ve written before about how Windows 8’s enterprise version will likely prove beneficial to the IT folks who have to maintain it day to day. In fact, no matter which version of Windows 8 ends up on your company’s systems, there are plenty of reasons to expect a better IT experience than any previous Windows version has been able to deliver. IT World’s Sandro Villenger has a top five list: Performance: Bad memory usage will be a bad memory. A freshly installed Windows 8 machine consume 330MB of memory, including Windows Defender, the anti-malware solution. Compare that to the 500 MB of the typical Windows 7 installation (without Windows Defender). Startup Time: How much of your life have you wasted waiting for Windows to boot? Imagine the screen springing to life in just eight seconds. It should happen. Microsoft says that even the oldest systems capable of running Windows 8 should improve by 40 percent. Villinger notes, however, that Windows 8 still seems to get stuck when a bunch of USB devices are plugged in. Always On, Always Connected: Windows RT devices can be shut down like regular machines, but Windows encourages you to put them in sleep mode, giving you essentially an iPad-like bootup and shutdown experience. In that sleep mode, Windows RT will poll the network adapter to check for notifications (received mails, messages, social media updates). Security: Microsoft includes Microsoft Security Essentials in Windows 8. The moment Windows 8 detects a problem with the boot files, Windows will stop the boot procedure, launch Automatic Repair, remove the malware, and restore the boot files. Brand New Task Manager: Task Manager has always been there to help IT diagnose system problems, but it’s always been ridiculously cryptic and mysterious. Windows 8 presents a much more user-friendly and plain English task manager that starts with an easy-to-read simple view and dives deeper for a “show me more” view. It’s about time.
