Win8 Don't get hung up about touch

With the launch of Surface and the raise in profile that this has given to Windows 8 (RT) I feel compelled to expand beyond my customary 140 characters or less and write a blog post.

There are a lot of people, some who should know better, banging on about how great Windows 8 is now that they have touch screens to use it on, how it transforms the interface and this is the only way that Windows 8 will be any use to anyone and the only way that it is likely to be embraced in home and enterprise. Crap.

On Friday (16th Nov 2012) I made a presentation to our management and IT on why we were going to move to Windows 8 and how long it will take. For info, we have 6000 PCs. They bought it. We won't be rushing out and buying touchcreens and we won't be buying Surface RT, maybe some Win8 Pro Surface in the future, we'll see.

Windows 8 is GA, it runs on the same hardware as Win7, and 99% of the apps that run on Win7 will run on 8. We are still on XP, like many enterprises, so we are looking at a sensible roadmap that has Windows 8 ready for deployment to the business by the end of June 2013 and finished by April 2014. This should give us a desktop that will take us through 2020. If we deployed Win 7 then we would have a 5 year old desktop o/s !

IT will have Win8 by January 2013, business users will be in beta by April and everything done by the following April 2014. Most of our users will have had some exposure to Windows 8 before then, either at home, college or in test. It won't be a new and strangely different o/s, certainly not the wrench that was Office 2003 to Office2007 , and to be honest while users may have initially moaned it didn't take them long to adapt.

As to the user interface: look at it closely, it's not that different in real terms, a bunch of icons (tiles) that link to programs (apps) that run either full screen or drop to desktop, with me so far?
No start button, gasp, shock, horror, but hey, move your pointer to where the start button used to be and you see the start screen thumbnail, which you remember is just a bunch of icons that link to programs. Power users right click and get shortcuts to the advanced features. So far so good. The bottom right corner where all the other stuff like time, running apps also has a menu (charms) that, you fairly quickly suss out, let you change either app or PC settings and shutdown, restart etc. The top left corner lets you see and close apps that are running full screen. Every action is easily controlled with a standard mouse and combo's of left and right clicks, finding apps is fantastic, just type their name or the first few letters and choose, in fact it works better with keyboard and mouse than with having to keep raising your arm to prod at the screen.

So to cut to the chase, give it a try without a touchscreen and you'll find it not hard at all and actually a joy to use. Those that are writing about how rubbish it is without touch, you haven't actually used it, have you? I for one will not be rushing out to buy a touchscreen monitor, I can't think of anything worse than having a 24" screen covered in greasy fingerprints, have you seen what some of the business users eat at their desks?

Windows 8, it's not that different, it doesn't need a touchscreen and once you start using it you'll find that you don't want to go back.

P.S. Three compelling reasons for the Enterprise to adopt Win 8

• Bitlocker
• Windows to go
• Direct Access on IPV4

Microsoft Lync for Emergency Response

As a local authority we have a duty of care to our citizens and unfortunately sometimes that involves co-ordinating the civil authorities, Police, Fire, Health, Social Work etc, to deal with serious events both planned and unplanned and on a happier note organising and ensuring the smooth running of major public events and festivals.

We had a suite of rooms in the basement of our Headquarters that was designated as the emergency planning and response centre, it all looked impressive, big maps on the wall, whiteboards, 12 desks with PC's and bright red telephones. Seperate conference room and other offices for brainstorming during emergencies. It was used on average once every 2 years.

As you can imagine that is not a great use of building space, equipment and resources. Now that we have Lync we don't need it at all anymore.

With the ability to quickly see who is available using presence, pull them into adhoc meetings and video conferences from their own office and even include outside agencies with federation or just by sending them an online meeting request, they are able to join in despite not having Lync, our emergency response has completely changed.

With a large rural area to cover we can setup and have running a fully connected control room in any of our council offices or schools within a few hours. Computer suites in classrooms are ideally suited to this purpose allowing us to be close to the event if required but still fully connected through Lync to our teams and other agencies.

We have moved away from the concept of dedicated numbers and helplines, anybody phoning in to our contact centre can be quickly routed through to any of our locations or people at the click of a mouse. Our use of SBA's across the region with 2 in our major towns gives us a good degree of resilience and we have successfully used 3G mi-fi to video conference and share data using Lync. The ability of senior officers to be effectively there despite still being in the home 30 miles away has increased our level of response beyond expectation.

This was a control room for the Olympic torch procession that ran through South Ayrshire in June. IT received the request to set up some kind of room where Senior staff could monitor the route yet still be in touch at 1400hrs on Thursday, the room wasn't available until 1700hrs. I left the building at 1745hrs after two of us had setup 5 workstations ( laptops ) connect to Lync and Plantronics P540 phones, a 42"  LCD displaying the live feed from the BBC. A Polycom CX3000 conference phone and a dual monitor station for the Head of communications with twitter.

All the staff had to do in the morning was login and their desktop, phone and email was all there ready for them despite them normally working in different buildings.

Lync also allows us a flexibility that was not thought possible a few years ago. Officers in charge of gritting operations in the winter don't have to battle through storms and snowdrifts to get to the office to co-ordinate operations, they are able to work safely and effectively from their home using broadband and still be in full control as if they were sitting at their desks. 

Lync truly has removed the concept of work being a location now it is an activity regardless of where you are.

Oh and I got a small medal for the Olympic Control room setup. Shhh don't tell them how easy it was.