If You are in the market for new PCs or even an operating system upgrade, your business might benefit from adopting Windows 8. Here are six ways that the new OS may improve your business’s processes.
1. Touchscreen interface: With a tablet or a touchscreen desktop monitor, Windows 8 supports options such as handwritten note-taking in OneNote or commenting on Word documents using digital ink. Once you get acclimated to Windows 8’s touch and swipe conventions, you can use the touch controls to navigate the OS effectively.
The touchscreen interface opens new business possibilities for Windows 8 tablets or PCs with touchscreen monitors. You might use Windows 8 at interactive kiosks, or give it to staffers working in the field.
2. Networking: Improvements in Windows 8 make connecting to a network easier and more intuitive.
Whether you tap the network icon in the Settings charm on the Windows 8 Ul charms bar or click it in the system tray in desktop mode, it pulls up a panel that fills the right quarter of the screen top to bottom. At the top of the list is Airplane mode; enabling this option shuts down all wireless communications.
When you join a new network, the dialog boxes that guide you through choosing connections to a public or private network are simpler, as are those for enabling sharing of data or resources between your computer and the other devices on the network.
Windows 8 also includes better tools for connecting to, and managing, cellular networks. And the OS can track and meter data usage for 3G/4G cellular networks.
3. Fast boot time: Real-world startup speeds can vary significantly depending on the hardware you use, but my Samsung Series 7 Slate PC with Windows 8 Pro boots in just 11 seconds. A faster boot time lets users get down to business quicker at the beginning of the day or at meetings.
4. Better security: Windows 8’s Secure Boot feature allows only software signed by authorized certificates to boot up, preventing BIOS- or kernel-level malware from sneaking in.
The new OS also incorporates the antimalware capabilities of Microsoft Security Essentials into Windows Defender, for stronger antimalware protection right out of the box.
Microsoft has expanded the scope of its SmartScreen technology, too. With Windows 8, SmartScreen applies to all network traffic, meaning that it provides the same security whether you're using Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome.
5. Storage Spaces: Newer hardware such as Ultrabooks and tablets tend to rely on smaller-capacity solid-state drives for storage. But Windows 8's Storage Spaces feature lets you create a storage pool that can span internal and external drives, and combine storage using different interfaces so that the OS treats everything as being on a single large drive. Storage Spaces also uses data mirroring across the drives; thanks to this technique, even if one of the drives in the pool crashes, the data will remain available.
6. SkyDrive integration: When you’re on the go, using the cloud to expand your storage options makes a lot of sense. Recognizing this fact, Microsoft has woven access to its cloud storage service, SkyDrive, throughout Windows 8.
The SkyDrive app on the Windows 8 Start screen offers quick access to data stored in the cloud. You can easily add files to SkyDrive from the Share charm in the Windows 8 charms bar, and data stored in SkyDrive is available from virtually anywhere, over almost any Web-connected device.
Businesses that subscribe to Office 365 Small Business Premium get a more robust approach to cloud storage. The SkyDrive Pro app provides the same benefits and functionality as SkyDrive, but it ties back to SharePoint and delivers more collaborative tools and better IT management for data than the personal SkyDrive account does.
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