Why Windows 8 will be good for your business

Yesterday, a shock wave reverberated through the tech industry: Microsoft unveiled the consumer preview of Windows 8 -- what the company in the old days would prosaically have referred to as the "beta version."

While Windows 7 was an incremental and measured enhancement from Windows Vista, Windows 8 is shaping up to be a dramatic and revolutionary change for the operating system. Indeed, the difference from Windows 7 is akin to the difference between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.

That kind of dramatic change in operating systems is often seen as a bad omen for business, since there's significant cost in training employees to use their new PCs. But there's good reason to believe that Windows 8 will be a winner for Microsoft and a great thing for your business.

You can read a lot about Windows 8, but here are the three key things you should know about it:

The traditional Start menu is gone. It's not just that the start button has changed shape, like it did in the move from Windows XP to Windows Vista. It is completely gone, replaced with a "Metro"-style, side-scrolling start screen filled with program tiles, modeled after the new Windows Phone interface. But you still get to the start screen in the same place as you do today -- in the lower left corner of the desktop -- or from the new command bar that appears on the right side of the screen when you put the mouse in either corner on the right side of the screen.

There are now two application environments. There's the traditional desktop, of course, as well as the new full screen "Metro" interface. All of your existing programs, including line of business applications, will still work on the desktop. The Metro, or Modern interface, though, is home to all-new, full-screen apps designed to be bought and sold in the new Windows Store, sort of like iPhone apps.

It's built for touch. Have you had your eye on an iPad or some other touch device for a mobile workforce? Windows 8 might be the perfect solution instead. You can get a real sense for how well Windows 8 will fill that role by exploring the consumer preview, particularly if you install it on an existing touch-enabled laptop or slate (like the ASUS Eee Slate EP121).

So where's the upside for business? If you're a software developer, it's obvious: The Windows Store is the single biggest opportunity in the history of computing. It's a store, like the one in every phone and tablet on the market, fully integrated into the biggest and best selling operating system on the planet. If you're not already developing an app for Windows 8, it must mean you're not a software developer.

And even if you're not in the software business, the simpler development environment to create the Modern Java and HTML5-based apps means you can create new business applications faster, cheaper and more efficiently. That means you can finally abandon that barely supported database you created in 2002, and get a truly modern update that will save you time, money and training time.

You can get try the Windows consumer preview at the Windows Website.

Have you installed it? What do you think? Sound off in the comments.

Dave Johnson was employed by Microsoft Corporation at the time this article was written.

[froze1]

I'm a computer noob. As a noob I get sick and tired of all the changes and having to keep up. If the computer slows down I don't have a clue why so I call a friend and if he has time he comes out and goes through a bunch of MS stuff and deletes things and I'm up and and running, but why should any program get littered with trash as you use it? It's like we are all expected to be computer engineers. And MS won't buy you software to fix your Windows program or pay a computer person to do it, it's on us even though their program does all of that! It's just stupid, make a windows program that's idiot proof so anyone can use it without any special schooling and be done with it. I just kind of gotten use to the way Vista works after coming off of ME and before that DOS (which I had to use DCOM shell just to figure out how to use it), and now 8! When will this end?

[SGragg]

Thank-You Dave for the brief outline of Win8.
Although we won't transition to Mac, We also won't waste out time upgrading to Win8.
I have to agree with win8bad above.

[bradrh]

XP was OK. Linux is much better. Win7 is crap. I hope I never have to use Win8

[bradrh]

XP was OK. Linux is much better. Win7 is crap. I hope I never have to use Win8

[thamcore100]

We downgraded all computers that came with windows7 to windows XP, because nobody could make our other perfectly well functioning hardware, printers etc.. work smoothly with it.
It is crazy and unethical. It is like buying a new house and being forced to throw all your furniture and other belongings away.

[spacespeed]

Sounds like you didn't do the proper research before upgrading. Also, stop blaming Windows 7 for the lack of/buggy device drivers. That's the responsibility of the device manufacturer, not Microsoft. Blame them instead.

[adam_hartung]

You have made a big assumption that Microsoft will continue to be big - and that its app store will be big. Those are assumptions. What if the market for tablets and smartphones is already in place - and accelerating. By 2013 20+ percent of all adults in the USA will have a tablet, and over 65% will have smartphones. When Windows 8 hits the market it could be stillborn, because users have already committed to their environment - and already abandoned PCs.

Forbes magazine last week took just the opposite of your argument, saying that Windows 8 is a copy of existing products, not a lot better, and has little market appeal. As PC sales disintegrate, by the time any Windows 8 tablets hit the market it will be tough sledding to gain share against powerful incumbents on their 3rd or 4th rev level, practically bug-free and already entrenched. There isn't going to be a need for a new PC given what mobile devices accomplish - and Microsoft will be shut out. Forbes gives this a ho-hum, and put a sell on MSFT http://onforb.es/zEbLfz

[win8bad]

Having supported both Windows and Mac OS for small, medium and large enterprises for 30 years, I am highly dissapointed that MS would tout an deliver this product with such a bad User Interface. It is the ugliest I've ever seen. Ms needs to recruit some creative folks outside of IT with vision to really develop a good human interface for Windows. Don't let programmers do it, they are great at programming but make lousy human interface designers. Go to the source, ask the user's both in consumer and corporate America about ease of use suggestions. This "new" interface is the worst I've seen since Lan Manager 1.0 I will more than likely go Mac with my next purchases.

[indydeveloper]

I am not a claustrophobic person. But Windows Metro still causes me claustrophobia. But there's a bright side to this: if you want to punish your kid for whatever mischief by making him/her stand in front of a wall for a long time, now you have the added punishment option of making him/her be stuck with having to use the Windows Metro interface when he/she logs into whatever computer with Windows 8. Yeah, I know. That's cruel. Microsoft apparently never has been particularly adept on the artistic side with anything outside of computer games. It's like everything other than their games is as dull and awkward as a crowd of nerds who never do or understand anything other than writing code. By what I recall, Microsoft actually did turn to consumers for input on what to make a new interface for Windows be like, but unfortunately such consultations have never fixed the problem of Microsoft Creativity and Microsoft Sense of Taste being perpetually stuck at version 1.0. Microsoft engineers are there for their jobs (rather short-lived contracts at that) and pay and get hired for their technical backgrounds. They are not there for a chance to realize their technical and artistic inspirations, nor are they hired for displays of creative talent, as is more the case in Google.