There’s significantly less than two years to go before Windows XP is unsupported, and of course if you’re still running Windows XP in your school, it’s worth remembering that Windows XP was probably born before some or many of your students.

But for schools making the shift to Windows 8, there’s still a need to plan carefully the migration, and this summer holiday will be one of the first opportunities for many of the classrooms around the country to be updated.

So this resource guide might be perfectly timed:

Basically, it steps you through focused documentation for the five key stages of rolling out Windows 8, and provides information that answers key questions:

• Explore – Windows XP is good enough, why should I care?
• Plan – Does it work in my environment? How do we prepare?
• Deliver – What can I do to make deployment easier and faster?
• Operate – How do I manage risk? How do I maintain control?
• Support – Where can I find help and support?

The Resource Guide has links to over 70 detailed documents which will help you to understand what Windows 8 does, how to plan the deployment, and what tools are available to make it easier. For an education institution or partner, there are a number of documents which would be especially useful, including information on:

• Bitlocker – to encrypt sensitive data on staff computers, especially laptops
• Windows To Go – to create a Windows 8 environment on a USB stick that staff or students could use on non-managed PCs (for example, to have a secure Managed Operating Environment build that students can run on a home PC which isn’t part of your standard managed network)
• AppLocker – to allow you to control which applications are run on which computers
• Microsoft Security Compliance Manager – to allow you to support a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy whilst maintain information security

Download the Spring Resource Guide for Windows 8

There’s significantly less than two years to go before Windows XP is unsupported, and of course if you’re still running Windows XP in your school, it’s worth remembering that Windows XP was probably born before some or many of your students.

But for schools making the shift to Windows 8, there’s still a need to plan carefully the migration, and this summer holiday will be one of the first opportunities for many of the classrooms around the country to be updated.

So this resource guide might be perfectly timed:

Basically, it steps you through focused documentation for the five key stages of rolling out Windows 8, and provides information that answers key questions:

• Explore – Windows XP is good enough, why should I care?
• Plan – Does it work in my environment? How do we prepare?
• Deliver – What can I do to make deployment easier and faster?
• Operate – How do I manage risk? How do I maintain control?
• Support – Where can I find help and support?

The Resource Guide has links to over 70 detailed documents which will help you to understand what Windows 8 does, how to plan the deployment, and what tools are available to make it easier. For an education institution or partner, there are a number of documents which would be especially useful, including information on:

• Bitlocker – to encrypt sensitive data on staff computers, especially laptops
• Windows To Go – to create a Windows 8 environment on a USB stick that staff or students could use on non-managed PCs (for example, to have a secure Managed Operating Environment build that students can run on a home PC which isn’t part of your standard managed network)
• AppLocker – to allow you to control which applications are run on which computers
• Microsoft Security Compliance Manager – to allow you to support a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy whilst maintain information security

Download the Spring Resource Guide for Windows 8

Windows 8 is a new user experience. One of the best parts is a uniformity and consistency across applications to handle common tasks the same. Specifically, I mean the charms. Users search consistently. Users share consistently. And, users access settings, preferences, options, personalization, and about screens consistently.

You know what I mean, right?

In some applications, there’s a Preferences item under the File menu. In some applications, there is an Options item under the Tools menu. In some applications, there is a Personalization item under the Edit menu. What’s a user suppose to do? Well, hunt for it – that’s the way it used to be. Do you see the problem? Of course you do. You’re smart.

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