Windows 8 tablets: Not open for business
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
April 22, 2012, 2:24pm PDT
Summary: I’d thought Windows 8 tablets one shot at the business market because IT administrators could deploy and manage them with Active Directory. Guess what? They’re not supporting Active Directory on them.
Microsoft has adopted a Wile E. Coyote approach to Windows 8 tablet management.
I think Windows 8 is doomed to failed on the desktop. But, much as I dislike Windows 8 and its Metro interface, I thought it had a chance on the business tablet. Oh, forget about Intel and Microsoft’s dream that the first wave of Windows 8 tablets will push the iPad’s global market share to below 50 percent by mid-2013. That’s not happening. But, Metro’s designed for tablet-sized displays and, I presumed, IT would be able to deploy and manage them with their existing Active Directory (AD) tools. Guess what? Microsoft won’t be supporting AD on Windows 8 on ARM (WOA).
When I first heard that Microsoft wasn’t enabling AD on Windows RT–the ARM-specific version of Windows 8–I thought there must be some kind of mistake. AD isn’t just a directory service, it’s the heart of business Windows authentication, authorization, security, and management. Every Windows system administrator, since Windows NT’s domain system was put out to pasture, knows AD. It’s what they use, just for starters, for:
- Adding new users to Active Directory
Changing passwords
Granting rights to file servers
Allowing remote access to the network
Setting login and logout scripts
Controlling when users can use the network
Creating security groups - with either static or dynamic membership
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