Blog Series: Windows 8.1 for Business

Windows 8.1 Powers BusinessWelcome to March!  And not that I mean to alarm you, but welcome to the final month before support ends on Windows XP.  I know that many of you supporting IT and devices for your businesses have known this for a while, and are either already done or continuing to work on migrating to Windows 7 or Windows 8But which one, and why?

What’s interesting to me is that there is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) surrounding Windows 8.1 and whether or not there is any real benefit to providing and supporting it as the default, best-choice for business devices.  And while I know that most of you have indeed done proper due-diligence in order to come to the conclusion that Windows 7 is a better choice for your businesses, it just may be that not all of your information was based on fact, or was missing some very important beneficial tidbits which, if you had known, might very well have changed the equation.

That’s the purpose of this March blog series: “Windows 8.1 for Business” .   We, the 9 Microsoft Technology (IT Pro) Evangelists in the US, plus a few special guest authors, want to take this month to help dispel some myths and provide some useful resources for you as you evaluate (and hopefully choose) Windows 8.1 as your business desktop/laptop/tablet/phablet platform of choice.

Below is our schedule, which will be continually kept up-to-date with links to completed articles as they become available.  Stop back often, because we sincerely want you to benefit from this information.  And if you have any questions or comments, please please please post them in the comments either here, or at the articles themselves.

UPDATE: Thank you for your patience!  Due to the importance of the topics we are going to cover, we’ve had to delay posting to this series.  We will continue soon (this week of March 17), and I’ll add items to  the schedule as soon as we’re sure of their availability.  Keep watching…

All the best!
Kevin Remde

Date

Article

Author

March 3

Series Introduction (this article)

Kevin Remde / @KevinRemde

March 4

Oh Start menu, how do I miss thee…or do I?

Matt Hester / @MatthewHester

March 5

Beloved Desktop, Where Art Thou?

Jennelle Crothers / @jkc137

March 6

Windows 8 works great without a touch screen

Keith Mayer / @KeithMayer

March 7

Does Windows 8.1 require more hardware than Windows 7?

Kevin Remde / @KevinRemde

March 19 Getting started with Client Hyper-V Matt Hester / @MatthewHester
March 20 Is the “Cloud” a really big deal? Blain Barton / @Blainbar 
March 21 Remember Our Good Friend Group Policy Matt Hester / @MatthewHester
March 28 Build No-code Business Apps with Windows 8.1, Project Siena and Microsoft Azure

Keith Mayer / @KeithMayer

March 31 Build No-Code Business Apps with Windows 8.1, Project Siena and Microsoft Azure (Part 2) Keith Mayer / @KeithMayer
April 1 Build No-Code Business Apps with Windows 8.1, Project Siena and Microsoft Azure (Part 3) Keith Mayer / @KeithMayer
April 8 Top 5 Key Security Improvements Anthony Bartolo / @WirelessLife
April 10 XP EOS – Guidance for Small/Medium Businesses and Individual Consumers Pierre Roman / @PierreRoman
April 14 Series Wrap-up and Resources Kevin Remde / @KevinRemde