Switchfast Blog: The Future of IT
Windows 8 in the Small Business
Thursday, June 23, 2011 by Michael Lewis
A few weeks ago we looked at the design philosophy driving next
generation consumer operating systems Windows 8 and
OSX Lion. Today we will focus on the specific impact of these
operating systems in a small business environment.
When Microsoft previewed Windows 8 in May, they focused on the
increased ease of switching to a touch driven display. The goal, I
believe, is to reduce user errors be reducing complexity. Computer
users have become used to a striped down, touch driven computer
experience after several years of operating touch based, stripped
down smart phones. However, Microsoft really has not changed
anything-they just hid it. Two decades of Windows legacy code is
still hidden under the new UI.
The other part of this is the touch driven interface itself.
Currently, the standard office workstation and software base is a
PC tower, keyboard, mouse, and one or two monitors. If you want to
take advantage of Windows 8 new user interface, you will need a
touch screen monitor. We have a whole library of software
applications that are going to need to be redesigned for touch. If
not, they will have to use some compensation of touch and the
traditional mouse/keyboard setup. The other option is to turn off
the new interface, but that defeats whole purpose.
We could also switch to a tablet driven work environment, but that
too requires rethinking the small business IT infrastructure. For
this to work, whole office workstations and laptops would need to
be replaced in order to take advantage of the touch drive UI. Line
of Business applications such as Quickbooks will need to be
redesigned from the ground up.
Can you imagine trying to build out an Excel spreadsheet on a
touch-based tablet? If not, go to your local Apple Store and try
out the demo of iWorks Numbers on one of the iPads. It is hard.
Spreadsheets are a keyboard-driven tool.
Maybe Microsoft has a new touch driven version of Office they
are going to show off this fall. Maybe they have come up with
a way to enter large amount of data on a touch screen, built
formulas, and design tables using a touch interface. It is
also possible small businesses should just forgo using the new
touch UI and stick with what works - a mouse and a keyboard.
Until next time -
Mike Lewis
Switchfast Technologies
Chicago IT Support &
Consulting
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Consulting
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