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Did Microsoft Simply Run Out of Time On Windows RT?
CWmike writes "Microsoft may have simply run out of time with Windows RT, Directions on Microsoft analyst Michael Cherry said on Friday. Windows RT, the name Microsoft slapped on the OS earlier this week after calling it 'Windows on ARM,' or WOA, for months, is the forked version of Windows 8 designed to run on devices powered by ARM SoCs, or system-on-a-chip. Cherry was referring to gaps in Windows RT's feature set, particularly the lack of 'domain joining,' the ability to connect to a corporate Windows network and the lack of support for Group Policies, one of the ways IT administrators use to manage Windows devices. 'This is pure speculation on my part, but it seems like they had to make a trade-off with Windows RT,' Cherry said. 'What we're hearing now about Windows RT is a function of time and how they wanted the thing to behave. It seems to me that the a key goal was to get battery life decent and keep the weight [of devices] down.' His analysis on RT's chance of success: 'I think you can take Windows RT off the table for enterprises,' he said."
WinRT does have central administration capabilities, just not as extensive as enterprise editions of Windows.
They had ARM-based code to join domains and apply system policies in NT4... this isn't some new reinvention of the wheel like "WinFS" was, this is a porting of existing code to a different platform, one for which they already had working examples of code to compare against.
Quite aside from that, it's high level code. You do not need to write the algorithms to join an NT domain in assembly or machine code, you write it in C and compile it for the arch. Porting a Linux distro to ARM does not mean rewriting the code from the ground up, it means recompiling with different flags... why would it be any different for Windows?
They could be but I'd say that's a bad bet - trying to "out Apple" Apple.
Microsoft has always had advantages in existing software compatibility and enterprise security features (say what you will - Windows Mobile had many more security features than Android or iOS for a long time). They seem to be casting off their only real differentiators in an attempt to copy the success of the iPad. This will fail spectacularly.
What nonsense. There are a whole host of Windows x86 tablets coming with full touch support and with new form factors which will be fully compatible with existing software and enterprise features of PCs.
And not to mention the fact that the author doesn't mention the enterprise features that Windows RT has.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/19/managing-quot-byo-quot-pcs-in-the-enterprise-including-woa.aspx
Very telling that the author is Gregg Keizer, who was involved in the scandals with faking Windows benchmarks to drive page hits.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/why-we-dont-trust-devil-mountain-software-and-neither-should-you/31024
And the submitter is CWMike, from Computer World. They know that Slashdot laps up anti-MSFT FUD and thus they use it to write drivel and get page hits from Slashdot. And judging from the comments, they're very successful in manipulating Slashdot for their own gains as they've historically with the fake benchmarks.
Take some time to read this:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/19/managing-quot-byo-quot-pcs-in-the-enterprise-including-woa.aspx
There are a whole host of enterprise features that Windows RT supports.
If they're not enough, you can get a Windows 8 x86 tablet, which will support anything that a desktop PC currently supports.
Why didn't the article link to that blog post or talk about it? It's plain FUD targeted at people like you and the MS haters have lapped it up hook, line and sinker like they've done with the author's previous articles. I am sure you can make a case that the features are not enough, but not even mentioning them AT ALL shows that it's a FUD article designed to drive page hits.
See the submitter of this fake benchmark article:
http://tech.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=10/02/18/0429258
Look at the submitter of this Slashdot story. It's the same Computer World guy.
Here's Slashdot post about how the above article was a fake.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/21/2329249/windows-7-memory-usage-critic-outed-as-fraud
This space for rent.
No, it can't. The only tablet I'm aware of that can do any sort of enterprise auth out of the box (against Active Directory) is the Lenovo Thinkpad tablet (Android). You can use your AD password to lock/unlock the device. They also preload a Citrix client into the tablets.