Devoted readers of Agnostic Computing.com, I write today to implore you to set your powershell scripts to Signed, get your Windows Key + R trigger fingers ready, and prep your forests and domains for a functional upgrade because today ladies and gentlemen, today, we get a new Windows.
Ahhh yeah.
There’s some excitement in Microsoft Country again.
No one knows what it’ll be called. Windows 9 is the front-runner, but late-breaking rumors say big MS could throw us for a loop too and name it Windows TH (Threshold?!?! the pundits echo) or just plain old Windows.
I say they should name it Windows TNS: Windows The New Shiny. Because among the rumors I’ve enjoyed hearing most is the one Microsoft may offer a sort of Windows 365 subscription for fanbois like me, a continuously morphing and changing OS, just like my O365 experience has been. New Shiny Windows every month…well maybe I’d tell ConfigMan to delay updates for a week or so, just to shake the bugs loose. But still. A subscription OS would be great.
But that’s a long-shot and probably not a very strong selling point for today’s event, which is, as everyone has noted, focused entirely on enterprise computing.
You see, Microsoft is trying desperately to court Enterprise IT people, to bring us back into the fold, targeting this entire event today at IT people like me who were aghast & horrified two years ago when they first installed Windows 8 in a VM.
“No. No. To get to start screen, hover your mouse in the lower corner. The lower corner, not the charms bar.There it is. Click that. Ahh shit, you missed it. Try again.” was how the conversation went throughout IT departments in ‘Merica.
As I’ve written before, the experience of Windows 8 & Server 2012 was so shocking and painful, it sent me running and crying into the Mac OS X camp, and then into ChromeBook fantasyland.
But I got over it. I overcame, and I figured out how to move all that nonsense touch stuff away when Windows 8.1/Server 2012 R2 debuted about a year ago.
Apparently other IT pros haven’t, and are still sticking to Windows 7 as if it’s the greatest thing since Active Directory. Thus today’s event.
To them I say: get with the program, or get left behind. Windows 8 did suck, but 8.1 & 2012 R2 were fine recoveries. If you decided to punt on learning about Windows 8.1/2012 R2, you missed a whole bunch of incredible advancements that are only going to improve with Windows TNS. Have fun catching up on this:
- Baked in Hyper-V. Free on Windows 8.1 Pro and up. A virtual lab on every desktop.
- Tiered Storage Spaces in Windows server 2012 R2: yet another software abstraction framework, but for your storage! You missed out on this too!
- An awesome networking stack, totally rewritten: Native support for teaming, network function virtualizations, Layer 3 routing protocols via PowerShell…oh my. I’d hate to be you stuck with a Server 2008 R2 box, running your old tired batch files, your dated vbs scripts and ipconfig. You missed out on some incredible advancements
And the great thing is that all this is going to get better, I think (hope). True, we won’t be learning about Windows Server today (Aidan Finn reckons that + nextgen System Center will be next month) but there will be lots of detail about our next Enterprise desktop product, by which you can bet people like me will make inferences for the next server product.
Things are looking up in Microsoft Country. We’ve a ten year head start on Trustworthy Computing (ShellShock couldn’t have had better timing for MS), a highly-modular & secure OS, a mature cloud stack, a SaaS offering second to-none (O365) and now, today, a new Windows OS.
Good times.
Wilson.tech 
Ill try it when they release the first service pack!
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