8 great reasons why Windows 8 is great for education

Here are 8 great reasons why Windows 8 is great for education:

1. No compromises: When it comes to technology decisions, schools often have to compromise. We hear from schools that they want the form factor of a tablet, but what they really need is the power of PC to meet their educational goals. They want a device that is very secure, runs powerful software and legacy applications, allows multiple user login, long battery life, instant on and works within their budget for procurement, deployment and management of the devices.  Windows 8 moves schools beyond compromise bringing together a tablet form factor with the power and flexibility of a PC. They’re no longer limited by challenges they’ve historically faced.

2. The cloud foundation: With Windows 8, we put “the cloud” at the center of the operating system so students and teachers can easily access their information, collaboration and productivity tools.  SkyDrive and Office 365 for education are central to the Windows 8 experience. This offers a flexible, anywhere, anytime learning experience across a range of different devices, both in and out of the classroom.

3. It saves time and money and safeguards kids: Windows 8 reduces ongoing management costs and provides enterprise-grade security and reliability. Beyond protecting your devices and your data, Windows 8 provides facilities to protect your students online and offline with Do Not Track on by default and group policy.  In addition, Windows 8 offers enhanced parental controls and a ‘Family Safety Activity Report’ so parents have insight into their child’s computer activity.

4. Accessibility plus: Windows 8 is optimized for a first-class touch experience, but equally comfortable with keyboard and mouse or pen.   In addition, there are many assistive technologies build in such as handwriting recognition with digital ink, speech and gesture tracking.

5. Real productivity: Windows 8 makes it possible for students or teachers to be as productive as they need. Imagine simultaneously watching a video while taking notes in OneNote, or the possibility of searching across an OS, the web and the cloud at once, while aggregating all findings in one place – it’s now possible and easy.  With split screen technology and easy switching between apps, multitasking is taken to a whole new level.

6. It opens students to the world of education apps: Windows 8 makes a wide range of content available, with the support of Flash and a rich set of applications like Khan Academy and the KNO reader, not to mention the 4.5 million existing Windows 7 apps.  Windows 8 fully embraces open standards like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript across IE 10, so that publishers and partners can continue to build native and rich content experiences.

7. Connected classrooms and mobile learning: With Windows To Go students can pack up entire desktops and bring it along on a small bootable USB drive wherever they go. And mobile broadband is being built-in more devices every day.  No more searching and connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots. Windows 8 does it automatically, whether from the school bus, home or a relative’s house.

8. It’s cool, fast and fluid: Students will respond to it and teachers will find it easy and intuitive. It’s powerful yet fun, beautiful and simple.
At Microsoft, we believe that technology must be in service to each student’s unique journey for learning and life. Also, it has to serve teachers and administrators as they guide their students. It’s because of this belief that our technology, our partners, our ecosystem, and our people, are in service of that reality in our classrooms today. Windows 8 is an extension of that mission, and a huge step forward – serving those heroes in learning.

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Posted By Sundeep aka SunTechie

Sundeep is a Founder of Youth Talent Auzzar, a passionate blogger, a programmer, a developer, CISE and these days he is pursuing his graduation in Engineering with Computer Science dept.

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Windows 8 will be challenge for Malware writers

Microsoft™s security researcher believe that upcoming operating system, Windows 8 is a step forward in security and Windows 8 will be far better at protecting against malware than it’s predecessors.

Chris Valasek, a senior security research scientist at development testing firm Coverity, began examining the security features of Windows 8 last autumn, before the consumer previews of the upcoming revamp of the new Microsoft OS came out.

"There are always going to be vulnerabilities but you can make it difficult to leverage vulnerabilities to write exploits." One major change between Windows 7 and 8 is the addition of more exploit-mitigation technologies, however. Windows Memory Managers (specifically the Windows Heap Manager and Windows Kernel Pool Allocator) are designed to make it far harder for attackers to exploit buffer-overflow vulnerabilities and the like to push malware onto vulnerable systems.

The "security sandbox" for applications for Windows 8 will also be a great step forward. "These new Windows 8 Apps will be contained by a much more restrictive security sandbox, which is a mechanism to prevent programs from performing certain actions," Valasek explains. 

"This new App Container provides the operating system with a way to make more fine-grained decisions on what actions certain applications can perform, instead of relying on the more broad ‘Integrity Levels’ that debuted in Windows Vista/7.

Windows 8 also comes with a new version of Internet Explorer, Microsoft's browser software. Internet Explorer 10 will come with a mode that disables support for third-party plug-ins such as Flash and Java.

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Microsoft Windows 8 hackathon, Mumbai

Over 200 hundred developers from across India have camped up for two days at a hotel in south Mumbai for a Windows 8 hackathon. This is the first time that the Indian developer community is getting into the hack mode for Microsoft Windows.

Hackathon, or codefest, is an event in which computer programmers and others in the field of software development, like graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software-related projects.

With Microsoft Corp geared to launch its cloud-connected Windows 8 later this year, the US-based software developer is making sure that the developer community is ready with applications (apps) for the platform.

“India is an incredible bastion of software developers. On a global scale about 25-30 per cent of all the software codes written in the world are written by Indian developers (based out in India and abroad). Certainly galvanising the developer community in India to see the possibility and re-imagine Windows 8 and build next generation businesses is important,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, via a video conference at the Microsoft India Technology Summit.

Atul Gupta, an individual application developer who has been coding for the last 16-17 hours, is elated with his experience on Windows 8. “This is my first time that I have attended a hackathon and the experience was awesome. The application that I developed is consumer oriented,” said Gupta.

But some of the app developers, who are active on the Android and Apple platforms, are yet to test the Windows 8 platform. “We do not see any immediate reason to be part of the Windows 8 environment. What matters is the actual number of people using handset on that platform, as of now they are very small. Besides the Android base is just growing fast,” said Sagar Bedmutha, founder CEO of Optinno Mobitech.

The company has been developing apps for Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry smartphones and the Android platform.

Noida based OnGraph Technologies is yet another app developer that is staying away from the Windows 8 platform. “Our issue with Windows is that it is not an open source system. Hence, we prefer Android,” said Nikhil Verma, business development manager, OnGraph.

For Microsoft, getting the developer support from India and APAC (Asia Pacific region) will be significant as the region has several hundreds of companies creating application for the Android, Apple and RIM platforms. “For Microsoft, this is crucial as they need to create a market. There is no dispute that Windows has a huge base in the enterprise segment but that’s not the case in the handset and tablet segments. And these are two areas that are growing exponentially,” said an analyst who did not want to be identified.

Ballmer also reiterated that the launch of Windows 8 is a “rebirth” of the company. “While Windows 7 was one of the best products, with Windows 8 we are re-imagining Windows from ground up,” he said.

Agrees Alok Shende, principal analyst, Ascentius Consulting: “For Microsoft Windows 8 is one of the most important product. The company has a dominant position in the desktop environment, the challenge will be in the mobile category. With Blackberry losing sheen in the enterprise segment perhaps Microsoft can address that market too. But consumers already have too much to choose from,” added Shende.

Vishal Tripathi, principal research analyst, Gartner, believes that Windows 8 has its benefits as security, application store and delivery models and app contracts. It will also support broader devices where users can have same seamless experience on tablet, Phone and PC. “But one of the challenges for Windows 8 is the Metro UI. While they have developed plenty of desktop applications but the catalogue of Metro is limited. Though Microsoft is encouraging developers to build applications and apps acquired through the app store are free for a limited time. In India Windows 8 adoption will face some resistance enterprise who have recently migrated to Windows7 so moving to to a new platform is a huge cost in terms of license, manpower, application testing etc. The change in OS in the enterprise environment happens every three to four years in India and in case of small businesses perhaps up to five to years. It might make sense of companies who are still on XP to move to Windows 8,” said Tripathi.

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