Apps for beer and remote cop cars

Developers have come up with a Windows 8 CRM app called Ultimate Beer Ranger to automate the sales team at New Belgium Brewing, which has already decided it will adopt Windows 8 on mobile devices.

Why? The brewery is a Microsoft shop and it wants to use its in-house Windows expertise as it pushes its CRM to mobile devices that the sales team -- beer rangers -- carry with them. The Windows 8 tablets will replace a smartphone app that was too clunky for the rangers to buy into, says Jim Steger, a principal with Sonoma Partners, which wrote the app.

The application will take advantage of Windows 8 touch capabilities as then as the tablets' internal GPS to steer rangers to nearby potential clients. It will as well enable accessing and inputting data to the brewery's back end.

New Belgium all in all has to wait for Windows 8 itself and tablets that support it to hit the market previously it can deploy to its 100 or so beer rangers.

A Geekwire video shows a police car's internal systems being controlled via voice command through Windows 8 laptops. By talking to the machines, developers of the app, Modularis, open car doors, turn on wipers and sound the siren and by the by startle a nearby cabbie. They say they've made provision for preventing the voices of perps in the back seat from taking control.

A cranky former Microsoft employee launched a blog previously this month called Fixing Windows 8 in which he described his experiences working with the consumer preview of the operating system, however now the blog has disappeared.

How unattractive a feature of Windows 8

In some cases he'd rant about how unattractive a feature of Windows 8 was, and at the time write about it again later saying the feature was in fact pretty good once you got used to it. He might have trouble ascending the learning curve.

While predicting that PC sales will grow 4.4% this year and anyway 8.6% straightway year, analyst firm Gartner says a lot of the burden for at once year's growth will fall to Windows 8.

"PC shipments will remain weak in 2012, as the PC market plays catch up in bringing a new level of research that consumers want to see in devices they purchase," said Ranjit Atwal, innovation director at Gartner. "The real question is whether Windows 8 and ultrabooks will create the compelling offering that gets the previously adopter of devices excited about PCs again."

He says ultrabooks will become more popular and could stimulate the market for mobile PCs, nevertheless tablets, just as Windows on ARM devices coming as part of Windows 8 and others, could put a crimp in that. "PCs will face more competition as we see new media tablets based on operating systems from Android and Microsoft, as so then the new iPad," Atwal says.

Many people trialing Windows 8 hate that the Start menu has disappeared from the bottom of the desktop in favor of the Start page, a collection of squares and rectangles that lead to applications.

Stardock is introducing Start8, an application for Windows 8 that adds the Start menu to the Windows 8 task bar. It as well adds an alternative to shutting down the machine in other words similar to the way it's been on traditional Windows desktops.

Businesses testing Windows 8 can now do so with virtualized applications through the beta version of Microsoft's Application Virtualization in other words an upgrade supporting the new operating system.

App-V allows businesses to install traditional apps on servers from which they are streamed to PCs with desktop App-V customers, the advantage being that there is no need to install multiple apps on each PC.

The beta as well works with the Windows Server 8 Beta

The beta as well works with the Windows Server 8 Beta, with Remote Desktop Services and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

According to Pocket Gamer Nokia's design chief is spending about a third of his time coming up with a Windows 8 tablet. The only solid thing Nokia's top designer Marko Ahtisaari said was, "We're working on it." Not a surprise, in effect, nevertheless Nokia has been officially mum about its Windows 8 plans.

The Verge reports that Lenovo is planning a Windows 8 tablet to be available the day the operating system becomes as a rule available, likely sometime this fall. There are no details on the machine except that it's not an ARM-based device and that it could be an existing device demoed at CES this year.

In today's competitive environment, IT organizations are pursuant to this agreement constant pressure to adapt IT resources and to improve levels of service in order to keep pace with the demands of the business. But, IDC finds many IT organizations burdened with an overly complex infrastructure in other words driving up operating expenses and taxing IT staffing resources.

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