 Hi everybody, and welcome to Your Windows 8 Questions Answered. A little bit about ReadyTalk, which is the webinar platform we are going to be using today. You will all be muted, so you'll want to go ahead and ask any questions that you may have in the chat box that you'll see on your screen. If you do lose your Internet connection, you can reconnect using the link that was emailed to you. And you should be able to hear me via your computers, mic and speakers, but if you do want to call in, just let us know and we can send you an alternate phone number that you can dial in to. And if you do either lose your connection and cannot rejoin, or you just need to leave early, or you just want to review the content later, we are going to be recording today's session, and we will be sending out the recording along with the additional resources out to you all later this afternoon. And if you do want to go ahead and talk about this on Twitter, you can use the Twitter hashtag TechSoup. So again, this is Your Windows 8 Questions Answered. And I want to begin our presentation by thanking Microsoft for their wonderful participation both with this webinar and through our product donation program. You can go ahead and take a look at the Microsoft Software Donation Program at www.TechSoup.org forward slash Microsoft. And so my name is Kyle Hunt. I will be your facilitator today. And with us is Namina Das from Microsoft and Ariel Gilbert Knight from TechSoup. A little bit about both of the presenters. Namina Das is a product marketing manager in Windows Commercial. She frequently talks with enterprise customers and executive briefing centers at Microsoft, and has recently won the Rising Star Award for Best Speaker. And Ariel is a technology analyst at TechSoup where she researches and writes about technology topics for nonprofits and libraries. And a little bit about the agenda today. We are first going to be listening to Namina talk a little bit about Windows 8. She's actually going to be showing us her presentation from Windows 8, so you'll be able to see a little bit of it in action. And then I'm going to take a look at some of the questions that have come into the chat so we will be able to address some questions from this presentation. Namina is going to be talking a little bit about Windows 8 in relation to questions that came about from our previous webinar talking about Windows 8. And we will be sending out the Windows 8 demo that is associated with that webinar and the resources after the webinar. After that first section, we will also be hearing of course from Ariel who is going to be taking Windows 8 and kind of siphoning it down and talking about it in relation to nonprofits and libraries. And then we will finish out our webinar with additional questions from the audience. And we will make every attempt to get to all of your questions. And if we do not get to your specific question, I will make every effort to follow up with you afterwards. And so with that, I'm going to go ahead and let Namina take the reins and share her desktop. Thank you. This is Namida Das and I'm going to be sharing my screen. Let me know when you all can see it or if someone can. It looks good. Okay, great. Thank you. So what I want to cover today is talk about Windows 8 and try to answer the questions that were raised in the last webinar. And I saw there were some questions related to apps and security and how to think about hardware, why Windows 8 for enterprise customers. So I'm going to try to answer some of these questions. And before I begin my presentation, I want to tell you that I am presenting from a Lenovo laptop. It's a T400 laptop. It's a 3-year-old laptop. And it actually came with Windows 7 and last year I upgraded it to Windows 8. And I'm using, it's not a touch laptop. It's a mouse and keyboard laptop and I think you can see my cursor. And what I'm doing is I'm just going to my start screen. And you all must be familiar with that Windows 8 has this new bold image to it. And I go to SkyDrive where I have my Windows 8 webinar presentation and that is what I'm presenting. So just trying to give you a sense of how I'm presenting and that I am using Windows 8. So let's take a step back and see what is happening in the marketplace or our customers who are using technology on a day-to-day basis. What's happening there? So every time, every day when I wake up, the first thing I do is look for my cell phone and that's where my alarm is ringing and I squint my eyes and I look at my first calendar meeting that I have or the emails that I got over the night. And the reason I'm giving you this example is because we've become so dependent on technology and devices that we choose how we want to interact with them. For me having a phone functioning as my alarm clock and the first thing that I want to do is get connected is important. And in the same manner, when you meet with your employees or when you are meeting with your customers or people who are coming to your organization, they are very similar. They are using multiple devices. They are interacting with data. They are interacting with people on the go. They are more tech savvy. There's a younger crowd. They are more digital savvy. They are fast-paced. They want to be mobile. They want to be connected all the time. And I understand that this can be challenging for you and how do you want to address it then? So we feel that we know Windows for business when we start thinking for businesses or for nonprofits or for bigger organizations, Windows is at this unique place. There are a lot of companies that are really good with devices and giving user experiences, but they don't understand what bigger organizations need. They need to be secure. They need to have control over resources. They need to protect access to information. And then there are some companies that are really good with enterprise-grade solutions or solutions catered towards bigger organizations. But what they lack is the easiness, the flexibility, the mobility, the um-happening factor. That's what they are missing. And so we feel that Windows is at this unique position where you get the devices and experiences that people love coupled with the enterprise-grade or bigger organization-grade solutions that we have and that we provide. And so Windows 8 fits well in this. So I want you to take a step back. I feel like when you go out in the market you see there are a lot of editions of Windows 8 and you ask yourselves which Windows 8 is right for me. So we know that there is one Windows 8 and it comes with all this new greatness as a start screen. And you have your desktop there. You can run your desktop apps or your built-in apps. Windows 8 works with mouse and keyboard like I am using it, or it works with new devices that come with touch. You get storage. You get cloud storage. You have browser. You have securities like Windows Defender and Trusted Boot and new features like reset and refresh that allows you to just come back to the manufacturer setting or go back to a state where your computer was most healthy. And this is all of Windows 8. But then you have another edition of Windows 8 called Windows 8 Pro which we feel is best suited for businesses. And the reason it is best suited for businesses is because of features like BitLocker and BitLocker2Go that provide you with data encryption. So if your device gets lost or stolen you can be rest assured that no one can access your data because it is encrypted. Or with features like domain join and group policy which allows you to join a domain and manage your users restrict access through group policy or remote desktop so that if you are at home and you want to log into your machine at work then you can do that too. So Windows 8 Pro is the best edition for businesses or for organizations. And then for bigger organizations you have Windows 8 Enterprise which has all the benefits of Windows 8 Pro plus additional features like Windows to Go which means you can carry your entire managed PC on a USB stick or direct access which is whenever you come online or you open a browser you are basically connected to your corporate network. You don't need a third party client, you don't need to VPN, you don't need to remember the password, you don't need to punch in anything. As soon as you are on the Internet you are basically connected to corporate, CarpNet. And then you have more features like AppLocker, BranchCache, and VDI enhancement. So think of this when you are thinking of which Windows is right for me. So Windows 8 Pro has everything of Windows 8 plus new features and Windows 8 Enterprise has everything of Windows 8 Pro plus new features but the main basic thing of this new bold reimagination of Windows is there. And you start asking this question that what is this new start screen? Some people say we love it because it has everything that I need at one place and some people are like, oh there is too much happening. So let's think about what is the start screen. So if you remember Windows 7, there used to be a start button at the lower left hand corner and when you clicked on that you would get a stacked image of all your programs and you would have to search through it. But what the start screen gives you is this dashboard of information, what you care about. So if you care about a particular app, you pin it on the start screen. If you care about a particular person, you pin it on the start screen. So it is your dashboard and it has live tiles which give you live information. So if I go to my start screen and I am going to just press the start button on my keyboard which takes me back to my start screen, it shows everything that is important to me. It has my mail, it has my calendar, it has my messaging. So when someone is messaging me, I get that it has my app. This is a particular app that I use for my fitness. It counts the number of steps that I take so it is showing me my steps and I don't even need to enter the app to know how I am doing. And then it has my other apps too. So think about your start screen as your one go-to place. From there you can open any app that you want whether you want to open Word, whether you want to open Excel or whether you want to open SkyDrive or Netflix, any app that you want to open. So talking about apps from the previous webinar that took place, I saw that there were many questions about Windows Store and apps. So the first thing is that Windows 8 and any additional Windows 8 that you take comes with built-in apps. That means you get mail, you get calendar, you get SkyDrive, you get photos. There are a lot of built-in apps that you don't have to invest more in. And then there are new modern apps and these new modern apps are those you can go to the Windows Store and you can download them. Some of them are free, some of them you have to pay for, but you can also try before you buy. So you go to the Windows Store, they are categorized into games, business, productivity, security. You can choose your page. But when you go to the Windows Store, you can also see desktop apps. So if you are looking for an Intuit app or you are looking for AutoCAD or you are looking for other desktop apps, you can still find them on the Windows Store. So it is your one place to go and search for apps that are there and they are compatible with Windows. Now if you have a Windows 7 app, now you are running Windows 7 right now and you have a particular app that is compatible with Windows 7 and if that is there, most of the time it is going to be compatible with Windows 8. Except for maybe some particular app that is only written for Windows 7 like a particular security driver app or something like that. But they are very less, less than 1%. Now if you don't want your employees or the people in your organization or you are using Windows 8 to go to the Windows Store and start downloading apps, you can control that. You can turn off the Windows Store via Group Policy. If you don't want that certain particular apps should not be running in your organization, you can restrict those apps using App Locker. And this is why we start getting into why Windows 8 is good for enterprises because you get this capability of managing. You can, through Domain Join and Group Policy, you can manage users. You can restrict the apps that they want to use. You can turn off Windows Store. You can also look at managing, create and manage user accounts. You can secure these workstations. You can support end users by creating shares, creating SharePoints, managing who has access to the SharePoint, fixing problems, spreading. If you have any driver updates, you can spread those driver upgrades, provide printer access, or if you want for mass deployment, you can do network boot. And this is why Windows 8 is great for enterprises because it gives you this capability of centralizing and sharing. The other thing that I want to talk about apps is that these apps follow you. So when you have a Microsoft account, at your work, you are using a computer and you downloaded some particular apps. Suppose you downloaded Netflix at work, or suppose you downloaded NBCNews.com. And when you go home and you are like, you know what, I kind of like that app and you can log in and you will see all those apps that you have downloaded somewhere else and you can choose to download that at home also. So the apps that you download are stored in the cloud and that information is stored in the cloud. So you don't have to go searching again. And that's how we are trying to make this easy. The next topic I want to discuss is about remote access. And this was a big topic in the webinar that took place last time where you want to be able to access data, apps, people from a remote location. So the first thing is that Windows 8 devices are thinner and lighter, which makes you be more mobile. They are less clunky. They come with touch. They come with detachable keyboards. So when you are on the go, you can be more mobile. And they are easy to use while you are being more mobile because if you want to use touch, you can use touch. But if you want to attach your keyboard and start using mouse and keyboard, you can do that also. And coming back to the same point of restricting control or managing access, you can do that with domain join. Then remote desktop allows you to, from a remote location, you can access your PC at work. And if you want to just be on the cloud, then you have SkyDrive. Now I want to take a minute to talk about the difference between SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro. Now SkyDrive is public. If you are using Gmail or you are using Dropbox, it's the same concept. It is as secure as your Gmail and Dropbox. But you can set passwords in SkyDrive that say that you must change your password every 72 days, which allows you to be more vigilant with your password setting policy so that if any particular hacker is trying to get your password, you are changing it every 72 days. So what happens with SkyDrive is I was working on my presentation yesterday night and I stored it on the cloud and today I am presenting it. I did not have to carry it. If for some reason my computer is not working, I could have gone to my coworkers computer, logged on to my SkyDrive and still have access to that data and I would still be giving this presentation. But remember, SkyDrive is public. What SkyDrive Pro does is it's private. So it's your own network and you cannot share it outside. You can only share it with people who have access to your network. So with Office 365 and SkyDrive Pro, you can limit who you are giving access to. It's like a private, you manage that cloud, you manage that data, you own that data. No one else owns that data. Then there were some questions on roaming profiles. Now roaming profile is an old technology. It's a 10-year-old technology. We do not recommend this. And the reason that is when you are using roaming profiles, it is creating a profile for every user and it ends up being slower. And it takes up more network bandwidth. It's taking up space on your hard drive. It's using a lot of network bandwidth. So our recommendation is to use Office 365 and SkyDrive which is more user-based and it lives on the cloud. Let's talk about security. Security is very essential for us. And what I want to say is when we were building Windows 8, we built on top of Windows 7. So we took everything, all the solid foundation of Windows 7 and we improved on that which means we are giving you a built-in firewall, a built-in antivirus, a built-in RootKit Malware protection and all of this is built into the operating system. You don't have to get new software with new hardware that comes with EUFI that is extensible user firmware. It becomes even more secure because it automatically checks, it makes sure that the OS is first loading so that Windows 8 is first loading and first booting before any other third-party software or any other driver that loads. And it also repairs, so for example, if a malware did come, it automatically repairs that malware and tells you that, hey, there's a malware, I'm diagnosing it and I'm updating it and I'm repairing it. So it throws it out. And that's what Trusted Boot is all about. But you also have more features like BitLocker and BitLocker2Go that allows you to encrypt your hard drive. BitLocker2Go allows you to encrypt your USB stick. So if your USB stick gets lost or stolen, no one can access that data until they have the password to it. IE 10 is the most secure and most fastest browser in the industry right now. And the best part is that as enterprise customers, when you domain join and you manage it by group policy, you can manage IE 10. You can manage what sites to go. You can push out updates. You can push out security updates for IE 10. So the last thing that I saw in the questions that were there for the webinar was how to think about hardware. There are a lot of choices now and how to think about that. So with Windows 8, we didn't just design or redesign an operating system. It's a new class of devices. Do you need touch? Or does Windows 8 only work on touch? No. I am right now giving you this presentation with a 3-year-old laptop currently running Windows 8 and it works great. So if you require touch, you can buy new hardware that comes with touch, but we also have a lot of choice with light devices, faster devices that does not come with touch. But if it does come with touch, you can be rest assured that it is very responsive. We have increased our certification for OEMs that if they want a Windows 8 logo, they have to meet a minimum of five point of touch, which is very reliable. Then newer devices are thinner, lighter, faster. They have longer battery life. And even they come with sensors and security. So when I talk about UEFI, that was about security. And you get a wide variety of devices. If you think of devices, you can attach a keyboard, you can twist the screen to make it a convertible, or you can flip the screen. And then there are other devices on Windows like the Surface RT, which runs Windows RT, and you have Windows Phone 8. So how do you think about these devices? I would say think about these devices as your companion devices. Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 looks a lot alike Windows 8, but think about how do you want to use it? So if you want long battery life and you want to do just one sort of work and you don't have desktop applications, then Windows RT might be the right fit for you. It is powered by ARM processors. And so it runs all your apps from the Windows Store. Plus you get Office 2013. That means you get Word, PowerPoint, Excel. But you cannot download desktop apps. And so if that is what you want to do, then Windows 8 is the right. But if you really want long battery life and you are only doing email and you have certain Windows Store apps or you have certain apps that you have developed for yourself and you want to run those, then Windows RT might be the right choice for you. And think of Windows Phone 8. Windows Phone 8 also looks a lot like Windows 8 because of the UI. And the best thing about Windows Phone 8 is that if you are comfortable with Windows 8 and you are comfortable with Windows RT, then it is easy for you with Windows Phone 8 also because it just has the same look and feel. It does the same things as you are comfortable doing on Windows 8. So I want to take a step back and talk about XP because I saw that there were a lot of questions about can my XP, I am running XP and I am fine with running XP. And I want to tell you that Windows XP, the support for Windows XP is ending next year in April 8, 2014. So what does this mean? This means that until now XP was a 10-year-old technology. And it was great, it was a great product but we have been supporting it for 10 years. But with the support of XP coming to an end, you will not be receiving any updates including security updates. And if you look at the implications, what it means is that you have a security risk. That means your PC may become vulnerable to harmful viruses or malicious software. And antivirus software will not be able to protect you if there is a new potential threat. You might have software issues because we know that with the support ending a lot of new hardware vendors or software vendors are not creating updates or not supporting XP also. You will not have anyone to call. Which means when a problem arises that hasn't been identified till now, online or phone-based technical support will not be available to you or to your ID partner. And so if there is a failure, you might incur more downtime because now you are going to your partner, you are asking them to help you move or to help you fix that issue. And so try to understand that the support for Windows XP is ending and it's a 10-year-old technology and you are missing out on all these technology innovations of being more mobile, of being more secure. With Windows 8 you get security that is catered towards the current threats. When you say the current hackers, they are looking at modern browsers. They are looking at modern threats that are internet-based threats. And so you might ask this question, okay, I am on Windows XP or I am on Windows 7. Should I be buying new hardware or should I be upgrading? And the way I think about this is that firstly you need to see is your current hardware compatible with Windows 8? Does it mean the Windows 8 system requirements? And if it is meeting Windows 7 system requirements, that means that Windows 8 will run on it. And for those type of PCs and for those type of desktops, just upgrading to Windows 8 is just fine. But if you are looking for newer mobile solutions, if you are looking for tablet-based solutions or if your hardware is more than 3 years old, then that hardware is pretty old and it is not built for modern security and you would want to buy new hardware. Another question that you might ask is, why don't I just move to Windows 7? Why do I need to move to Windows 8? And the reason is that Windows 8 builds upon Windows 7. It has everything that you liked about Windows 7 plus more. It still has your desktop. It still runs your Windows 7 apps, but it is faster when you boot it. On my current machine, I had a Windows 7 machine and I upgraded it to Windows 8 and it is much faster. It boots faster. It gives me longer battery life. It gives me better performance. It is just more secure because it sees the booting process. It makes sure that the operating system loads first before any other driver loads. It has better multi-monitor improvements. It has improved Taskbar. It has a powerful file explorer. I get Invert Select. So you get all the benefits plus more benefits of Windows 8 that you have the Windows Store. I get new apps. So this is what I want to convey and I am open to more questions. This is it from Windows 8 and I hope I have been able to answer some of the questions that were raised in the previous seminar. Okay, great. Thank you, Namita. That was a really great presentation. We have had quite a few questions come in. I want to take a moment to at least touch on a couple of them and then we will touch on the rest of them after Ariel's presentation. Since one of the last things we were talking about was XP, I will go ahead and start off with a question about XP. Barbara was wondering, she said she has XP now. Will transferring data, files, etc. be a problem if she upgrades? Namita? Yeah, I was just unmuting. No problem. So talking about XP, XP is such an old technology that yes, you will run into some issues of migrating your data and apps in the sense that our deployment toolkits when you download Windows 8, it has a deployment toolkit which allows you to easily migrate your data and apps and settings but that will only do if you are migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 8. So when you are migrating from Windows XP to Windows 8, the first thing I would say for your data specifically is take a backup. You need to backup your entire data. Then it will be like a clean install for you. Now when we talk about apps, I would say first think about is that app that you have been running, is that the right app that you still want? Because with 10 years of innovation, there might be much better apps that do that work. And if you are still like, no, that is the app that I want to work with, first talk to the app provider. Are they still supporting that app? Are they still providing you updates for that old app or do they have newer versions? And I am sure if they have newer versions, they are not supporting Windows XP. And so apps is a bit of a challenge that you might have to consider. Do I need to go to cloud-based apps? Do I need this client version of app? So apps might be a bit of a challenge. We did see that most of the productivity apps that were running on Windows XP were running on Windows 7. And we also know that most of the apps that are on Windows 7 run on Windows 8. But I would say talk to your app provider and see whether that app, is there a better app or a latest app that will run on Windows 8? Okay, great. We also have had quite a few questions about customizing the start screen. I don't know what the best way to go about talking about or setting it up. I don't know what the best way about talking about that would be if there was a way that you could show how you would set that up. Let me show you how to customize the start screen. So I am going to go to my start screen and let's say for me, I don't want SkyDrive to be the first thing that I want to see on my start screen. And I'm doing this with mouse and keyboard. I'm not doing this with touch. So I pick this up. I press my hold button. I'm clicking what key is this left key. I just pick it up and I drag it and I'm saying, you know, I'm just going to push it all the way where all my Office apps are and I'm coming back. Or I'm going to press this little key over here. This is a minus sign over here. And what it does is it zooms out and I can see all the apps on my start screen. And so let's say that for me, my Office apps are really important. And so I'm going to pick it up and I'm going to drop it to the front. And then I just clicked on it and I'm going all the way back to the front. And now you see that as soon as I come to my start screen, if Office is very important to me, you know, getting to Word, Excel, PowerPoint is very important to me. That's the first thing that I've kept. Now if in your organization you have, like in libraries for example, you can have certain apps that you have customized your start screen and if you put those apps towards the front. So I want to take another example. Let's say I'm going to Internet Explorer and I'm going to cnn.com. And cnn.com, you know, imagine I go to this site every day and I want to pin this to my start screen. So I come here and you see there's a pin site. I click on it and it says pin to start. So I click on pin to start and I say yes, name it cnn. I say pin to start. Now I'm going to press the Windows key that takes me back to my start screen and I'm going to scroll with the scroll bar all the way to my right. And you'll see I have cnn. And I want to take cnn to the front because that's what I want to do. Every time, that's the first thing I want to do and now I have cnn on my start screen. So imagine tomorrow I come to office and I switch on my computer. The first thing I want to do is read the news and I click on cnn and I see my news. So here it is and I'm going to go back to my desktop and I'm going to stop sharing. Okay, great. Thank you. And I just want to go ahead and take one more question before our REL section. This one's about security. And it's just wondering if you need additional antivirus because this person is saying that they were prompted, saying that the Windows 8 said that they needed to enable Norton Antivirus. And if you already have the security, do you actually need an additional antivirus software? Yes. So security is a tough one in the sense for everyone, peace of mind, what gives you peace of mind? It will be different for me and it will be different for you. What I can say is that Windows 8 comes with built-in antivirus. It comes with built-in malware protection. It comes with built-in firewall. And we also have trusted boot which makes sure that any time a malware is detected, when it's restarting, it repairs it, it throws it out, it quarantines it. Also, IE has smart filter in it and even Windows 8 has smart filter in it. So suppose I'm downloading an app from the web and Windows 8 is like, hey, I haven't seen that app before. I think it's a potential threat. It will warn you and it will ask you, do you still want to continue? Give it a recommendation that we don't think you should do it. So I don't use any other antivirus on my machine or anyone in Microsoft does not use any other antivirus. We go with the built-in antivirus. But if it gives you more peace of mind to have additional antivirus, then that is your call. Okay, awesome. With that, I want to go ahead and take it to ARIA section. But if we haven't gotten to any of your questions, we will be taking a look at the questions at the end of the webinar. And again, if we don't get to your question, your specific question, I will try to follow up after the webinar. But thank you, Namita, for that great presentation. And please just stick around for the questions at the end. So with that, let's go ahead and take it away ARIA. Hi, everybody. I'm ARIA from TechSoup. And I'm going to talk about how some of these features of Windows 8 can be used by nonprofits and libraries. So first, the Start screen that you've already seen, it really is one of the biggest changes in Windows 8, and it does take a little bit of getting used to. But once you do, it's really very useful. We've used it here at TechSoup, Windows 8, and we found that the Start screen is a really convenient way to access all of the apps and tools you use on a regular basis. So this is Windows 8 Start screen that I have customized. So you can see I have my People app showing me what my social networks are up to. I've got the Skype app, I've got the Skype app showing me recent messages. The Calendar app showing me that I'm doing a webinar right now. I've also got an example of what Amita showed of pinning a particular website that you access a lot. This is TechSoup for Libraries. They're a wonderful blog to the Start screen. So it really is this really nice way to customize exactly the apps and content that you want to see immediately. You can fit it to how you do your daily work and what you really want to access frequently. So another big change in Windows 8 is that it's very app-focused as you've heard, and there are a bunch of apps built in right off the bat. I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the apps, specifically how you can use them as a nonprofit or library. So the People app brings together what the people in your email and social networking contact lists are up to in one really convenient place. So you can see Twitter and Facebook and other updates altogether. The Mail app allows you to easily view multiple email accounts. This is really nice if you have your personal email and your work email, and maybe there's a designated email address that you check for people who want to contact your organization. You can view all of those together in the Mail app. The News app lets you customize your News feed to focus on topics and sources that you really care about. You can search the web with Bing. I'm going to talk quite a bit more about SkyDrive, but that is also all of these are readily accessible through the Start screen. The Photos app is also pretty cool because it gives you access to images that are stored on your device, and from Facebook and Flickr or SkyDrive, so they're all together in one place. So say for example, you had a fundraiser and you want to use a picture from the event for your newsletter or put it on your website. You don't really have to remember where you stored it. You don't have to remember if it was on your computer or in your Flickr account. You can see all of your photos together in one place with the Photo app. It's very handy. There's a whole lot more you can do with the built-in apps, but there are also even more apps that you can add from the App Store. So on your Start screen there's a tile that will take you to the App Store, and we've compiled at TechSoup a list of apps specifically useful for nonprofits and libraries, and these are productivity-oriented apps. So they're apps that you would use in your day-to-day work, different from the apps you might use at home. So the more fun things like the Netflix apps and stuff like that, these are more apps that will help you do your day-to-day work. So just a couple of examples of the kind of apps you can get in the Windows App Store. There are communication apps like Skype, social media apps like the official Twitter app or MetroTwit. There are apps that help you share files like you send it, and there are also note-taking news apps, and I'm going to show you an example of a couple of those. And you can see our full list of Windows 8 apps for nonprofits and libraries on the TechSoup blog. So this is an example of one popular app in the Windows App Store. This is Evernote. I'm particularly fond of it, although I do use also OneNote and some other note-taking apps depending on what I'm doing. And so this is what Evernote looks like. You've downloaded it from the Windows App Store. It shows up as a little tile on your Start screen, and when you click it, it pops open all of the notes that you've tagged. And Evernote is really useful because you can compile links and clip articles, blog posts, whatever, and it's really useful if you're researching a particular topic or compiling a list of resources that you want to share. Another nice app that you can get in the Windows App Store is Pulse. It's a news aggregator app that pulls in news from all your favorite sources and it's nice, visual, really easy to read way. And so you can check out what's happening in news that affects your organization's mission. Say you're a healthcare, health-oriented organization. You can check out what's going on with healthcare regulations. You can also look for general nonprofit or library news, technology news, really any topic that you're interested in. And you can see in the top right corner, one of the other cool things is that while you're working in an app, you can get little updates from other apps. So you can actually see that my colleague Becky skyped me while I was looking at this blog post and a little message popped up showing that she had skyped me. So we all multitask a lot and it's little features like this in Windows 8 that help make that multitasking easier. We've already touched on the hardware question. And Windows 8 is optimized for touchscreen devices. And we actually have a touchscreen computer here at TechSoup and using it with Windows 8 is actually pretty amazing. For any geeks out there, it's kind of like you've suddenly moved into Star Trek Land. But if your organization isn't quite at the Starship Enterprise stage yet, you can very much continue to use Windows 8 with your regular keyboard and monitor and mouse just fine. In fact, you can even use Windows 8 with older computers. Not quite as old as the one I'm showing here, but we actually tested it out at TechSoup by installing Windows 8 on a 7-year-old computer. It was a Dell OptiPlex from 2005. And it was a mid-range computer back in its day, so it wasn't fancy or super powerful. And it worked beautifully with Windows 8. It was very fast. All of our Microsoft Office productivity apps and multiple web browser Windows open at the same time and moving back and forth and doing the kind of multitasking we all do worked just fine. It was very fast even on this very old machine. And this is the case. Windows 8 works well on older machines because it has a relatively small footprint compared to other operating systems, even compared to Windows 7. So you don't need to upgrade your existing machines to use Windows 8. You don't need a touch screen. It will work with your existing hardware even on these older computers that many nonprofits and libraries have. So it's really great for any nonprofit or library that really needs to squeeze as much life as they can out of their old computers. It saves you money because you don't need to buy new computers. And it's also a greener option because you're extending the life of your old computer rather than putting it in the landfill. Another nice thing, especially for smaller organizations, is these built-in security features that come with Windows 8. So say you don't have dedicated IT staff in-house as is the case for many nonprofits and libraries, or you don't have the budget or the technology skills to invest in or install or manage separate security software, your Windows 8 computers are protected as soon as you install Windows 8. So there are a bunch of great security features which we describe in a blog post on the TechSoup blog called Windows 8 Security, What's New, What's Different. But a couple I wanted to highlight that you've already heard a little bit about is Windows Defender Security. So that is, you may be familiar with Microsoft Security Essentials which is free downloadable security software from Microsoft. Windows Defender is kind of the Windows 8 version of this functionality, but it's built right in. You don't have to download anything. You don't have to install anything. As soon as you have Windows 8, you're good to go. So even if you don't have really dedicated knowledgeable IT staff who can help manage and secure your computing environment at your organization, or you just have an accidental techie who hardly has any time to focus on technology, you will already be protected just by installing Windows 8. Demi Depp also mentioned BitLocker, which if your mission focuses on something particularly sensitive, something like immigration or another kind of hot button issue where the kind of data that you're storing on your computer is really, really sensitive and needs to be protected. BitLocker allows you to encrypt and protect that sensitive data, and that also comes with Windows 8. And you can also, as Namita mentioned, if you want to run a different security software, you can disable Windows Defender and run your own security program choice. Another nice thing about Windows 8 is that it really is built for the way a lot of us work. We're working at home. We're working in the field, in the office while traveling. People are using a variety of devices. You have volunteers and consultants that are coming and going. And so when you get a Microsoft account, your Windows 8 contacts and files and apps and settings are stored in the cloud, which means you can sign in with your Microsoft account to any of your PCs running Windows 8, and you'll have access to your familiar Windows 8 apps and StartScreen and your individual experience that you have on your main computer, including all of your SkyDrive files. You're not tied to a particular computer when you're using Windows 8. There's also a really cool piece of functionality that's available with the Enterprise Edition of Windows 8 called Windows to Go, which Namita had mentioned. So you store a version of your Windows 8 software on a USB drive, and you take that USB drive, plug it into another computer, and you're up and running with your same version of Windows 8 that you use on your main computer. So you can work from home or in the office without carrying your computer back and forth. It also supports bring-your-own-device scenarios. So if contractors or volunteers are coming in with their own computers, they can access your network and use Windows 8 using whatever device they personally bought in. There's also disaster recovery benefits to using Windows to Go. So if, heaven forbid, a disaster damages or disables your main computer, you have a version of Windows 8 in your pocket using Windows to Go that you can run on another computer and still keep performing your mission-critical tasks. SkyDrive we've already talked about a little bit. It's Microsoft Cloud Storage Service where you can save documents, photos, whatever you want to SkyDrive, and access them from any computer with an Internet connection. This comes in really handy because you can also share files through SkyDrive. So say you have a draft of your annual report that you want your board members to review or you want to give your volunteers access to the plans you're making for a big event. You can share it with them using SkyDrive. All they need is Internet access to get to the files you've shared. I also use SkyDrive to make sure I always have access to a particular file. So if I'm going to a conference, I store my presentation and materials in SkyDrive, and that way if anything happens to my computer, I can still access my files. There's also a lot of really great sharing functionality that's just embedded in the way Windows 8 works. So when you're using Windows 8, say you're reading a blog post or you're looking at a photo, with just a few clicks you can share. You can see there's this share term here. You can share whatever it is that you're looking at. This example is a blog post with your social network. Say you can see Twitter here with your contacts through the People app, through email, and through a variety of other apps that you can add. So for example, if I had added Facebook, I would be able to share to Facebook too. So this is really useful also for if you're managing social media for your organization and you find something that you want to share on Twitter or Facebook, you can just do that directly from whatever it is you're looking at, be it a blog post or a photo or something else that you want to share. And very quickly, I'm going to talk about some considerations if you are thinking about upgrading to Windows 8. The big one is if you're existing software and hardware are compatible with Windows 8. Microsoft has a really good resource on the website called the Windows 8 Compatibility Center where you can search for and find out if your software is compatible with Windows 8. And you want to be especially conscientious about your mission-critical software, so your donor database, your client database, your financial software that you use to balance your books. You need to make sure that they are compatible with Windows 8 before you decide to upgrade. Microsoft also has an upgrade assistant that you can use to check if your computer meets the basic system requirements for Windows 8. So be sure to check those before you decide to upgrade. Some other considerations is that Windows 8 does have a very different look and feel, and so there will be a bit of a learning curve for staff and other users, so plan to do some additional training. And if you have older, very low-resolution monitors or graphics cards on your computer that you're installing Windows 8 on, that can sometimes reduce some of the enhancements that are available in Windows 8, and some of the new features won't work as well. So you might want to plan to upgrade that hardware or to hold off on Windows 8 until you're using higher-resolution monitors or graphics cards. And the last thing I wanted to touch on is how you get Windows 8. You've made the big decision to switch. So TechSoup offers through the Microsoft software donation program for eligible organizations. We offer Windows 8 professional upgrade, a Windows 8 Enterprise upgrade. And if for some reason you can't use an upgrade version of Windows 8, let's say you have a donated computer that has a kind of possibly unlicensed old version of Windows on it, the Get Genuine program is available to help you get a full licensed operational version of Windows. There are also a number of other Microsoft products available through TechSoup donations, and you can browse the entire catalog of them with the link that will be included in the materials we send out afterwards. And we also have a number of resources available, which we'll include links to. And I know we're running short on time, so I want to hand it back over to answer a last few questions. Okay, awesome, Arielle. And just so everybody knows, again, just to reiterate, we will be sending out these resources that are listed, so don't worry about jotting down the names of any of these links. We will be sending them out. All right, so let's take a look at some of these questions. We had one about SkyDrive. Bernal was wondering, are the shared files in SkyDrive automatically downloaded to the local SkyDrive folder, or do you have to access it via the Internet? I don't know, Arielle, you want to try to take a stab at that one? I'm not sure if shared files, like if I share a file with someone else, if that file is automatically downloaded to their SkyDrive. Great. So if I can answer that? Yeah, go for it. So it will show in your SkyDrive. It doesn't get downloaded till you ask it to. Okay, that makes sense. All right, great. Barbara was wondering, just as a personal opinion, and Amita maybe you can answer this one, is a touchscreen better than using a mouse? I'll give you my personal experience. So I also have a laptop in which I have a touchscreen. It's a traditional laptop. It's just that certain tasks for me are easier with the touch. Suppose if I want to click Next, I'm browsing on, and I just want to go Next. It's easier for me to just swipe on the touchscreen, or if I want to go back to the start screen or touch an app or just move a document. If I'm on Word and I want to move it up and down, it's easier for me to do certain things faster with touch on a laptop. But then if I'm working on my Excel sheet or PowerPoint like I was working yesterday, then it's easier for me to do it on my keyboard. And then when I have a tablet, I've gone from meetings where I just carry my tablet and I do everything on touch, because I just like that it's light for me to carry. And I'm usually showing my presentation. I'm sitting with someone close by. And when that someone has something to say, I just pop up the soft keyboard and I quickly type in. But that typing is like just taking notes. It's not extensive typing. That's how I use it. Okay, got it. That makes total sense. We also had a question about passwords and gaining access to your Windows PC. Risha was wondering if setting up a password to gain access to the PC is that mandatory in Windows 8? No, it is not mandatory to set up a password. But if you are linking your Windows 8 to your Microsoft account, then a password is mandatory because your Microsoft account gives you access to the Windows Store, to your SkyDrive, to your Microsoft email. So when it starts giving you access to these things, you want to protect it. You don't want that anyone who comes to your computer can just start downloading apps or can just start accessing your files. And so at that time, you do need to set up a password. Another thing on password is there is a really cool interesting way to set up a password now. You have something called picture password. So you don't have to remember a long password. You can just have a picture and you just make gestures on the picture to unlock your PC. Okay, that makes sense. We also had a question wondering can the system be set up so that you can avoid the app screen and just go straight to the desktop? So just avoiding that start screen altogether? No. No, okay. Alright. And Rinaldo was wondering, but when you do go to the start screen, your desktop is pinned to the start screen. It's automatically pinned. It's automatically pinned. Okay, great. That's another follow-up question. Rinaldo was wondering, is there any URL management with the built-in security software? I'm not sure what that means. We can take that offline. Yeah, that makes sense. I'll forward that to you later. Let's take a look at the other questions. So Sue was wondering, and this is about SkyDrive syncing and updating. She says she updated a file in her SkyDrive on her Windows 8 laptop and it did not sync or update the SkyDrive on her Windows 7 TouchSmart computer. So is it possible to sync update between Windows 7 and Windows 8 devices? Oh, I'm sorry that you had that experience because it should be working. So I have a Windows 7 desktop at home and I was working on this presentation and I uploaded it and today when I came into office, I have my Windows 8 computer. It was there. All my changes were there. So maybe it might be an internet connectivity issue that it did not upload all the changes. Okay, got it. But it definitely is possible and it should work. Okay, great. So it looks like we got through most of the questions, if not all. For the few people that do still have outstanding questions, I will follow up with you after the webinar. But again, thank you everybody for submitting all these questions. They really have been great. And of course, thank you Namita and Arielle for your great participation in this webinar. Just to kind of wrap us up, just as a reminder, we are TechSoup. We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization just like so many of you out there. And we are striving to work towards a day when every nonprofit library and social benefit organization has the technology, knowledge, and resources that you need to fulfill your mission. And again, I want to thank Microsoft. I want to thank all our presenters and everybody working on the back end to help me out today. And I want to thank you all for joining our webinar today because I do know that your time is valuable. If you could take just two seconds when you exit the webinar, you will see a survey pop up. If you could fill that out, it really does help us in developing our future content. And again, for anybody that we did not get your questions answered, we will be following up with you later. And I hope everybody has a wonderful day and we will be sending out the recording later today. Thank you.