System Center User Group (Philadelphia, New York)

Several sites including Neowin are reporting that the Windows 8 Release Preview will come a little earlier than expected.

http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-8-release-preview-to-land-may-31

We had a very energetic group for our May meeting in Malvern, PA.  Microsoft’s Bill Tsai kicked us off with a great Windows 8 demo and Brian Marranzini from RES Software talked dynamic desktop and strategies for IT to handle the consumerization of IT.

As many of you know, I’ve been working with Windows 8 since we demonstrated the early developer preview version many months ago at the user group.  One of my biggest complaints, both with the developer preview and consumer preview, was the awkward/finicky multi-monitor support when interacting with some of the new user interface elements such as the charms bar.  Well, it sounds like Microsoft has been listening to feedback from beta testers and is making some nice enhancements ahead of the anticipated June release candidate (or whatever new term they are using for release candidate these days).

Neowin has posted an article fully detailing the multi-monitor experience with Windows 8 and I figured it was good timing ahead of Bill Tsai’s Windows 8 demo at the meeting Thursday night.

http://www.neowin.net/news/huge-multi-monitor-enhancements-coming-in-windows-8

Now if I can just convince someone at Microsoft to put the classic start orb and start menu back in (I’m old school and need my user interface crutch).