Introducing Windows® 8 titles in Skillsoft Books24x7

We’re pleased to bring you a guest post from Kimberly Lin, a Product Marketing Manager at Skillsoft.

By Kimberly Lin

Windows® 8 marks one of many turning points for Microsoft®. In the first day of availability, the consumer preview received more than 1 million downloads − a remarkable statistic compared to the developer preview, which garnered 3 million downloads in the previous seven-and-a-half weeks.

If you peruse the Windows 8 blogosphere, or better yet, pick up any of the Skillsoft Books24x7 Windows 8 titles featured below, you will learn in no time how to swipe and use your mouse to navigate around the new, touch-based user interface which is shipped with a Desktop environment resembling Windows 7. The tablet-friendly UI is a novel concept that is expected to unify disparate devices hosting Microsoft software, such as Windows Phone 8, Xbox, tablets designed for Windows 8 and PCs.

However, as a learning leader, you may be wondering what benefits does Windows 8 bring to businesses? Stronger security management is one critical upgrade being touted. Windows to Go enables organizations to provide employees with a portable desktop image stored on a USB device for booting Windows 8 from another compatible machine. Secure Boot is a new safeguard which checks for malware during the boot sequence and diverts to repair mode if an issue is detected. BitLocker drive encryption, which came to being with Windows Vista, now encrypts drives more quickly. 

For programmers who are developing for the Windows environment, Gartner states that “Organizations planning to develop new Win32 applications should switch to Metro for all new user-facing applications beginning in 2013 and should focus on external apps first and internal apps later.”

To support IT and engineering organizations in this endeavor, Skillsoft Books24x7 has been featuring books covering Windows 8 since January 2012.

The newest book from Ed Bott, Ed Bott's Windows 8 Head Start, Consumer Preview Edition (publisher: Fair Trade DX), carefully walks enthusiasts through shortcuts, tips and secrets on how to perform a clean install, customize the Start screen, master the Windows Explorer and work with features aimed at power users.

Another excellent reference addressing Windows 8 is a special series carried in Books24x7. The Alpha Book series are pre-release, still-in-development versions of Apress titles which allow readers to review content as it advances through the production process – chapter by chapter. We are very excited to expand our Books24x7 offering with the inclusion of Apress Alpha Books so subscribers have information on the latest, most cutting-edge Microsoft technologies.

 

The Windows 8 Power Users Guide by  Mike Halsey   This guide takes you beyond the routine and the familiar to reveal the hidden power behind this amazing new operating system.

 

More Windows 8 titles from Apress which progressed through the Alpha Book Program:

 

	Metro Revealed: Building Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 and JavaScript by  Adam Freeman   By inviting you to take a crash course in Metro development, this fast-paced primer will help you create innovative, elegant applications for the latest evolution of the world’s most successful OS.
	Metro Revealed: Building Windows 8 Apps with XAML and C# by  Adam Freeman   This fast-paced primer will help you create innovative, elegant applications for the latest evolution of the world’s most successful OS.

Subscribers can access all of the titles above in ITPro.