Free ebook: Introducing Windows 10 for IT Professionals, Preview Edition

NOTE 1: The final edition of this ebook has been posted; please refer to this blog post for the download link(s).

NOTE 2: The Microsoft Press Guided Tours app has been discontinued and is no longer available in the Windows Store. If you have already installed the app, you can continue to use it for as long as you like. All the tours will remain available for download from within the app. Introducing Windows 10 for IT Professionals, Preview EditionWe’re happy to announce the release of our newest free ebook, Introducing Windows 10 for IT Professionals, Preview Edition (ISBN 9780735696969), by Ed Bott.

Below you’ll find a few helpful sections from the Introduction. Enjoy!

July 15, 2015 update: You can now get this eBook with interactive features by downloading the free Microsoft Press Guided Tours app from the Windows Store.

Introduction

I’ve written about Microsoft Windows for nearly a quarter-century, and in all that time I have never worked on a project like this one. Then again, I’ve never seen anything quite like Windows 10 from Microsoft, either.

This book is a preview, a work in progress about a work in progress. It offers a snapshot of the Windows 10 Technical Preview as of April 2015, on the eve of the BUILD Developers’ Conference in San Francisco.

By design, this preview edition has a limited shelf life. After Microsoft releases Windows 10 to the general public this summer, I’ll revise and expand the content in this edition to reflect the finished product.

Windows 10 represents a major transformation of the PC landscape. For IT pros who’ve grown comfortable managing Microsoft Windows using a familiar set of tools and best practices, this version contains a startling amount of new. A new user experience. A new app platform. New security features and new management tools.

My goal in this book is to help you sort out what’s new in the Windows 10 Technical Preview, with advance notice of features that will be available in the finished product but aren’t yet implemented. I’ve tried to lay out those facts in as neutral a fashion as possible, starting with an overview of the operating system, laying out the many changes to the user experience, and diving deep into deployment and management tools where it’s necessary.

Although I’ve written in-depth guides to Windows in the past, this book is not one of those. It’s also not a review. Only you can decide whether, and how and when, to incorporate Windows 10 into your enterprise, based on your own organizational requirements. This book is designed to serve as a rough guide so that you can get more out of your evaluation of the Windows 10 Technical Preview.

By design, this book focuses on things that are new, with a special emphasis on topics of interest to IT pros. So you might find fewer tips and tricks about the new user experience than your users want but more about management, deployment, and security—which ultimately is what matters to the long-term well-being of the company you work for.

The Windows 10 Technical Preview offers anyone an opportunity to not just try out the next version of Windows but to provide feedback about the new operating system, in real time, to the team that is building it. I encourage you to share your feedback about this book directly with me. E-mail your comments to me at feedback@realworldwindows.com.

Ed Bott
April 24, 2015

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank Michael Niehaus, Chris Hallum, and Fred Pullen, who reviewed the content for this preview edition. I’d also like to thank the good folks at Microsoft Press—Anne Hamilton, Rob Linsky, and Rosemary Caperton—for their efforts at making this project happen on very short notice.

About the author

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology journalist and author who has been writing about Microsoft technologies for more than two decades. He is the author of more than 25 books on Microsoft Windows and Office and writes regularly about technology for The Ed Bott Report at ZDNet.