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Microsoft formally launched its Windows 8 operating system today, sabering the champagne bottle (so to speak) on one of its two cash cow software platforms. (The other is the Office productivity suite.) The event, which was live-streamed on the Web, featured chief executive Steve Ballmer, Windows chief Steven Sinofsky, Windows program management chief Julie Larson-Green and Windows client and ecosystem chief Michael Angiulo. Heavy on pomp and light on substance, the presentation nonetheless gave us a view into what kind of bet the Redmond, Wash.-based tech company is making with the announcement. Five key quotes and what they tell us: 1.) "We shunned the incremental. We boldly reimagined Windows." (Sinofsky) Thanks to the new "chicletized" user interface, anyone who looks at a Windows 8 computer will instantly realize that Microsoft is departing from the traditional desktop computing experience. It's hard to understate the importance of this, because it was Microsoft that popularized the old convention. (The company didn't do away with it completely -- look hard enough and you'll find the original tucked inside.) Apple's success is due in large part to it bringing computing conventions to pocket-sized mobile devices; thankfully Microsoft mirrored those motives, and not just the UI. Finally, the Windows 8 experience marks a significant step away from the fundamental idea of many-windows-on-one-screen multi-tasking, which was Windows' calling card for most of its life. Now, it's one vista at a time. (Pun intended.) 2.) "We see today as a grand opening." (Sinofsky) Here, Sinofsky is talking about the Windows online store, which (like Google's) is modeled after Apple's App Store. But forget that detail for a second -- consider the fact that this is the final nail in the coffin for store-bought, disc-bound software, now delivered in bits over the air. For almost two decades, the Internet was the computer's killer app. Here, they are one in the same. 3.) "Windows 8 shatters perceptions of what a PC now really is." (Ballmer) The term "PC" was popularized by IBM's 5150 but quickly became synonymous with Microsoft as it conquered the consumer sector. (Nowhere is that more clear than in the long-simmering argument "Mac or PC?" -- since when are MacBooks not personal computers?) Over the last decade we've seen phones move away from pagers and toward computers, likewise gaming consoles, likewise televisions, and likewise those funny things called tablets. Microsoft has always approached this from a desktop-first perspective; today, it's finally embracing the idea that a PC could be shaped like a pack of cigarettes or a Ford Fiesta, even if the needs are similar. 4.) "Picture your start screen filled with everyone and everybody who's most important to you." (Ballmer) This is a minor quote in the grand scheme of the event, but it actually hints at something quite important. The term "social" has been thrown around quite a bit with regard to Facebook and Twitter and the like, but the point is that computers are regressing as simple machines to be manipulated and progressing as platforms to enable some of our most basic human needs -- such as communication. Other people (and their computers) were hardly on the radar of early Windows machines; today, we can't imagine computers without imaging the communities their users occupy. People have replaced files. 5.) "Windows 8 is a major milestone in the evolution and revolution of computing." (Sinofsky) Microsoft kicked off the event with this proclamation, but it's only partially true -- Windows 8 is a reflection of computing's greater evolution but it's far more of a revolution for Microsoft itself. It's hard to believe that the user experience we see today originated on the Zune portable media player, of all things, but in many ways that makes complete sense: Zune was, of course, portable, and that's the point. This is also remarkable: instead of Microsoft trickling down elements of its preeminent product, Windows, to other platforms, the reverse occurred: the Metro UI crept from Zune to Kin to Phone to Windows. For Redmond, that's swimming upstream. None of these points are surprises, of course, but it's good to take a moment and reflect on what this means for Microsoft and personal computers in general. After years of incremental change (yet monumental declarations), we're finally getting a major leap to justify the bluster. There's no turning back now. via Zdnet > http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-windows-8-event-5-key-points-7000006411/

So Microsoft has gone and done it. The company has sold operating systems for other companies' computers for more than 30 years. Sticking to the software and letting other people deal with the hardware side is what made Microsoft the multinational behemoth that dominated the computing landscape through the 1990s and much of the 2000s. MS-DOS; 16-bit Windows 1, 2, and 3; the hybrid Windows 95 family; and the 32-bit (and, later, 64-bit) Windows NT family that is still with us to this day: all were sold primarily to computer OEMs for preinstallation on new machines. With Surface, Microsoft is diving headlong into a new business model. Let's be blunt here: Redmond is going the Cupertino route. Microsoft is not merely writing the software. It's designing hardware to go with that software, and contracting manufacturers in East Asia to turn its designs into millions of units of real, shipping hardware, that Microsoft will be selling directly to customers. Why the change of heart? The president of Windows and Windows Live Division, Steven Sinofsky, says that Microsoft has its own point of view when it comes to tablets. He pointed at Google, Amazon, and Apple, saying that each of them have their own tablet take. Google's world is centered on search and collecting data; Amazon's tablets are intended to drive purchases from Amazon's store; Apple's is designed to capitalize on the iPhone's familiarity. Microsoft's take is the same as it has always been: the tablet is a sort of PC, with all the flexibility, extensibility, and variety that that entails. This mindset is fundamental to understanding why Windows 8 is the way it is. It's also why Microsoft continues to sell its operating system to OEMs; it knows that there's too much variety in the market for one company to meet every need. But Microsoft has a competing pressure. It wants to show off its software in the best light possible, and controlling the whole experience—software, hardware, and even retail—is how it plans to achieve that. Quite how Microsoft will sit in the broader tablet market isn't yet entirely clear. The company is keeping very quiet about production volumes and expected sales figures. There are a few predictions and rumors floating around, putting expectations in the region of low millions. That's a smaller scale than, for example, Amazon's Kindle Fire or Google's Nexus 7, but still substantial for a first product. If nothing else, the limited distribution—Surface will initially be available in just eight markets—will serve to limit Surface's ability to disrupt the OEMs, making the computer more of a Nexus-like benchmark than a complete transformation of Microsoft's business model. But we can expect that to change with time. Studio B, the building in Redmond that houses the Surface team, is taking hardware seriously, and Microsoft wants to create a sustainable, profitable hardware business to position itself as a "devices-and-services" company. Surface is the first product to reflect this devices-and-services ambition and I've been test driving one for about a week. Does Microsoft have what it takes to be a player in the hardware market? Can it take on not just the OEMs, but the Apple juggernaut? read the rest at arstechnica

did you make your deployment Required or Available ?

those look like DNS issues (or lack of network connectivity can you bring up a command prompt during the task sequence (press f8) when it fails and ping the FQDN of the management point ?

can you attach the entire smsts.log file please (as an attachment) edit out any urls if you are worried about revealing info.

were the systems off when the job was supposed to run ? anything in eventviewer ? To get extensive logfiles open an administrative command prompt and CD to the following directory on the client, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Client\Antimalware and execute the following command MpCmdRun.exe -getfiles the log files are stored in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware\Support and that directory in turn will contain a CAB file (MPSupportFiles.cab) which has several relevant log files to examine.

if you download the MDT Toolkit and examine the printed documentation that comes with it it does a pretty good job of explaining what steps do what, for Configuration Manager you have Technet - see here.

start by verifying what policy is applied to those clients, then if it's the wrong policy you need to find out why it's not applying the correct policy

you could target that task sequence deployment to another collection that has a membership rule setup to Exclude the Laptops collection.

if you are getting abortpxe error messages then look at the all systems collection do you see any 'unknown' records there ? if so, delete them and try again

the site code is a drop down field and allows you to assign this site server to a site (a primary site for example), so if you have one primary site server with site code P01 then this dp which is a site server will be assigned to that primary site...

if you could install windows 8 instead on that computer then you could use the built in HyperV role and then you'd have a really really cool lab (it would almost mirror what i use daily) the difference here is that I have more than one lab and I change the content of them regularly, however the laptop I use for all the configuration manager 2012 sp1 stuff (windows 8 guides etc) is running Server 2012 with the HyperV role enabled and it has several virtual machines on it with only 8gb ram. The important thing on this laptop is that it has a 240gb OS drive on an SSD drive so it's fast, it also has a 240gb modular bay drive to store other vm's and that's ssd too. If I can do it then so can you, Windows 7 can't run hyperv but Windows 8 can !

what type of drive is it ? AFD ?

is usually always DNS or network related, verify you have a valid ip address (enable command support in your boot images, press F8 when you boot) verify that you can ping the FQDN of your management point from the client in the command prompt, if not you may need to add network drivers for your hardware to the boot image.

what do you mean exactly ?

no, you need to open the ports required for client push, if you decide on using that method of getting the client installed.. they are documented on Technet as well as here, as a side note...the recommended best practice method of installing the client via Configuration Manager doesn't involve firewalls at all, look at this post.

check the account that is used to join the domain, perhaps the password has expired or the account is locked

the smsts.log file is the one we need, it would be a good idea to raise a new topic about your problem.

check again that you've added both architecture boot images (x86 and x64) and distributed them to the dp's AND enabled them for PXE boot, you need to enable PXE in three places, the Distribution Point the boot image (every boot image that you use for PXE boot) the deployment of your task sequence

No it creates Active Directory site boundaries, and if you look in a production Active directory site, then more than likely it's bound to one or more subnets does that help ?

start by reading Part 8 of my current series which explains how to install applications (packages are essentially the same as they are in Configuration Manager 2007 today). once you've grasped the power that the new application model provides you'll see that using those abilities will reduce the number of collections you need, if you still want to deploy software to users based on active directory security group membership then you can by the way you mentioned 'sub collections are possible', they are not, you can create folders with folders with folders with collections but that's about it.

yet another reason why i dont do Mandatory deployments without serious safety measures in place (password protect the task sequence) 1. How to set a password on PXE boot Setting a password to avoid accidental Operating System Deployment 2. How can I password Protect a Task Sequence ? Password Protecting a Task Sequence if you already know what systems have received the advertisement then deal with them if the clients have received the mandatory policy then they will run the task sequence, and usually that means reboot, then format... but as regards the server, you could disconnect it from the network, then power it back on, and once up disable the task sequence (do not delete it) read the following article for some ideas http://www.niallbrad...ish-you-hadn-t/

you need to read it again, i say in production to select IP Address Range Boundaries, the linked article refers to why IP Subnet boundaries are evil see the difference ? and I quote Jason below

did you post this on technet as well? , the reason for your bitlocker failure is because it cannot communicate with your domain controller, fix that issue first and you'll be good to go

some things to check.. did you add back both architecture boot images ? did you distribute both to the dp's ? did you change your task sequences so that they are using the new boot images ?