India Broadband Forum

India Broadband

Software giants Microsoft might be due to release their next major update to their Windows OS, Vista early next year but they have come out with an operating system for businesses, which would help companies extend the life of older PCs by effectively turning them into thin-client computers.

This new product is called Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs and the company is offering this to the customers who are on Microsoft’s Software Assurance licensing and maintenance program.

It is not a fully functional operating system but the company claims that it brings security and manageability of PCs for customers with systems that are too old for Windows XP. It can be a boon for companies who cannot upgrade their hardware to run the latest software products from the company.

This is one of the major steps Microsoft has taken to answer the critics of their Software Assurance program. This OS would run just a couple of programs locally, such as security tools, management tools, and document viewers. Rest of the applications would run remotely.