Intel’s Skylake vPro chips will support Windows 7 after all
The Unhived Mind
Intel’s Skylake vPro chips will support Windows 7 after all
The new chips are tuned for Windows 10, though, and strengthen biometric authentication
Agam Shah
IDG News Service Jan 19, 2016 10:44 AM
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3024372/hardware/intels-skylake-vpro-chips-will-support-windows-7-after-all.html
Business users alarmed by Microsoft’s recent announcement that new chips will not run on Windows 7 PCs need not fret. More than 100 business PCs coming with Intel’s new “Skylake” Core vPro processors will run Windows 7, though the chips are tuned for Windows 10.
Microsoft last week said PCs with certain Intel Skylake and next-generation “Kaby Lake” chips would support only Windows 10. The goal was to push enterprises to upgrade their PCs to the new OS. However, Microsoft is releasing a list of Skylake PCs that support Windows 7.
The new “6th-generation” vPro chips, announced on Tuesday, have features that let system administrators remotely manage and secure PCs. Some features in the new chips—such as chip-level storage of biometric authentication data—will work only with Windows 10.
The PC market is slumping partly because businesses are slow to upgrade PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10, according to IDC. Intel is maintaining support for Windows 7 considering enterprises are still using the old OS, though the chips will aid in the transition to Windows 10, said Tom Garrison, vice president and general manager of business client products at Intel.
Windows 10 has new biometric authentication features so users can log in to PCs through face or fingerprint detection. With vPro, biometric authentication data is stored in firmware at the chip layer, providing a higher level of security than placing the information on a drive. The authentication information stored inside the chip will extend to other login methods such as iris detection.
The chip-layer firmware technology isn’t foolproof, but it provides an extra layer of protection, Garrison said.
Non-biometric data like PINs are scrambled and stored in the graphics processor. Hackers can’t easily access data in the GPU, Garrison said
System administrators can remotely troubleshoot, repair and manage PCs, and even wipe or lock down PCs if they are stolen. Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager server software lets system administrators set policies or deploy updates.
The Windows 10 OS also allows for better geotagging of PCs, Garrison said. Policies can define the types of applications users access and locations where PCs can be used. For example, a doctor might be able to access a medical record from within a hospital, but not from a cafe outside.
Some vPro features don’t rely on the OS. System administrators can remotely access PCs prior to OS boots to fix memory or hard drive problems.
The Skylake chips are about 35 percent faster than comparable previous-generation vPro PC processors based on the Broadwell architecture, according to Intel benchmarks. For laptops, that benchmark assumes a battery life of about eight hours.
HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus and Acer will ship vPro laptops. Garrison declined to comment on whether vPro chips will be used in Apple Macs.
The vPro chips are also in Intel’s thumb-size Compute Stick, which can plug into an HDMI port to turn any display into a PC. The Compute Sticks with vPro will ship next month starting at $399.
theunhivedmind
The reason the Worshipful Company of Technologists are using their forks to push Windows 10 on the masses is very simple. It’s not all about the mass spying and espionage side of the operating system. Governments around the world want to implement many of their public services through the Internet. An example of future Internet use will be unemployment benefits where instead of physically going to an expensive to run building, you’ll be visiting a website and placing your fingerprint on a scanner in your home to verify you instead of physically signing-on. Windows 10 has and is being developed around these changes in how we interact with various services etc. When important systems like banking, unemployment and so forth all end up on the internet only, then you’ll need a good level of security and verification. In the near future just logging onto the internet will require biometrics so you can be put on trial and charged for any actions the totalitarian powers claim you’ve violated (pirating a movie, telling the truth, not being politically correct[thought control]). We just have to hope that Linux will be supported in the future if that’s how the world is changing. I can see the WCT forcing everyone onto these spy os systems. Windows 10 is not only a spying and espionage operating system but it also is riddled with many bugs. Windows 8.1 was pretty rock-solid when it came to reliability and performance but from my personal experience of Windows 10 this new OS falls way below 8.1.
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