On Day 6 of this series, I'll take a look at how Windows 8 interacts with a couple of Power-related applications: IBM Personal Communications and IBM Systems Director.
I installed IBM Personal Communications on Windows 8, and it worked as expected. Windows 8 doesn’t really bring anything new to the application experience unless you have a touch-capable system, in which case it's possible to use touch to select the menu functions from the tool bar and highlight text from the 5250 emulator you wish to copy.
I attempted to use Internet Explorer, which is provided with Windows 8, to access a Systems Director management server and noticed that selections within the interface are not accepted. I suspect this might have something to do with the heavy reliance on Java in the Systems Director interface. So, I went out and installed the beta version of Mozilla Firefox, and that appears to work much better. Windows 8 itself doesn’t bring anything new to the Systems Director experience, but if you have a touch interface, you'll benefit from being able to use that interface to select from the large set of links that the Systems Director interface provides.
In the next entry in this series (Day 7), I'll wrap up this look at Windows 8 by relaxing, watching a movie, and providing a summary of my Windows 8 exploration.
