Late last week, Microsoft announced that it has officially certified disks from five manufacturers to take advantage of its Windows To Go service (which, for those of you who aren’t ‘in the know’, we covered a while back). The new kids on the block are Imation, Kingston, Spyrus, Super Talen and Western Digital.
In order to be deemed certified for Windows To Go, ‘x’ manufacturer must produce a drive (or drives) that meet strict requirements held in place by Microsoft:
“A USB drive must pass a battery of certification tests… Certified drives must:
~ Be built for high random read/write speeds…
~ Have been tuned to ensure they boot and run on hardware certified for use with either Windows 7 or Windows 8.
~ Be backed with manufacturer warranties.” An official Microsoft Blog post reads.
Each manufacturer that Microsoft has partnered with to drive (pun intended) Windows To Go usage amongst customers are all bringing something different to the party:
For those of you who are interested in giving Windows To Go a try, you can purchase any officially certified drive and install a copy of the Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation Edition (which supports WTG).
If you’ve already taken Windows To Go for a spin, leave a comment below detailing your experience.
