Windows 8 for desktop and laptop computers provides customers with 2 available interfaces, as follows:

• Standard desktop - An updated standard desktop which is very close to the existing Windows desktop
• Windows 8 Apps desktop - A new touch-optimized desktop (previously nicknamed "Metro")

There are controls which allow customers to move back and forth between the 2 desktops. Both desktops provide a web browser, Internet Explorer® 10, but the Metro version of IE does not support plugins.

On the Windows 8 standard desktop, customers seeking support will have the same experience they have with previous versions of Windows. They will start a browser session (Internet Explorer 10 is the default version for Windows 8), connect to a support website and things will work as usual.

The Windows 8 Apps interface will prompt customers to "Open" or "Run" an add-on and the page will be redirected to their Windows 8 standard desktop. From there on, your support process will proceed as usual.

Because the representative has full screen sharing capability, they can move back and forth with the customer between the standard desktop and the Metro desktop. This allows a representative to provide customer support for Metro based apps without the customer having to join a session from the Metro desktop.

• Phone Mode or Web Mode

  On the Windows 8 Metro desktop customers seeking support will enter the support site URL into browser address bar just as they do on the Standard Desktop. For phonemode and non-fastchat/webchat portals, the page will render as expected and the customer will be able to proceed with the download.

• FastChat or Web Chat

  Internet Explorer 10 on the Metro desktop does not provide full support for Flash. This makes the join process for customers from Internet Explorer on the Metro desktop slightly more complicated. When a user navigates to a FastChat or Webchat URL from Metro Internet Explorer 10, they will not be able to input data into the smartbox or select continue. With the 10.4 release, new metadata has been added to webchat page that will cause Metro Internet Explorer 10 to generate a notice to the user that an add on (Flash) is required and the page needs to be opened on the desktop. When the user selects Open, the webpage will open automatically on the standard desktop. Because Flash is included with Windows 8, an extra step to download and install Flash will not be required. The session will proceed as expected from there.