The Windows 10 Technical Preview So Far

A little while ago Microsoft released a technical preview for their newest operating system, Windows 10.  I got a chance to play around with it some and see what's new and improved over Windows 8.  Keeping in mind that an official release likely won't be until the middle of 2015, there's still a lot of time for things to change.  And if this turns out to be anything like the Windows 8 release process we still have the developer preview and consumer preview to come before an release candidate or RTM.  If you're interested in seeing how that process unfolded for Windows 8 in fact, you can check out my series on the Windows 8 RTM from 2012 here.

Personally, I never really had a problem with Windows 8 - it was a little different but to those that do the computer thing for a living the learning curve was fairly small.  But to a lot of Windows users, dealing with the new UI they introduced was a nightmare, and let's face it kids, to them that Start button was the truth.  They just didn't know it until the Metro UI Start Screen had replaced it.  The backlash was huge from users on both the home and enterprise sides, and being a professional nerd I was able to see the meltdown first hand by both sectors.  I watched home users stumble and fumble trying to deal with live tiles to find programs with, I kid you not, pure distress and pain in their voices like someone had just robbed them of a family heirloom.

Oh that start button.  It's like Windows users everywhere were collectively Gollum and that button was the damn precious.

As for the business side, IT shops were reluctant to say the least about putting 8 into play.  I myself said that there was no way would roll it out into my environment.  I even made sure the workstations I got on our last PC refresh were downgradable to 7.  I had visions of my users coming after me with torches and pitchforks, with calls and complaints to my team every 15 seconds - sad, tearful users murmuring "but... but how do i find mail?"  So this OS which was intended to bridge the gap between mobile and desktop never really got a good foothold.  No one really wanted it.  The start button became a turf war.  So naturally the biggest cosmetic change users will notice in Windows 10 is the return of -

<insert fanfare here>

The Start button

Start button lovers rejoice!  While it may be a little different than what you're used to, it's back with a couple of tweaks.  Instead of the full start screen, what they've done is given you two things side by side - a mini Windows 8 style start screen joined with the Windows 7 style start button.  And actually it works pretty great.

The settings allow for customization so that you can have as many (or as few) live tiles as you want on your start button, while displaying as many things as you want on the left side of the menu.  Apps that are frequently used will pop up there, along with any shortcuts you choose to add like Control Panel or Administrative Tools.  Right clicking the start button also gives you shortcuts to commands that are commonly used, like command prompt and computer management.

When adding live tiles (done through a simple drag and drop mechanism), you can still customize their size and with it how wide your start menu can get.  I would almost consider the live tiles portion of the start menu something like the notification bar on an android device, automatically updating and notifying users when something new is happening.  And if you're the type of user that's just a live tile glutton, you can actually add enough live tiles to extend your start menu all the way out to the right edge of your screen.

Now to be honest I kind of missed the Windows 8 start screen a little bit while starting my foray into 10.  It became one of those things I had gotten used to using that eventually found its way into my routine.  But I got over it pretty quickly.  I was never really one for menus anyway - I'm from the old school.  I grew up with Windows 3 and DOS 5, and do most things with shortcut keys, the run command and command prompt (oh that's right).  But for those of you (I'm sure the number is few) that prefer the start screen, all you have to do is change a setting, and clicking start brings back your full start screen.

I mean it is pretty.

The funny thing is though, while so many users reviled 8 for it's lack of a start button, the Windows 8 technical preview DID in fact have a start button option, which was able to be toggled on and off with a registry setting.  That registry key was removed by the time we got the consumer preview in 2012, which left more than a few IT pros (myself included) confused.  Strange decision on Microsoft's part, but one they're making up for now.

Virtual Desktops

They're called virtual desktops but don't get them confused with virtual machines.  What Windows 10 has done with this is added functionality to the alt+tab shortcut we all love so much to switch between running applications.  What's new though is what happens when you hit window+tab - it will again give you the option of switching between your active programs, but at the same time allow you to add a virtual desktop for some more space for more stuff.

I run 2 monitors and will never (ever) go back.  When I need extra desktop real estate without clutter I can drag stuff over to my 2nd monitor and still see everything clearly.  What virtual desktops do is allow a user to simulate that multi-screen environment on a single screen.  You're still only running one Windows session, but as if you have multiple desktops with different things on each screen.  For those of you that run Linux systems this works exactly like the multiple desktops in a KDE or GNOME setup.

So for example, in the screenshot I have here, window+tab allows me to see what I have running on my current desktop (we'll call it desktop 1), on which i've got my documents folder and the battle.net launcher (I was fixin' to play some Diablo III).  But it also gives me the option to switch to another desktop I have running (desktop 2), in which I'm browsing the internet in Google Chrome.  Or if I wanted to I could make a third virtual desktop for more space.

And to cut down on confusion, Windows also tells you what you have running in other desktops.  For example in desktop 1, Google Chrome is highlighted with a faint grey underline to tell me it's running elsewhere.

Compatibility (machine specs at end of article)

On my main rig*, so far I've found that if it works with Windows 8, it'll work with Windows 10.  The technical preview had no issue picking up all of the drivers for my devices from HP and nVidia, and worked with my motherboard without breaking a sweat.  The first thing that came up when I fired it up for the first time was a notice that there was a Windows Update available for current version drivers for all of my stuff - which is surprising, given my experiences playing with other OS previews and betas from big blue.

To test it further I installed some stuff I would normally use on my machine - namely the battle.net application and Diablo III.  Everything ran smooth with the settings turned all the way up, but there was some definite video lag and choppiness in animations when there was a lot of activity happening on the screen.  This doesn't happen when I'm running it through Windows 8.1. 

On my older Windows 7 laptop* though there were a few snags.  Radeon drivers gave me a bit of trouble installing the driver and Catalyst software, and some of the HP-specific stuff was hard to get without manually searching and trying to force Windows 7 drivers to work with 10 which were, well, not very friendly to say the least.  But that's older (well, old-ish) hardware, so I wasn't really surprised.

The Early Verdict

I like it and I like what it could potentially be.  For an early build, it looks like Microsoft has really focused on fixing the shortcomings of Windows 8 and trying to put out an operating system that has some appeal to all users, both desktop and mobile.  Which is good, because I was never on board with the "post-PC era" shtick I've been seeing everyone buying into for some time now.  It feels good on my main rig and I can still see using it on a Surface or other Windows tablet, so it looks like this could potentially deliver to both a good touch as well as a mouse and keyboard experience.  Then again I did say the same thing in my early Windows 8 impressions, and that did go, shall we say... awry.

As it presently stands I would consider this a definite upgrade for users running Windows 8 on a desktop, but wouldn't call it a necessary update for users running Windows 7.  Windows 7 is still in effect and a complete operating system that users are still crazy for, and with reason.  It's a solid OS both for home and business, and let's not forget that it rescued us from the beast that was Vista.  So far this technical preview has hit over 1 million downloads, so we'll see how this goes.  I'm sure they'll generate a lot of feedback to shape how these builds roll out. 

* Main rig test specs: ASUS Z87-Pro, i7-4770K, 8GB G.SKILL Ripjaws X, nVidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB, 1TB Western Digital Black

* Windows 7 laptop specs: HP dv6t quad, i7-2720M, 8GB DDR3, Radeon HD 7690M 2GB, 750GB HDD

Microsoft Sued for Windows 8 Live Tiles, Trollish Behavior Suspected

Love it or hate it, Windows 8 was released last week.  The biggest change Microsoft has ever made to the Windows operating system, it marks a colossal shift in how Microsoft is doing business, banking on the new OS, a fleet of Window 8 and RT powered tablets, and doubling down on access-from-anywhere cloud access via SkyDrive.  Naturally as it occurs with every OS, it didn't come without its criticism as well as its praise from the general public.  There's a bit of a learning curve on using the live tile interface as opposed to the start button driven Windows XP and 7 UI's a lot of users are used to, and though some users love that it turns your computer into a big phone, others complain that it just doesn't work as well.  And while these user reactions to Windows 8 spanned the range of pure praise to pure criticism, there's no one I've spoken to that hated it enough to actually sit down, call their lawyer and file suit.

But of course there's always going to be exceptions to everything.  In this case it's a small technology company called SurfCast up in Maine, who have just filed a patent infringement suit against the Redmond tech giants.  They filed the complaint in Maine on Tuesday, leaving the amount of damages they're suing for left undisclosed.  Now over the years a lot of tech companies have done some, shall we say, questionable things with regards to borrowing ideas from their contemporaries.  So what was it about Windows 8 that drew the ire of SurfCast?

The issue is live tiles, the core of the new interface for the Windows 8 family of products.  SurfCast is claiming that tiles were their invention based on a patent that they have, and they want damages for it.  Immediately upon reading the headlines my nostrils tweaked, kind of sideways like and my face contorted to something... unnatural.  It was a smell I've smelled before.  It smelled like patent troll.

So I checked them out.  You can see their website here.  I know, right? Exactly what you'd expect from someone who invented live tiles - great flow, an intuitive user experience, and scores of content.  All of that is totally there. EXCEPT IT'S THE EXACT OPPOSITE.  It looks like something I could have cobbled together in FrontPage back in high school in the 90's.  Scratch that, even stuff I did as a kid was better.  My point is that even just looking at the website, there's nothing high tech happening here.  The website's main headline is "SurfCast designs Operating System technology and has four issued patents with additional applications pending."  There is nothing on the site pointing to any products - hardware, software or the combination of the two - that SurfCast has ever actually created themselves.  A convenient "Patents" section tells the user what they're really all about.  This furthered my theory on their trollish behavior.

Anyway I digress.  SurfCast's complaint is on the grounds of patent 6,724,403, entitled “system and method for simultaneous display of multiple information sources.” The patent describes a graphical interface arranging "a variety of information sources into a grid of tiles," with each tile refreshing content independent of each other.  The patent was issued to SurfCast in 2004 by the USPTO, and sure, on its face I can see how it sounds familiar to the Microsoft's Windows 8 UI.  But Microsoft does have its own patent, 7,933,632 awarded in 2011, entitled "Tile space user interface for mobile devices."  Both Microsoft and SurfCast reference some of the same patents in their application, but the USPTO determined that Microsoft's was different enough from SurfCast's to give it to them.  Actually drawing on SurfCast's patent as prior art is part of the ammo they're trying to use to extract some cash from the house that Gates built.

Now here's my main problem with all of this.  SurfCast has held this patent and a couple of others in 2004, but they're asking only for damages - money for every supposed infringing product, including Windows Phone 7, Windows 8 and Windows RT.  If they had any means or any intent to manufacture or develop any interface using this technology, oh I don't know, anytime in the last 8 years, then why wouldn't they go for an injunction to sell instead of or in addition to just money?  We saw this exact type of situation unfold in the number of legal skirmishes between Apple and Samsung.  SurfCast clearly didn't have anything they could have sold since 2004, meaning that, in my non-professional opinion, any claim of "harm and injury" on these grounds is ridiculous.

If the claim held any water, where was the lawsuit when Windows Phone 7 came out? The Windows 8 Developer Preview last year?  The Consumer Preview this year?  They waited until the very month that Microsoft released Windows 8, RT, and the Surface hardware.  Sorry SurfCast, Technical Fowl just ain't buying what you're sellin'.  Every shred of evidence tells me that this is nothing more than a troll out for some easy green.

Microsoft's statement to Wired and Ars Technica on the topic was simple: “We are confident we will prove to the court that these claims are without merit and that Microsoft has created a unique user experience.”

Translation: "We are going to mop the floor with these chumps."

Do I Need to Upgrade to Windows 8? [tf charts]

So as you all know I did a 3 part feature on some of the aspects of Windows 8 from a user perspective.  Personally I like it and think it's going to be pretty good on phones and tablet devices.  In that feature though I also mentioned that I personally wouldn't be replacing my Windows 7 desktops and laptops with the new OS.  For a keyboard and mouse environment Windows 7 works too well to switch out.  I also have a bit of apprehension even attempting to roll it out on my network at work.  We have some custom applications and don't even get me started on the potential learning curve for my users. I know others have some questions too, which is why I decided to answer everyone, user and admin alike, that have asked me Windows 8 questions.

SO. I put a handy little flowchart together to help you kids out.  You're welcome everyone.  Click on the image to make it bigger so you can, you know... read it.

Windows 8 RTM Part III - The Windows Spin on Social

[Article first published as Windows 8 RTM Part III - The Windows Spin on Social on Blogcritics.]

Over the first two parts of this Windows 8 feature I described the OS as turning my laptop into some sort of giant phone.  Today we're going to get into that a little further by looking at something that's going to be used by every Windows 8 user in both the desktop and mobile space- and that's the social aspect.  Built-in apps to manage your social networks and photos look pretty good so far, and again it makes operation more like a big smartphone than a traditional Windows system.  One of the things that makes social possible are networks of "friends."  Be it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any other social service you use, without them your social network becomes very... well... antisocial, I suppose (womp woooomp).  The problem is that you're probably connected with them on a variety of networks and sometimes that can be hard to track.

Having all your friends' information in one place makes it that easier to manage, now that a decent chnk of internet communication these days is conducted through social.  Mobile gets that - one of the things I like about my Android devices is that they consolidate my contacts into single, detailed entries, making it a lot easier to keep track of everything that's going on.  So if I have three entries in my phone for one person - a phone number entry, a Facebook entry and a Twitter entry, the device will automatically link them together if they have similar name and email addresses, or give me the option to manually link entries for those that don't really look the same.  Thankfully, that's also the case with the Windows 8 mobile interface.

This was the case with my friend Mikey.  Yeah that's right Mikey, we're on YOU now.  He goes by his real name on Facebook, but on Twitter he goes by the much more sleek and numeric "Ocho."  Much like my Android device, Windows had a bit of trouble reconciling the two, as nothing about the name "Michael" corresponds with the Spanish language or the number 8 at all.  But also like my Android device, I was able to manually link Mikey with his "Ocho" persona.  Linking the two together let me see all of his updates and notifications in one steady stream instead of having to jump back and forth between the two.  Outside of keeping your contacts in order, the People app lets you consolidate your own profile, setting status updates for the supported social media services you have you have connected to your Microsoft account.  Right now all I've really been able to play with is Facebook and Twitter.  Consolidated messaging works the same way with your messaging services.  Right now all I can see is MSN and Facebook chat, but it works with the same idea.

No Google+ though... weird, right?

Next is pictures.  Just like social, Windows 8 can aggregate all of your albums in one place.  From the photos app tile, a user can see both their local pictures as well as any albums on synced accounts like Facebook albums.  So far it will let you add Flickr albums, whatever's on your SkyDrive, and any devices you manage through SkyDrive.  Again, it's one of those minor conveniences that make things a bit quicker, but a lot of minor conveniences can add up to a noticeable increase in a decent user experience.

I've actually grown kind of fond of the new social interface, and could definitely see myself using it, especially on a tablet.  I've been working on a laptop so far and it's worked, and I actually have been finding myself using the tiles from the new interface over the Windows 7 style desktop.  Naturally there's going to be a pretty decent learning curve for most standard Windows users, but I think for users that are all about social media and photo sharing on the go that it's intuitive enough to pick up in a few minutes.  On the upcoming Surface tablets that can provide the touch interface this was designed for, this OS will allow the most social of butterflies to get it done. 

Windows 8 RTM Part II - Now with Notes of MacOS and Linux

[Article first published as Windows 8 RTM Part II - Now with Notes of MacOS and Linux on Blogcritics.]

Windows 8 is one of the biggest departures from what we know of Microsoft operating systems since Windows 2000 and the introduction of Active Directory over a decade ago.  So I thought it would be a good idea to show you fine folks what it's all about so you're not met with huge surprises when it drops in October.  Last time we took a look at basic navigationand operation in Windows 8 Professional - namely what's different from Windows 7 as far as the user interface and your UI experience.  The biggest glaring difference was of course what I called 8 Mode, the touch-friendly cell phone style skin than lays on top of the 7-style desktop.  Today we'll be going into a few of more functional features that Windows 8 is packing - one page borrowed from Apple's playbook and another from Linux.

One of the biggest points I try to drill into everyone is the importance of data backups.  I've seen people lose a lot of data, from something easily retrievable like music to something irreplaceable like baby photos.  And unfortunately it's generally not until some sort of data loss like that before people start heeding the advice of their local IT nerd.  Microsoft did actually have a native backup program built into previous versions of Windows, but not many people used it - in fact the Windows engineering team estimates that the total number of users is less than 5% of all windows users.  It just never really took off, and there were a number of improvements that could have been made.  So traditionally I advised people to burn data to discs or an external hard drive, or even to use a consumer cloud solution.  Windows 8 seems to have improved on that backup and recovery solution with their new file history feature.

It works kind of like Time Machine if you're familiar with MacOS.  Instead of periodically taking a snapshot of files on your backup schedule like the occasional copy or burn, file history is something that continually runs to check for changes to files that are flagged for file history.  To set it up the only thing that a user has to do is to configure a destination drive to backup to, and that's it.  Outside of any exceptions selected,  from that point on every file (excluding the exceptions set by the user) is checked every hour for changes and backed up if needed.  File history is designed only for a user's local libraries and not windows system files.  This means that users will take less of a resource hit when it scans for file changes, and who really cares about OS files anyway?  They can always be re-installed with little issue.

Now if you've got some computer nerdery in you, you've probably already got a solution for full system backup should you need one.  Windows 8 file history is really aimed primarily at tech civilians as an easy "no work involved" backup solution.  The screenshots in this post are from setting it up on my 2GB USB drive called nenemicro2.  And it really did only take a few clicks.  And for those of you that use file encryption, it's set up to work with BitLocker too.

So file history was the taste of MacOS.  Those of you who are familiar with flavors of Linux are probably familiar with Live CD's and USB drives that let users plug into a computer and boot up into a portable Linux system.  There's shades of this present in Windows 8 Enterprise with Windows to Go, a mobile workspace that lets users plug into any machine and get down to business.  It works pretty much the same way - plug in and power on to boot into your USB image of Windows 8 Enterprise, except without access to the computer's local drives - only the space that's on your USB device.  It works pretty well though, and the ability to carry around an OS  in your pocket could be a handy little tool for Enterprise users on the go.  Since you're packing an entire OS on your USB device with some additional room to work, make sure that you're using a 32GB device or larger.

The problem with it though is that that particular feature is targeted at business users, but I don't know any of my colleagues (including my own) that are scheduling Windows 8 rollouts over Windows 7 to replace Windows XP.  Cool feature, but not sure how much play it's going to get.

So after part II of this series I'm still of the same mind - It's a good OS and I'd like it on a tablet, wouldn't mind using it on my desktop, but don't see rolling it out in the enterprise just yet.

Coming up in part III - More of a consumer focus, your social scene in Windows 8.

89. Windows 8 Hands-On: A Mobile OS that Still Has Love for the Desktop

[Article first published as Windows 8 Hands-On: A Mobile OS that Still Has Love for the Desktop on Blogcritics.]

** UPDATE: This article is on the Windows 8 Developer Preview from September 2011 - for more info on the actual release version, my series on Windows 8 RTM starts here. **

I had a lot of reservations about Windows 8 since i started seeing leaked PowerPoint slides detailing it ages ago.  From those leaks, it looked like it was going to be nothing more than some sort of mobile OS designed to compete with Google’s Chrome OS, and wouldn’t really be very useful for desktop users.  Old screenshots of the Metro interface made me think that it was just a larger size version of the Windows Phone, without a lot of additional functionality behind it.  As of Microsoft’s BUILD conference keynote just this past Tuesday, I’m glad to say I was wrong.  Microsoft released the Windows Developer Preview (I’m going to just call this WDP from here on out) Tuesday night, and after a number of tries just downloading the image, I finally got it dual booted with my Windows 7 on my laptop.  Now granted, running the preview on a laptop isn’t going to give me the complete mobile experience that I see this being great for, but it’s at least given me a taste.

One of the phrases that gets tossed around the web so much to describe the current state of computer technology is “post-PC era.”  With all due respect to proponents of this philosophy, what the hell is the matter with you and your technological world view?  I’m not saying mobile is worthless; on the contrary I think mobile is an extremely important component in today’s era of computing.  But that doesn’t mean I’m going to confine my gaming to casual games like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja while running out to replace all my users’ machines with tablets and spend insane money on peripherals. Let’s face it, most high-powered gaming and traditional applications used by gamers and business users is still going to be run on traditional desktop PC’s.  As it would appear, Microsoft agrees with me, and Windows 8 still provides what I affectionately refer to as le olde school, namely Windows Explorer.  Outside of the new Metro interface, a very familiar setting awaits those of us that primarily compute mouse-and-keyboard style.  Users still have full access to a familiar Windows desktop, where they can peruse files through Windows Explorer, add desktop shortcuts, gadgets and pin applications to the taskbar.  Working with multiple monitors has also become a little bit easier, with the frustration of being unable to stretch the taskbar across multiple screens is now gone.  Exploring files includes common window and file commands on an optional menu in-window, pulled from their Office 2007 and 2010 ribbons.  Want to go virtual?  The preview has a built-in hypervisor for Hyper-V, which currently is only available as part of a server OS package.  And as far as compatibility, nothing is going to change for users used to running a Windows 7 environment.  I ran a guildie through Stratholme in World of Warcraft from it last night with no problems whatsoever.  The one thing that may take some getting used to is the lack of a start button similar to what we’ve seen in most Windows iterations.

Now for the other side of the OS.  There’s the new mobile half of it using Microsoft’s Metro interface.   I like it, and can definitely see how this would be a very intuitive and easy interface to use on a tablet.  Right now i’m scrolling left and right with my mouse, but on touchscreen enabled devices movement would be swipes from side to side.  The Metro interface works almost like a layer on top of a Windows 7-ish OS.  In that sense it has a very similar feel to Android device manufacturers’ custom UI’s that lay on top of the operating system like Motorola’s MotoBlur and HTC’s Sense, where users have tiles for shortcuts and instant information.  The preview includes a bunch of tiled apps that come pre-loaded that make it very easy to access basic information like weather and stock reports and social media apps for facebook and twitter.  It includes “touch” versions of your control panel and the new Internet Explorer 10, which I have to say, runs pretty nice.  Also, on the touch front, they demoed 5-finger multi-touch during Tuesday’s BUILD keynote.

While there is a lot I like about it, it does have its drawbacks – little things like no way to just shut down.  If I want to turn off the machine I have to switch to desktop mode and then go through the Alt-F4 menu to get there.  Then there’s the whole tiled app thing – tiled apps mean that whatever you run in Metro (social, weather, games) will always be running in the background.  Android devices work exactly the same way, and it’s the reason why apps like Advanced Task Killer are extremely popular downloads.  The Preview does have a way around it, by dropping individual background processes to use 0% CPU when not in use, but there is still memory usage there.  On my laptop I have the power to Alt-F4 an app to kill it, but that might not be so easy on tablet and mobile devices employing the OS with a virtual keyboard (also means Alt-Tabbing through everything that’s open).  And call me a traditionalist, but I still favor the full-function start button of Windows past.  But I’m going to cut Microsoft a lot of slack here – this is a developer preview, which means beta and release candidates still yet to come.  So they have a lot of time to make tweaks.

So in the end Microsoft has made a good start in making a single OS which bridges the gap between a desktop and a mobile solution for part of their single ecosystem, even though functionality still leans in favor of mobile.  As it stands now I wouldn’t buy Windows 8 to replace Windows 7 on my laptop or desktop without a little additional power on the desktop side – even though it has native tools I would normally download 3^rd party software for (I don’t need Alcohol 52% anymore for mounting ISO’s) I would at best I’d have it in a dual-boot setup.  BUT, I think slates or tablets running Windows 8 could be real winners.  The OS really seems like it would shine for casual users with its simplicity, which is one of the reasons iPads running iOS are so popular.  We'll see how they fare late next year.

I’m looking forward to what’s next.  I’d like to see how they’ll handle Xbox Live integration, since Games for Windows will be scrapped and lumped into the XBL environment.  I’m also looking forward to developers making some apps for this so we can see how the marketplace is going to flesh out.  And since this OS is targeted for both desktop and mobile, my biggest question arises:  What’s pricing and licensing going to look like?