Windows 8 was designed to be touch first but you can use it with a keyboard and a mouse. I do that with my work laptop, the beast, which I use to run Windows 8 Client Hyper-V for deployment demos because it has SSD storage. But what if you want that touch experience? Some apps, certainly games (Cut the Rope, Angry Birds) work best with a touch UI. You could go out and buy a replacement monitor for you PC. You could replace your laptop. Or you could go the Apple route and copy what they did for the Mac a while back when they introduced the pricey track pad.
I was just in the store picking up a new keyboard and mouse for some writing work (the real thing always beats a laptop keyboard/pad) and I saw something interesting on a display stand:
This is the Logitech Wireless Touchpad with Multitouch, coming in at $32.57 on Amazon.com. It supports single, double, triple and quad touch as well as swipe. Locally it was €49.99 in a brick store. I very nearly picked one up but I was concerned that it might not be a great Windows 8 device; I’ve seen some people having Synaptic driver issues on forums with gesture support on their laptops. I did a quick search on my iPhone but found nothing conclusive so I left it there.
I returned home but didn’t forget it. I did some more searching and found one very happy reviewer. Maybe I’ll get one for the work PC which I’m very likely to upgrade as soon as possible after RTM.
That reminds me. I love to see what’s happening in the PC world, especially to the all-in-ones. If I was buying a personal PC then that’s the type I’d want for Windows 8. I saw a very sexy looking Lenovo IdeaCenter A720.
It is around $1700 in the USA and €1200 here. It features a 27 inch 1920×1080 anti-glare 10-touch point screen with a flush bezel. The spec is i7 (3rd generation), 8 GB RAM, 2 GB NVIDIA GPU. It was a work of art in my opinion; I’d be happy for it to be placed in my sitting room.
I found myself using my iPad really only for two things:
Reading – but I since bought a more convenient smaller Kindle that I could read in a wildlife photography hide without scaring off the subject
Watching a little bit of TV when I went to bed
The reason I bought it originally was to have lots of battery life at conferences. But I couldn’t type with it. The screen keyboard is OK but not fast enough. The attachable keyboards weren’t rigid and you never have a desk at these events. So I ended up buying an Ultrabook.
So my iPad became dispensable. Even though it was an iPad 1, there were no shortage of buyers. And I didn’t even have to advertise it. So it’s not like I’m claiming it’s a dead platform or anything.
So what’s my future on the device front? In my personal lab, it’s a bunch of tower PCs. That’s tied up for a while with work.
My Ultrabook is going strong. It’ll stay on Windows 7 until Windows 8 RTM, and maybe later depending on my work schedule. My work laptop (the Beast) is already running Windows 8 so I can have a mobile Hyper-V base for demos.
My “tablet” for now is the Build slate, a revved up version of the Samsung slate that you can buy in retail at the moment. The Release Preview is running nicely on there. It’s not ideal – it runs hot and the battery life is poor for a tablet style device. Maybe I’ll sell it later in the year before I get a Windows 8 device. Or maybe I’ll sell it as a collectible on Pawn Stars
I will look at design-for-Windows 8 devices later in the year. I work for a Sony and Toshiba distributor so obviously I’ll look at what they have coming. I haven’t seen anything about Sony’s plans in that space yet. Toshiba have an interesting slider in the but I’d want to try it out. I’m not sure about it as a machine for your lap.
The Asus Transformer goes a more portable route. It’s a laptop and a tablet with an i7 CPU. I like that as an iPad and Ultrabook replacement.
The one making the headlines is the Microsoft Surface. The problem is … what do I want? If I want a tablet, then either the Pro or the RT would suffice. The Pro would be great for things like Photoshop and be dock-able as a normal PC. But I can’t let myself fall into the same trap as I did with the iPad. That keyboard isn’t rigid – so it will suck at conferences and events, constantly flopping.
Then again, why would Microsoft release Surface at all? Windows 8 is a huge play call by Microsoft. By re-imagining Windows, they are bringing in major change. And there hasn’t been anything like this amount of change since Windows 95. It’s a risk and everyone wants to mitigate risk.
What we’ve learned in the last 3 years is that the device plays as much of a role in the consumer sale as the operating system, if not more. Microsoft has always relied on hardware partners for the most part. Yes, they’ve built a better mouse, a better web cam, and the XBox. But in the PC realm, they relied on partners.
Look at some of the devices that we’ve seen announced. There have been many slate PCs and tablets that offer nothing new – just more of the same that used to run Android and would now run Windows 8 – former wannabe iPad killers. In the the Ultrabook market we have seen some rather strange device choices too … that one with the screen on the outside was ridiculous.
Not all have been silly or lacked innovation. I like the look of some of the slide-out slates/tablets where the keyboard lives under the screen and can slide out to produce a more normal looking laptop experience.
My guess is that Microsoft wanted to lead on the success of Windows 8, rather than depend on the hardware leadership of others. By creating Surface, Microsoft has built sexy, stylish, and innovative devices, something that the OEMs should have done. They have challenged the OEMs to produce something different, something better. Don’t just reinvent the same old thing with a different OS and new processor version. Be creative. Use new form factors. Take advantage of new components. Challenge each other and steal the lead from Microsoft.
By launching now instead of at Windows GA (October is my guess) it’s giving the OEMs time to get their act in gear sooner rather than later. I hope the OEMs do respond positively – I’d like to see cool devices for Windows 8 being sold outside of the USA.
So I was wrong. I was sure the big secret Microsoft announcement last night would just be some streaming media subscription service for the USA. Instead, 99% of the press got it right and Microsoft announced a Microsoft branded tablet line. Stealing the name from the table top device … welcome the Surface:
It is thin, 9.3mm, and that depends on which version of the Surface you choose:
It has a case that doubles as a keyboard and comes in different colours. The case features a built-in kickstand for when you want to prop it up. There is an audible snap when it closes which is nice. It is 0.7mm thick, thinner than a hotel room key:
Two Models
The Surface comes in two models. In broad strokes, the Windows RT (NVIDIA-made ARM-based CPU) is aimed at the consumer and competes with the iPad. It’s the thinner and lighter of the two devices. The Windows 8 Pro version is a twofer: it’s a tablet (slate PC) and a PC replacement. The Pro has an Ivy Bridge Intel i5 CPU and I’m guessing it’ll have around 10 hours battery life based on what we’ve seen from Dell’s future device.
The Body
No, I’m not talking about Elle McPherson, but sexy is what MSFT is aiming for none-the-less. The screen is Gorilla Glass 2. The chassis is made from VaporMg (pronounced Vapor-Mag), an injection moulded metal tolerant down to 0.65mm, and providing a perfectly smooth surface. The cover is snap on. It apparently has a solid snapping action which I saw being described by a present journalist as reassuring. This cover doubles as the keyboard which is flat. Size-wise, it’s thin. It’s the 1300 * 768 screen ratio you can expect of Windows 8 devices, with a landscape layout preferred over portrait.
Price
Nothing was confirmed. The Pro edition will allegedly compete in the Ultrabook price range. The RT edition will be similar to other ARM based tablets. The Pro edition will be some 90 days later.
Release Date
Good luck! Surface RT will be shortly after the Windows 8 GA. It’ll be sold via Microsoft Stores (USA only) and the Microsoft Online Store.
Apps
Windows 8 is still a Release Preview. Metro apps will be released via the Microsoft Store, built into Windows 8. Being Windows with 300+ million PC sales per year, the apps will definitely come. Already there are some big names there, and a Netflix Metro app was announced last night too. This won’t be Windows Phone. Office 2013 RT will be bundled with the RT edition. Only Metro apps and Office 2013 RT can run on the RT Surface. The Pro Surface will run any .exe or Metro app that can run on any Intel/AMD-based Windows 8 PC/laptop.
Reaction
Positive first. Wow, how the hell did MSFT keep this secret? We already know the spec for the XBox 720 and that it’ll likely have Azure integration for cloud content/games. The device is sexy. It’s got a lot of features that I like … built in kick stand for the plane, and a keyboard cover are cool.
My main concern is simple: Will Microsoft release this device outside of the USA? Will it suffer from The Curse Of Zune?
Secondly: how did the CEOs of Acer, Asus, Toshiba, Sony, etc, react when they woke up in Asia this morning? They’re allegedly being charge $85/device for Windows 8 OEM for their devices. Now they will compete with Microsoft on device sales? What will this mean?
The way the announcement was made was strange. It was 23:30 UK/IE time, 00:30 German/France time and God-knows what time in Korea/Japan. Choosing 15:30 Pacific Time said to me that this was an event for an American audience. If an International announcement was important, surely they would have gone for 09:00 or 10:00 PST? Choosing not to stream the event was strange too. I’d scream from the mountain tops if I was announcing this. Inviting 150 journalists, many of whom wouldn’t know Windows from a door, to be your single channel of communications is very strange. Yes, they want to copy Apple and have exclusivity, but this seems wrong to me. Just my independent opinion.
People are talking about this device. I’ve already had 5-6 conversations about Surface this morning in the office in the last 90 minutes. Strange, considering that it looks like only 5% of the world’s population (USA) will be able to buy one.
Summary
The Surface is a fab looking device. I’d like to have a try, and maybe consider buying the Pro version. Will it be an XBox/Kinect or a Zune/Kin? Will I end up even being able to buy one of these innovative devices? Time will tell. Have a look and make up your own mind:
EDIT #1
Some more notes. MSFT released video recordings of the event. You can stream it, or download it.
Above, you can see that the kick stand angles the Surface at 22 degrees. What if you wanted to record something at the table? Having the camera pointed downwards would be useless. The back camera is pointed upwards at 22 degrees to compensate for the kickstand angle.
The keyboard/cover snaps into a magnetically bonded spine. The Metro UI changes colour to match the colour of the Touch Cover! There are aligning and clamping magnets to organically connect correctly. You can hear it snap into place in the video. When you fold it back, the keyboard turns off, thanks to an accelerometer. Touch cover allows your fingers to touch the keyboard and it measures force to count those touches as types. Therefore you can touch type from the rest position.
The Pro edition has a wrap around vent so it’s never blocked. It is silent – I rarely even notice the vent on my Ultrabook, whereas I do on my Build slate.
The screen supports 600 DPI digital ink using a stylus pen. Zoom in and the ink is still smooth. The touch digitiser detects the pen being used and blocks touch so your hand on the screen doesn’t cause chaos for the pen digitiser. The screen is 0.7mm thick, making it the thinnest of it’s kind. The pen clicks into the side of the Surface.
TPM apparently is included. It supports HDMI and DisplayPort. They demo Adobe Lightroom on the Pro edition.
The cover comes in two models:
Touch Cover: a 3mm cover with a multi-touch keyboard.
Type Cover: designed for the touch typist wanting great speed. Key has 1.5 mm travel with full modern trackpad.
This is a beautifully designed device. But I’m told that the same was said of Zune which defined The Curse Of Zune by being only available to 5% of the world’s population – the web site wasn’t even visible to us back then! I’ve asked a person who understands channel, and he reckons it’ll allow MSFT to control the distribution with more quality. Maybe they’ll reach out to large chains like PC World (UK) and Best Buy (USA) next year, or the year after if Surface doesn’t go the way of Zune.
A new KB article related to Hyper-V was posted this morning.
You have a Windows Server 2008 R2 system with the Hyper-V role enabled. If the BIOS has been set to inject SMIs at a high rate, 11 SMI/sec for example. The system may hang during boot time.
As the rate of SMI injections increases, the likelihood of failure (system hanging) increases.
Cause
If an SMI occurs before all processors are ready to receive SMIs, Windows boot will hang.
Resolution
Reduce the rate of SMI injection in the BIOS to prevent a hang during Windows boot.
If you’ve read more than a few posts from here over the last few months then you know I have a pretty nice lab at work. In fact it’s so nice, that Microsoft Ireland has asked us to start a training program for MSFT partners. So most of the next month will have me prepping crash courses on System Center 2012 and WS2012 Hyper-V. Then I’ll be delivering training for quite some time. And that means the lab will be tied up.
Problem: I’m starting on a new project where I need a lab. I’ve configured the lab at work to flip around in a decent amount of time but it’s painful having to do that … I can get quite a bit of work done during lunch and I don’t want to lose 20 minutes of that while 2 servers POST at the start and the end of the hour.
Circumstances have forced me into buying a small lab for home. I’ve talked about this for years, and I kept avoiding it … rather successfully But the time has come, and luckily some recent work will cover the costs, and I work for a distributor so I got parts at trade price.
Here’s the pieces I’ve bought:
2 * HP Elite 8200 tower PCs: i5 Processors and take a max of 16 GB RAM. I don’t need much VM capacity.
2 * 4 port GB NIC cards: can’t remember the manufacturer. With the on-board NIC I have 5 NICs to play with.
8 * 4 GB Kingston RAM: Cheaper than HP and I’ll max out the PCs.
Netgear 24 port switch
I have a very old home build PC that will get some extra networking to become my SAN. It might also double as a host for a few other things. And it will double as a domain controller and RDS Gateway (my ISP won’t allow VPN traffic but inbound HTTPS is OK).
I’ve also added some recycled Netgear wifi NICs into the two HP PCs.
Like in the lab at work, I plan to make the hosts very flexible:
Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise will go onto the machines. This will allow me to power them up for normal day-day stuff.
They will boot from VHD as well.
This will allow me to slip in VHDs for Windows Server 2012 to (a) get very quick clean OS deployments and (b) multipurpose the hardware with multiple builds that I can swap in/out.
I’ve talked about our lab in the past and I’ve recorded/shown a few demos from it. It’s one thing to build a demo, but it’s a whole other thing to build a lab environment, where I need to be able to build lots of different demos for W2008 R2 (current support for System Center 2012), Windows Server 8 Hyper-V, OS deployment, and maybe even other things. Not only do I want to do demos, but I also want to learn for myself, and be able to use it to teach techies from our customer accounts. So that means I need something that I can wipe and quickly rebuild.
WDS, MDT, or ConfigMgr were one option. Yes, but this is a lab, and I want as few dependencies as possible. And I want to isolate the physical lab environment from the demo environment. Here’s how I’m doing it:
I’ve installed Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter as the standard OS on the lab hardware. Why not Windows Server 8 beta? I want an RTM supported environment as the basis of everything for reliability. This doesn’t prevent Windows Server 8 Beta from being deployed, as you’ll see soon enough.
Lab-DC1 is a physical machine – it’s actually a HP 8200 Elite Microtower PC with some extra drives. It is the AD DC (forest called lab.internal) for the lab environment and provides DHCP for the network. I happen to use a remote control product so I can get to it easily – the ADSL we have in the lab doesn’t allow inbound HTTPS for RDS Gateway This DC role is intended only for the lab environment. For demos, I’ve enabled Hyper-V on this machine (not supported), and I’ll run a virtual DC for the demos that I build with a forest called demo.internal (nothing to do with lab.internal).
Lab-Storage1 is a HP DL370 G7 with 2 * 300GB drives, 12 * 2TB drives, and 16 GB RAM. This box serves a few purposes:
It hosts the library share with all the ISOs, tools, scripts, and so forth.
Hyper-V is enabled and this allows me to run a HP P4000 virtual SAN appliance (VSA) for an iSCSI SAN that I can use for clustering and backup stuff.
I have additional capacity to create storage VMs for demos, e.g. a scale out file server for SMB Direct (SMB 2.2) demos
The we get on to Lab-Host1 and Lab-Host2. As the names suggest, these are intended to be Hyper-V hosts. I’ve installed Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 on these machines, but it’s not configured with Hyper-V. It’s literally an OS with network access. It’s enough for me to copy a VHD from the storage server. Here’s what I’ve done:
There’s a folder called C:VHD on Lab-Host1 and Lab-Host2.
I’m enabling boot-from-VHD for the two hosts from C:VHDboot.vhd – pay attention to the bcdedit commands in this post by Hans Vredevoort.
I’m using Wim2VHD to create VHD files from the Windows Server ISO files.
I can copy any VHD to the C:VHD folder on the two hosts, and rename it to boot.vhd.
I can then reboot the physical host to the OS in boot.vhd and configure it as required. Maybe I create a template from it, generalize it, and store it back on the library.
The OS in boot.vhd can be configure as a Hyper-V host, clustered if required, and connected to the VSA iSCSI SAN.
Building a new demo now is a matter of:
Replace virtual DC on Lab-DC1 and configure it as required.
Provision storage on the iSCSI SAN as required.
Deploy any virtual file servers if required, and configure them.
Replace the boot.vhd on the 2 hosts with one from the library. Boot it up and configure as required.
Basically, I get whole new OS’s by just copying VHD files about the network, with hosts and storage primarily using 10 GbE.
If I was working with just a single VHD all of the time, then I’d check out Mark Minasi’s Steadier State.
The SAN I’m installing in the lab at work is a HP P4000 (Lefthand) virtual SAN appliance (VSA). While the majority of the online conversation for the VSA centres on VMware, there is a supported Hyper-V VSA, and obviously that’s the one I want to use.
I set up the storage server, a HP DL370 G6 with lots of disk, and got W2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V up and running. I didn’t go Windows 8 beta because I only want to run RTM software for the underlying bits of the lab that don’t get wiped/etc – more on that once the lab environment is built.
Then I ran the setup.exe for the VSA and that’s where I wasted many hours because it kept failing with this error:
Installation Failed.
Provider failure
While ‘Unmounting the configuration drive…’
A search found one result and the suggestions in that forum post were about as helpful as standing on one foot, bouncing counter-clockwise, touching the tip of my nose, and signing the national anthem backwards.
I decided to dig a little deeper and found that HVSA_Original.VHD was a compressed file. Hmm … interesting! I then did the following:
Uncompressed the HVSA_Original.VHD file and moved it to the folder where I’d create my VSA VM
Created a new VM for the VSA in Hyper-V Manager
Attached HVSA_Original.VHD to the new VSA VM
Attached another new fixed VHD to the VM’s SCSI controller
Powered up the VM … it appears to be based on CentOS
“Logged into” the VM and ran the setup wizard to set the hostname and IPv4 configuration
Set up the CMC to remotely configure and manage the VSA
Configured a P4000 cluster and provisioned a LUN
Bob’s your uncle! I think I’ve never managed a P4000 before. EVA was much easier but P4000 has more potential, hence the complexity I suppose.
When I walk into a PC store I’m seeing touch enabled PCs, usually all-in-ones, more and more on the shelves. I’m betting that some people are buying with Windows 8 in mind.
I was talking with some MVPs about this last week and one of them brought up a really good point. Much of what we do in Windows 8 touch devices such as getting the charms bar, the app bar, bringing up the start screen, or switching apps, is done by swiping from the “magic pixel”; that’s the extreme edge of the screen.
Question: If the screen has a thick bezel, then how exactly do you touch that pixel on the edge? Do you use a stylus (yuk!), do you squeeze your little finger in there? Sounds kind of icky to me. The suggestion I got was to ensure that if you do by a touch screen then make sure that the bezel is flush with the screen, just as it would be with a tablet or slate PC.
Other things to watch out for:
The resolution should be a minimum of 1366 * 768 – shouldn’t be a problem for a PC monitor
HP has launched their Gen8 (not G8) line of ProLiant servers. The machine I was most interested in was the DL380p Gen8 because that’s the model I’d most encounter in virtualisation. Some highlights:
2 CPU sockets handling up to 8 cores each
24 DIMM slots (requires HP SmartMemory for warrantee and performance) with a maximum of 768 GB (!!!) RAM using 32 GB RDIMM.
Choice between 4 * 1 GbE or 2 * 10 GbE NICs on board.
iLO 4
On board management has taken a bit of a leap forward:
“HP iLO: The HP iLO management processor is the core foundation for HP iLO Management Engine. HP iLO for HP ProLiant servers simplify server setup, engage health monitoring, power and thermal control, and promote remote administration for HP ProLiant ML, DL, BL and SL servers. Furthermore with the new HP iLO is the ability to access, deploy, and manage your server anytime from anywhere with your Smartphone device.
HP Agentless Management: With HP iLO Management Engine in every HP ProLiant Gen8 server, the base hardware monitoring and alerting capability is built into the system (running on the HP iLO chipset) and starts working the moment that a power cord and an Ethernet cable is connected to the server.
HP Active Health System: HP Active Health System is an essential component of the HP iLO Management Engine. It provides: Diagnostics tools/scanners wrapped into one; Always on, continuous monitoring for increased stability and shorter downtimes; Rich configuration history; Health and service alerts; Easy export and upload to Service and Support.
HP Intelligent Provisioning (previously known as SmartStart): HP Intelligent Provisioning offers the ability for out-of-the box single-server deployment and configuration without the need for media”.
On the blade front, there is a new BL460c Gen8:
2 CPU sockets handling up to 8 cores each
16 DIMM slots (requires HP SmartMemory for warrantee and performance) with a maximum of 512 GB RAM using 32 GB RDIMM.
One (1) HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 554FLB FlexibleLOM
iLO 4
There’s crazy big scalability in each host if you can justify it. To counter that you have the “too many eggs in one basket” argument. I wonder how much a 32 GB SmartMemory DIMM costs To reach the densities that this hardware can offer, you will absolutely need to install the very best of networking such as 10 GbE. I’d even start wondering about InfiniBand!
Surface RT will be shortly after the Windows 8 GA. It’ll be sold via Microsoft Stores (USA only) and the Microsoft Online Store. 
But the time has come, and luckily some recent work will cover the costs, and I work for a distributor so I got parts at trade price.
This DC role is intended only for the lab environment. For demos, I’ve enabled Hyper-V on this machine (not supported), and I’ll run a virtual DC for the demos that I build with a forest called demo.internal (nothing to do with lab.internal).
I’ve never managed a P4000 before. EVA was much easier but P4000 has more potential, hence the complexity I suppose.
To reach the densities that this hardware can offer, you will absolutely need to install the very best of networking such as 10 GbE. I’d even start wondering about