Tag: Hardware

Playing With A New Low Spec Windows Tablet

I visited my employer’s stands at the Retail Trade Show in Dublin this week. I already knew most of the stuff there, but I got to put my hands on one of the new ultra-low spec Windows 8.1 “Update 1” tablets. ICYMI, the April 2014 Update for Windows 8.1 enables OEMs to sell lower spec machinery.

For example, a Windows install is much smaller. That means you can sell a Windows tablet, and that’s x86 Windows, not Windows RT, with 16 GB of storage.

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And the machine can have just 1 GB RAM.

The machine I played with was a Win’Tab8. I don’t know who the manufacturer was (I think they were French) and I’m not in the office to find out more info. It was an 8” yellow tablet. Thin and light as one would expect. And I believe it was quite cheap (maybe sub €200).

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This tablet did have 16 GB storage, micro-SD expansion, an Intel Atom 4-core CPU, and 1 GB RAM. There was a micro USB port and a dedicated power socket (I like that!). I don’t know what the battery life is like. Just over 4 GB of the storage was free. The RAM was under pressure; while I’m OK with the small amount of storage for a consumption machine (I hope MSFT embraces expansion storage like on Android), I am not sold on tablets with less than 2 GB RAM. The demo machine was not logged in with a Microsoft ID so I couldn’t install something from the Store. But I played around and it seemed to perform pretty well.

Expect to see these kinds of low spec/price Windows tablets in retail stores in the coming months.

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An Old Post Of Mine On Ballmer That Makes Interesting Reading

I’ve just re-read a post I wrote in 2010 about the future of Steve Ballmer. My two topics of focus were Windows Phone 7 (released that day) and the lack of a Windows tablet at the time.

I thought WinPho would struggle behind iOS and Android, mainly because of apps. I was not wrong. Things have improved, but there’s still issues with app quality and availability.

We now know that Ballmer bought into the Sinofsky plan (sounds like some dodgy French plan to keep out invading forces, and we know how those tend to work out). Windows 8 came, Windows 8.1 came, Windows 8.1 Update 1 came, and still Microsoft struggles in the tablet market. I thought (and I was not along) that, despite everything, Microsoft should get WinPho working on tablet devices. Instead we got the confusing and failed Windows RT, which is now being killed off through a merger with Windows Phone for ARM devices.

Fun times!

Oh yeah, I completely underestimated the impact of smartphones and tablets on the consumer market.

How Lab At Work Is Configured At The Moment

As I share from time to time, here is a description of what the test lab I run at work looks like at the moment. It has grown a little bit since the last of these posts.

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There are 7 physical computers split into two AD domains:

Physical Network

  • There is an ADSL internet connection using a NetGear router.
  • We have a WatchGuard 2 series XTM. This provides me with my primary VPN route into the lab (SSL VPN client) and connects the on-premises lab with Microsoft Azure. I also use the built-in wireless hub to connect to the lab using my laptop while in the office.
  • There are 2 x dumb Netgear 24 port 1 GbE switches.
  • 1 x HP Procurve 10 GbE SFP+ switch that I hate. The only redeeming quality is that it is 10 GbE, allowing the iWARP cards to be plugged in.

Lab.Internal

This environment is pretty static, and enables me to get into the lab, and have enough fabric to rebuild the demo lab from scratch.

  • Lab-DC1: This is an old Sony laptop. I run AD on here for the lab domain. Here you can fund WSUS, and RRAS as one of my emergency backdoors in. This machine has just a 1 GbE network connection.
  • Lab-Storage1: This is a beefy HP DL370 G6 storage box with lots of capacity. I store all of my ISOs and images here. I have enabled Hyper-V and run the management pieces of the Demo.Internal domain on here, including AD and System Center. This machine has 1 GbE networking and 2 x iWARP (10 GbE RDMA) ports, each of which are connected to different virtual switches – I enable vRSS in VMs that run on this host and do SMB Multichannel in the guest OS. I’ve also done the unsupported Shared VHDX hack to enable Shared VHDX on local storage.

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Demo.Internal

The physical part of this environment is frequently built from scratch, using what is running/hosted in the Lab.Internal domain.

  • Virtual Management Stuff: You can see the range of things running in this domain that are hosted by Lab-Storage1.lab.internal. The most important of these is Demo-DC1, the DC for the demo domain. I run all of my demo System Center VMs as VMs on Lab-Storage1, and I also run demo PCs as VMs.
  • JBOD: I have a DataOn DNS-1640 with 8 x HDDs and there are currently 6 x SSDs in there too. Yes, that is a very weird breakdown for tiering and for column counts.
  • Demo-FS1 & Demo-FS2: These are HP DL360 G7 servers that are connected to the JBOD using 6 Gbps LSI 9207-8e SAS cards (8 = two interfaces/cables, each having 4 “ports” that run at 6 Gbps). These servers are clustered to make the SOFS. From time to time, I enable Hyper-V on them to have a second Hyper-V cluster. The servers have 4 x 1 GbE and 2 x iWARP for SMB 3.0 storage networking.
  • Demo-Host1 and Demo-Host2: Two Dell R420 servers that are my Hyper-V cluster. Each has 4 x 1 GbE and 4 x iWARP 🙂 That gives me lots of flexibility for SMB 3.0 designs. Normally VMs are stored on the SOFS, but you might have noticed that I also have an iSCSI target running as a VM on Lab-Storage1. My network design varies depending on what I’m trying to do.
  • Demo-Host3: This is a HP Elitebook 8740w. This “beast” was my work laptop until it was replaced by a Toshiba i5 KIRAbook – a portable lab is pretty useless for me now so I prefer a light presentation machine that I can VPN from. The mobile workstation is now in the lab where it runs as an additional host on 1 GbE networking. It gives me capacity for Hyper-V Replica, and quickly testing things without touching the Hyper-V cluster.

Azure

With a site-to-site connection into Azure, I have capacity to deploy additional things in the cloud, with integrated management via System Center.

The main changes over the past year have involved the addition of the XTM and Azure. My work has me spending a lot of time learning and teaching about Azure so that side of things will continue. Our DataOn business has been growing so we’ll see how things go there. Of course, I’ll have to stay up to date with the on-premises gear so we’ll see what changes might be driven by “Threshold” come TechEd Europe.

Microsoft News Summary – 12 August 2014

Welcome to the SMB 3.02 edition of this update. Jose Barreto has been very busy!

Nanu nanu!

San Francisco 49ers Are Using Windows Tablets & Microsoft Surface

The San Francisco 49ers (an NFL or American Football team) are based in Santa Clara, California. Nearby you will find Cupertino, the HQ location of Apple. Also nearby, you will find Mountain View, the HQ location of Google.

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What tablet did I see the 49ers using on the side line in a preseason game against the Ravens last night?

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Let’s take a closer look:

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Hmm, that’s not the Apple square button and it sure aint Android. The announcers went on to mention that the NFL has a sponsorship agreement with Microsoft Surface. Note the stylus? I reckon that’s a Surface Pro (not the 3 based on the shape). Apparently the league only allows side line tech such as this for analysing still pictures (a full field shot is taken just before and after a play starts for later analysis by coaches and players).

Previously a junior staff member printed out booklets of black and white photos and ran them to the coaches/players on the side line. That took at least 30 seconds. They must be a mess to use and keep organised. Now colour images (see above) are transmitted straight to the Windows tablets and presented in a tiled touch interface. You can see below that some coaches like the new system, and some do not:

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Interesting to see a team such as the Niners, who have just built the most technology centric stadium on the planet in the shadows of Apple and Google, are using Windows and the Surface.

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Microsoft News Summary – 6 August 2014

I’ve done photography in some of the most rural parts of the world, but I’ve never been without phone or Internet for 3 days before. *exaggeration alert*  Being in a dark valley in Scotland over a long weekend was like having an arm removed. Anywho, here’s the news from the last few days. Note that there is an “August Update for …” Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 coming out next week, what the media will probably called “Update 2 for …”.

Microsoft News Summary – 28 July 2014

It was a quiet weekend. Note a useful scripts for health checking a Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) by Jose Barreto.

Lenovo Yoga Tablet 8 – 8 Months Later

It was 8 months ago when I purchased my Lenovo Yoga Tablet 8, an 8” Android tablet. I raved about the form factor, price ($206.99 on Amazon.com, £150.99 on Amazon UK, €153.06 on Amazon Germany), and all that jazz.

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So how has the tablet worked out?

I mentioned in my previous post that I was going to test the battery life in my upcoming travels. I did:

  1. I charged up the tablet overnight in Berlin
  2. Watched video flying from Berlin to London
  3. Watched video flying from London to San Francisco
  4. The battery was at 54% when I checked into the hotel in the west coast of the USA

And that was before a firmware update that increase published battery life from 16 hours to 18 hours. I suspect that this device pulls power from dark matter in the universe. It is incredible, with only Kindle readers beating it.

The screen is not the best for viewing photos … but let’s be clear. The machine is CHEAP and works great for video.

I probably use this device more than any machine other than my PC at work. I travel with it, using it to keep myself entertained in hotels, airports, planes, etc. I keep it at my bedside locker, so I can check up on things when I hit the snooze button in the mornings. It has replaced my Kindle reader as my way of consuming books – the extra large battery doubles as a comfortable handle.

I’ve used a Micro-SD to expand the paltry 16 GB of inbuilt storage. Using a SD converter, I can quicky copy content from a PC/laptop onto the machine. Combined with the hotspot on my phone, I have easy Internet access. Throw in ProXPN and I am accessing Netflix USA while in Europe, and UK/Irish services while abroad. My Bose headphones give me perfect sound in a noisy environment.

The lightweight CPU has not been an issue for me. I don’t play many games – but Robocop, Plants VS Zombies 2, and the Angry Birds carting thing play fine.

I have a lot of good things to say about this device. I wish it was a Windows machine – I do have a Toshiba Encore tablet but the Yoga wins on battery life (against almost everything) and apps (quantity & quality VS Windows).

I strongly recommend this tablet to anyone needing an affordable mobile device, and who would like to complete their journey with some battery life left …. which is actually a big deal with airport security now.

Microsoft News Summary – 23 July 2014

Overnight Microsoft news is dominated by their Q4 2014 (MSFT  financial year is July-June and just started FY 2015) returns.

Microsoft News Summary – 21 July 2014

Not much news floating about. But the first two items in my summary makes me worry about Microsoft. V- staff (contractors) are going to be blocked from network access intermittently, making them redundant, and baldy needed human testers are being made redundant.