Tag: Windows 8

Surface Launch

People are delighted, and they’re snap dancing around the world … apparently  Surface is a “stage of Windows 8”.  There are more stages … Surfaces … to come?

The 10.6 inches diagonal screen is what Windows was designed to work on (side by side apps).  The display is Cleartype.  The panel was designed from the ground up by MSFT.  The tablet was designed from the inside out, with weight distribution in mind.  It has to feel “great” … light and balanced.  Weight distribution reduces stress on the wrists. 

The MicroSD (up to 64 GB) is under the kick stand.  You could swap cards for those long journeys, archiving lots of photos on a vacation, etc.  Speaker says he watched movies on a 10 hour flight to china without charging.  In a layover, he nearly did a 100% charge.

There are 2 wireless antennas for signal quality.  Speaker claims he connected to hotel wifi when staff said he wouldn’t be able to at the hotel roof pool.

He talks about the screen contrast and lack of reflectivity (how the screen is bonded).  Independent reviews call this out.  As a photographer, I understand the importance of this.  Using SmartGlass, he throws the movie that is playing to an Xbox and the projected screen.  He repeats with music to stress how you can take advantage of your surround sound system for music.

Hydro Thunder is up.  I miss it from the beta.  Very good 3D graphics

He drops one from held up position to prove a point.  The build is SOLID and he picks it up to use it.  They then show the “surface keyboard” (d not do this) when Sinofsky rode one.  Speak of the devil … he comes out to reclaim it. 

Clever usage of side-by-side with angled back camera.  With the kickstand open, he records the audience and writes, just like a student could record a lecture and take notes at the same time.  Very very nice.  Beat that iPad.

Steven SInofsky comes on stage to plug in a DSLR directly into a Surface via the USB port to upload some pictures into a blog post in Word.  iPad, can you do that?  Dongle what now?

And in-store sales start at 00:01 on the 26th in the USA.

That’s a wrap!

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Windows 8 Worldwide Launch

Today is the launch of Windows 8.  It will be GA tomorrow (26th October), and MSFT stores are opening at midnight to sell FPP (fully packaged product for “upgrading” existing installs) and Surface.

Steven Sinofsky, the man behind the reimagining of Windows and the way that was done, comes out to kick things off.  670 Million licenses of Windows 7 have been sold to businesses and consumers.  Temper that with half of businesses are still deploying Windows XP (end of life in April 2014) and they often downgrade from their entitled Windows 7 licenses.

16 million installs of Windows 8 pre-RTM editions were done.  650 pages of blog posts on Windows 8 were done by Microsoft.  That’s about 10 trillion words.

3 announcements:

  • Upgrade FPP of Windows 8 will be available in stores and online
  • Windows Store is “live” (it has been for a while)
  • New Windows RT devices will be available overnight for the first time (genuinely).

Windows 8 is built on the solid foundation of Windows 7.  A Windows 7 logo machine will have improvements: 36% boot time, 13% battery, up to 22% memory, and compatibility with Windows 7 logo hardware and software (if the software doesn’t do stupid checks).

I’m not counting the pre-release testing because there was no beta or RC feedback program outside of TAP.  No, the Answers forum does not count IMO.

1,000 new PCs are certified for Windows 8 – that’s counting all the variations of models.  I am not buying what he’s selling when he says many of these devices cost under $300.

Mike Angiulo comes out to demo Windows 8.  The old Windows 7 slate PC (similar to Build one) makes an appearance.  It’s very demo friendly because of the dock which features RJ45 networking (no unreliable wifi required) and full sized HDMI port (mini HDMI is loose fitting in most devices I’ve seen).

Heh … the first new Win 8 device picked up was an Acer.  Trying to make friends again?  Reconnect to wifi is an average of 1 second instead of 15 seconds in Windows 7.  The Sony TAP 20 AiO got a quick show – I got to demo it before it’s announcement.  We loved it as a family machine – it’s a portable touch PC with a 3 hour battery.

Out comes Steve Ballmer.  He’s excited, apparently.  Some repetition here, with a mix of Bing and IE10.

670,000,000 PCs out there to be upgraded or replaced.  400,000,000 a year being bought.  That’s a lot of Windows 8 PCs going to be bought next year and a big market for app developers to pay attention to.

And that was that.

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Microsoft Surface Suffering From A Mild Case Of The Curse Of Zune

I hope you weren’t too desperate to get a Microsoft Surface anytime Zune soon.  They are only available on pre-order in select countries (you know … the ones where Windows Phone sort of works):

  • Australia
  • France
  • Canada
  • USA
  • Germany
  • UK

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Hmm, and $499 seems to convert into EUR479.  Strange that!?!?!

Hard luck!  Try a Dell XPS 10 or Samsung ATIV instead.  No such limitations there … and you get the option of a real keyboard with contained battery … the XPS10 has 20+ hours of video play time with the keyboard attached.

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How To Buy Windows 8 For Different Scenarios

This post mainly applies to SMEs, small/home office (SoHo), and personal usage.  The following slide describes the various scenarios where you want to buy Windows 8 and which type of package to sell/buy:

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  • OEM: the manufacturer supplied installation that cannot be moved to another piece of tin.  A Windows machine must start with either OEM or Personal Use License (see later).
  • FPP Upgrade: Fully packaged product, the thing you buy off the shelf or direct from MSFT. Only Windows 8 (aka Home) and Windows 8 Pro. It is an upgrade license only.
  • VL: Volume license, which you can buy if you have more than 5 machines. It is legally an upgrade license (even though it can do a clean install). It requires the machine already has an existing license, e.g. an OEM of Windows 7 Pro or Windows 8 Pro.
  • SA: Software Assurance, an optional add-on or Open or Select (volume) license programs that offers free upgrades and additional benefits for a certain number of years, e.g. 2 years.  EA and Open Value license programs include SA.
  • Personal Usage License: The “system builder” license that is available to actual system builders. Now it is also available to enthusiasts who build their own PC an have no unassigned OEM license to start with. Not for upgrades, legalization, or businesses over 5 users.
  • Legalization: You or an auditor has found discrepancies and you need to fix your licensing

 

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Just Got to Play With Some Of The New Windows 8 Tablets

I’m in London attending distributor training by MSFT. One of the presentations was on Windows 8 devices and the presenter had 2 of the forthcoming tablets at hand. After the presentation, he invited us up to have some hands on and play.

The Samsung ATIV Tab is slim and feather light, being fairly similar to an iPad 2 in feel.  The battery had a charge and we got to play. It was snappy too.  I’d be happy to own one, and I might just do that – I did sell my iPad a few months ago.  And good news for customers, Microsoft has a policy on OEM junkware so preloaded software on Windows RT will be tightly controlled just like it is on Windows Phone.  The device has USB, SD, and Micro HDMI expansion, and possibly more.

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The presenter also had the HP ElitePad 900 that was only announced yesterday. This is based on the new Intel Atom. First off, yes it is an Intel based machine, but this is nothing like the Build or Samsung Series 7 slate. Very honestly, it was about the same thickness as the original iPad and my non-calibrated hands didn’t feel much difference in weight to an original iPad.  It felt solid too, as it needs to be for it’s targeted enterprise market (for 3 year support contracts).  The HP ElitePad 900 device has no expansion ports but does have a docking port. This slots into the “jackets” such as a the expansion jacket that was on hand that does have HDMI (full size), USB, etc.

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The Samsung ATIV Tab was a very nice machine.  Everyone wanted pictures that showed the thckness of it, and wanted to quickly switch apps, surf the net and pinch zoom, all going away quite happy. And the universal comment on the HP was that it felt good in the hand.  Only 24 days until we get to try these things (ElitePad 900 will be via business channel only)  in the retail outlets.

Oh – I did ask and the new UI is now just the “Windows UI”.  It’s not modern, or any other guff.  The apps are called Windows Store Apps now.

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Licensing For Windows 8 Windows To Go

There are licensing requirements for Windows To Go; it is not just as simple as getting a copy of Windows 8 Enterprise and Bob’s your uncle.  Here are the licensing requirements:

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The mentioned CSL is a new companion subscription license.  A companion device is a device such as a Windows 8 tablet that is the user’s secondary device, and where the PC is the primary device.

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KB2744129 – Cannot Run Windows 8 Or Windows Server 2012 VM In Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V

Microsoft released an update to deal with an issue where you cannot run a Win8-based or WS2012-based virtual machine on W2008 R2 Hyper-V.

Assume that you have the Hyper-V server role installed on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2. You create a virtual machine that is running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 on the computer. However, you experience one or more of the following issues:

  • The virtual machine stops responding. 
  • You receive a Stop error message, and the computer restarts. This behavior stops all running virtual machines together with the computer.

The issue occurs because the Hypervisor does not handle the one-shot synthetic timer correctly.
Note The one-shot synthetic timer is also known as the aperiodic timer.

There is a publicly available update that you can download to resolve this issue.

Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Configuration Manager, Endpoint Protection, and Windows Intune

I’ve got 4 blog posts for you to read.

As I was commuting yesterday, Mary Jo Foley blogged about a Microsoft announcement on how System Center Service Pack (SP) 1 – Configuration Manager (SCCM/ConfigMgr) and Windows Intune will be changing in the near future.  Some highlights:

  • System Center 2012 SP1 Beta is out
  • A new version of Windows Intune with WP8 and Windows 8 support is coming in early 2013
  • You will be able to integrate ConfigMgr with Windows Intune for unified device management, both company and BYOD – or use ConfigMgr and Intune separately
  • Windows Intune will switch to per-user licensing from per-device. The new per-user license covers 5 devices.  ConfigMgr client ML owners will also get a discount.
  • Windows Intune will (at last!!!) be sold without Windows 7/8 Enterprise; currently anyone with SA on the desktop OS gets a 50% discount because they already own Windows 7 Enterprise

A follow up blog entry was posted by Microsoft, discussing the support changes in ConfigMgr and Endpoint Protection for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012:

ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 will support:

  • Windows 8 Pro/Enterprise and Windows Server Std/DC as clients
  • All site roles on WS2012 Std/DC

ConfigMgr 2007 SP1 will support Windows 8 Pro/Enterprise and WS2012 Standard/Datacenter as clients only.

System Center 2012 SP1 Endpoint Protection (SCEP) will protect:

  • Windows 8 Pro/Enterprise and Windows Server Std/DC as clients
  • WS2012 Std/DC

You can also protect those OSs with Forefront Endpoint Protection 2012 with Update Rollup 1.  Note that this 2010 version won’t support WS2012 as a management server.

Make sure you read the following to get more info and to fill in the gaps:

  • The original announcement
  • The news post by Mary Jo Foley
  • The supplemental support post by Microsoft

EDIT#1

Let’s not stop there.  You might want to learn about the cross-platform support that’s being added to ConfigMgr 2012 SP1

  • Mac OS will be added as a supported client: h/w discovery, software inventory, policy settings management, and software/patch distribution
  • Linux and UNIX will also be added: h/w discovery, software inventory, policy settings management, and software/patch distribution

SCEP 2012 will also support Mac OS – please don’t say that there is no malware on Mac OS because you’re living in a dreamland under a very dark rock if you think that’s the case.  If did not realise this but:

Endpoint Protection 2012 Client for Linux is also available now.

Windows 8 for Business Licensing Guides, Including Windows To Go, App Sideloading, BYOD, and VDI

I have found 3 guides to (try) help you understand how to Windows (including Windows 8 and older versions via downgrade rights) for desktops, companion devices, and VDI via volume licensing in the business:

I actually was going to try write a longer post detailing lots of the details of Windows 8 licensing butitseemslikepunctuationandwritingunderstandableEnglishhavefallenoutoffavourinRedmondThelanguagein

theseguidesespciallythebitsaboutCSLBYODappsideloadingandVDIrequiresyoutofigureoutwheretoputinthefull

stopsorperiodsifyouareAmericanandhiringateamofconstitutionallawyerswhowillprobablyneveragreeontheprecise

detailsofthelicensingsoImnotgoingtodareofferanyadviceviathisblogonthisstuffthatsomeonewillmistakenlyconsider

asbeinglegaladvicewhichitwouldnotbeThisissuchapityconsideringhowSystemCenterandWidnowsServershow

howlicensingcanbesimplified

That’s my own, personal, non-work-related opinion on that.

Some interesting bits:

  • If you want to dual boot a PC, then you need to cover it with Software Assurance (SA)
  • SA also gives you rights to 4 VMs on the licensed Windows 8 machine.  That’s not new; I remember it from way, way back from when I first started blogging.
  • OEM licensing can only downgrade to Windows 7 (except Ultimate) or Windows Vista.  You need a volume license upgrade to downgrade to XP.
  • You need to look at Companion Subscription Licensing (CSL – available to buy for PCs covered by VL upgrade with SA) if you’re looking at Windows To Go or VDI from additional (non primary) devices such as tablets or smartphones.

This stuff is complex.  Please consult with your LAR (if you are buying Select/Enterprise Agreement), reseller (if you are buying Open/OV/OVS) or distributor (if you are reselling Open/OV/OVS) if this stuff is unclear (which it will be if you are not an aforementioned constitutional lawyer).

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KB2734608: Enable WSUS 3.0 SP2 To Support Windows Server 2012 And Windows 8

Microsoft has released an update for WSUS 3.0 SP2 that enables Windows Server Update Services to provide updates for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8.  It is available as an x86 and x64 download.

According to the Microsoft SUS blog, this update will fix:

This update lets servers that are running Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 SP2 provide updates to computers that are running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012.

This update fixes the following issues:

  • Installation of update 2720211 may fail if Service Pack 2 was previously uninstalled and then reinstalled.
  • After you install update 2720221, health monitoring may fail if the WSUS server is configured to use SSL.

Additionally, this update includes the following fixes:

  • 2530678 System Center Update Publisher does not publish customized updates to a computer if WSUS 3.0 SP2 and the .NET Framework 4 are installed
  • 2530709 "Metadata only" updates cannot be expired or revised in WSUS 3.0 SP2
  • 2720211 An update for Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 is available