windows – Billwil.com

Don’t Panic about Windows on Arm (WOA); There’s Still Choice

Before this becomes the biggest non-story story of the month, I wanted to point out a couple of things regarding the manageability of Windows on Arm. I think that all businesses, when given the choice, are going to choose more management over less management all things being equal, right? Two points, though. First, all things are not equal. Second, our customers WILL have this choice for more vs. less management, no matter what more we find out about WOA. I’ll explain my thoughts on each.

All things are not equal: I say this because it appears, from what we know, WOA is a subset of functionality compared to Win 8 on x86. This is likely not arbitrary. What I mean is, there are likely good reasons that this disconnect from the past was specifically decided on. I can “speculate” on a few, including eliminating legacy virus and malware threats, dramatically increasing battery life (because all apps are either Microsoft written or metro-style apps), running well on less powerful hardware, reliability, etc. This break from the past eases the step into the future to compete well with mobile devices, like the iPad, Galaxy Tablets, phones, Kindle Fire, etc. These will likely include small, very long battery life devices that do a subset of what a full-fledged PC can do (no matter the platform), but does those things well. I personally think that’s where WOA will sit…in direct competition with these, but with a few really key advantages (that we know of so far) such as running the full Office 15 suite, running the exact same metro apps that can be run on full-fledged Win8 PCs, etc. Yes, it won’t run everything that Windows 7 runs. No, it likely won’t be as manageable as full-fledged PCs. That’s not what they are for…these are mobile devices, and for the time-being, may need to be managed as such. That leads me to my second point…

There is still Choice: If a business really needs the advantages of Win8 for touch, metro-style apps, whatever, but doesn’t want to give anything up, they will have this option…on Intel. Intel is moving forward as well, dramatically increasing battery life and power efficiency with their new chipsets, and Windows 8 will make such strides in the area of battery life that I wouldn’t be surprised (although I obviously don’t know this for sure) to see iPad-length battery life with Windows 8 on some Intel-based devices, and maybe even better on WOA. I would imagine that an Intel-based tablet or other type of device will generally be a bit more expensive than it’s WOA cousins, but that is a price for having a true PC, not just a mobile device. Windows 8 will be the only platform to provide this choice, so as long as customers are properly educated on the differences (and some of these differences are yet-to-be-known) they choose properly based on their various users’ needs, this should be a non-issue. There is a big difference between choosing a WOA device (which is a mobile device) and choosing an Intel-based Windows 8 machine (which is a true PC, and replaces, it doesn’t add to, an existing PC). The choice is there, and this is not a sky-is-falling scenario; in my mind, this is a huge opportunity for Microsoft, and for Microsoft’s customers, who have never had this much choice to provide the right devices to the right people on a unified platform (at least unified in the future-oriented areas where it makes sense, such as Metro-style apps and Office 15). Keep in mind, too, that WOA will surely evolve, hopefully quickly, to include more features that make sense…and these could include additional manageability features that may start to make the clean break of WOA more of a no-brainer for even traditional business users…especially as the Windows Marketplace gets more and more stuffed with apps after launch.

For more information (a lot, actually) on WOA, take a look at Steven Sinofsky’s blog post on the “Building Windows 8 Blog” on this subject. Also, Paul Thurrott has a very interesting take on WOA and it’s NT roots along with the apropos “history repeats itself” theme.

Let me know what you think about the differences that we know about so far between WOA and Windows 8 on Intel.

Change of Scenery

Wow. It’s been a whirlwind couple of months, to be sure. I need to get some things updated here. Shortly after my last post my and my family’s lives changed quite a bit. In that time, I took a step along my career path, we rented out our house in Arizona, bought a new house in Southern California, and moved. The dust hasn’t even settled yet, but I’ve got some things rolling around in my head that I’ve got to get out on the blog, so I need to get up to date here so I can get to the good stuff. I won’t talk too much about the move here because I’ve got some footage, and intend to get more, on our experiences, our thoughts and emotions, and more importantly, the adventure of relocating and discovering a whole new lifestyle in a new place, and will likely put it on YouTube or otherwise get it out there (I know my Friend not Fish buddies are saying, “Ya, right” at this point).

From the Desert to the Beach. That said, the quick story is we moved to San Diego (actually, the north county area near Carlsbad), and we’re trying to adjust, get settled, etc., all while I’m starting a new job and trying to transition out of the old.

What’s Next? I’m pumped, though. Not even as much about our beautiful new surroundings because I don’t even think that’s sunk in yet (and we’re certainly not doing many “fun” things yet). It’s more about the new job. I’m focusing now on Windows client and all of the things around Windows, including devices, apps, security, and of course, the enterprise side of it all. It’s especially exciting right now because of what’s happening and about to happen with Windows 8. The Consumer Preview was just released and we’ve learned a great deal around Windows 8 in the last week. I believe that this is one of the biggest risks that Microsoft has ever taken, and I’m confident that it will pan out. It’s just exciting to be a part of it.

I’ve also got a lot of new, interesting customers that I’ve never worked with before, and I’m really excited about that as well. I get to work with a lot of really smart, talented people both at Microsoft and at my customers. I get to learn what these customers are really good at, what is important to them, and hopefully help them do it even better.

Yup…I’m stoked. You’ll probably see a lot more information here that pertains to Windows, especially Windows 8, because it’s my professional life now. I absolutely loved what I was doing before…and I’m excited to take this step into specialization as well. Bring it on.

Windows 7 Beta Publicly Released

In SteveB’s CES kickoff keynote Wednesday night, he announced the public availability of the Windows 7 Beta release. Windows 7 is the next release of the desktop operating system from Microsoft, to succeed Windows Vista. This is good news for tweakers and tech-heads, and anyone who wants to stay ahead of the curve. The announcement indicated that this Friday it will be publicly available and starting tonight, is already available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers.

I’ve gotta say, I’ve been running Windows 7 (first the tech preview, and now the Beta…build 1400 for the last few days) on one of my laptops, and I am loving it. In fact, I’m typing this post from Windows Live Writer on Windows 7 right now. I’m not a Vista hater (I’ve had really good luck with Vista…and love a lot of the features…and actually find it very difficult to use XP now), but I really like a lot about Windows 7 so far. Here’s a few highlights (not nearly a comprehensive overview though).

The New Taskbar

Besides the quicker boot-up, the first thing most people will notice is the new taskbar. Mine as it sits right now is shown above. Here is a close up of the running and “pinned” apps that I have right now.

Obviously, this taskbar looks different…but it acts quite a bit different, too. First of all, it combines some of the functionality of the old quick launch toolbar and the taskbar. In other words, you can pin apps to the taskbar so they show up whether they are running or not…and you can launch them (or switch to them if not already running) with a single click. There is a subtle, but easily recognizable difference between running apps and non-running apps. Notice above the Zune icon…it appears “flush” with the background. This indicates that it is not currently running. The Skype icon, on the other hand, shows that it is running (it has a subtle raised effect in the glass). In fact, if you look to the left where the Internet Explorer icon is, you will notice that I multiple instances and tabs (conveniently combined in the UI) open, so there are multiple glass layers there. Finally, since I’m typing in Live Writer now, you’ll notice that it’s icon “glass” is somewhat smoked, or opaque, indicating that it holds the current focus. Simple and subtle, but useful and easily noticed without thinking much about it. This behavior can be customized as well. I’ve heard some in the media complain that the new taskbar is too different, and too subtle, and at first I agreed (and even changed the defaults), but the more I use it, the more I like it. Besides….it’s pretty.

I won’t get into the jump lists (finding them useful when I remember to use them…getting better at it), changing desktop backgrounds, etc…but it’s safe to say there are some really useful gems, most of which I probably haven’t discovered yet. And again…it’s pretty.

System Tray

The system tray in the lower right corner (typically) is a little different as well. Now Windows gives the user full control over what shows up there and what doesn’t from a single and easy to use configurator. This is a welcome change. For each tray icon, you can choose to display the icon and notifications, notifications only (the toaster and the icon temporarily show up when a notification happens from that tray icon), or hide completely (out of sight, out of mind).

Libraries

Windows 7 has a new concept of libraries; essentially libraries of different types of documents. These libraries can point to multiple physical locations on various disks (even removable disks and network shares), but ccollect and show a collation of these documents and files together as a single library. This is great for most users, and I’m already finding myself liking it for it’s simplicity and ease when it comes time to find a picture or save a video. Windows 7 ships with four libraries by default (Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos), but users can add as many as they want, and even modify the built-in ones.

HomeGroups and Device Management

Both home networking and managing devices is easier on Windows 7. The Homegroup concept, while I haven’t tested extensively, looks really promising. It allows even domain joined computers (like a work laptop for example) to automatically and easily participate in a group of home computers, and use devices (like printers and media centers) while it’s there. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I’ll get to use this much because in my limited experience, it appears that you cannot create HomeGroups from domain-joined computers (although, as I said, they can participate in one). Since I run a domain at home, and of course use one at work, this may not be something I personally can take advantage of…although I’m in an extreme minority of home users who run a domain.

As for the device management, you may have heard of Device Stage. I’m not sure if that’s the official name, but managing devices in Windows 7, whatever the tool is called, is looking much easier and very promising. It is a very graphical view of all of your devices and resources along with the ability to change their settings, update drivers, etc., all from one place.

Compatibility, Speed, and Drivers

I saved the best for last. Windows 7 is fast. It boots faster than XP and Vista. It resumes faster the XP and Vista. It runs better with 1 or 2 GB of memory. 64-bit (which I’m running on two machines) is solid with no driver issues. I’m throwing all sorts of weird devices and drivers at it, as well as software, and so far, no glitches. I had to install the beta version of Skype, which seems to run great, but other than that everything just works. Every software package I’ve installed from the standard Office 2007 tools to very specialized stuff like Voyager 4 flight planning software and Flip Video’s FlipShare is working great. I’ve installed Visual Studio 2008 (which is monster big with lots of dependencies) with no problems as well.

I’ve thrown some non-standard hardware at it, too. Again, the Flip Video (with or without it’s drivers from the manufacturer) just worked…and shows up quickly and easily on the device stage. More surprisingly, perhaps, is the results from just slapping on my M-Audio Mobile PRE USB interface (which allows my to connect high end microphones and power them using phantom power, adjust built in pre-amps using physical knobs, and monitor using headphones, etc.). I plugged it in, and it just worked…both outputting audio as well as the inputs from the analog mics. Remember…this is 64-bit, too. M-Audio is working on 64-bit Vista drivers for this unit (which will work in Windows 7, I’m sure), but even without those drivers, everything works great just by plugging it in. I’m not sure how, but I’m happy. I’m really trying to break it, but I can’t

I did have a driver issue with the wireless on one of my laptops. I was getting crashes while using wireless. After thinking, “Well, after all, it is beta.” and dismissing it, I noticed that Windows Update was notifying me of an optional update to the wireless chip driver in my laptop. I accepted it, and it fixed the issue. I’m amazed. This really doesn’t seem like a beta product to me…at least not yet. Maybe I will start to discover more issues…but as it stands, I’m very close to upgrading almost all of my production machines to Windows 7 beta (at least as a dual boot for testing).

How to Get it

Brandon LeBlanc on the Windows 7 Team Blog has a nice write-up about downloading the beta. More information on how to get it can be found there and on the Windows 7 website, especially as the public release day (this Friday) approaches.

Oh ya…one last thing. I got a big chuckle out of the default desktop background (the focal point of which I’ve featured here). See if you get the joke. Enjoy Windows 7.