hoTodi.tv bei Gizmodo in Frankfurt zur Präsentation von Windows 8 und dem Surface

hoTodi.tv war auf Tour und hat  durch die Fenster des Windows 8 geschaut. Gestern Abend hatte Gizmodo eine kleine Anzahl von Leuten dazu eingeladen, sich das kommende Update von Windows 7 – einfach Windows 8 – anzuschauen und einen Eindruck davon zu bekommen. Ich war ehrlich gesagt skeptisch, ob der  Sachen, die ich da sehen  sollte und so ging ich auch mit wenigen Erwartungen nach Frankfurt. Der Hauptgrund liegt natürlich auf der Hand, bei hoTodi.tv wird objektiv an Videotutorials gearbeitet und da kein Betriebssystem bevorzugt. Wissen und Anwender gibt es für Mac OS X ebenso wie Linux und auch (in einem erheblichen Maß) für Windows 8.

Neben der Software selbst hat Gizmodo noch ein tolles Schmankerl parat gehabt, so wurden Laptops und überdimensionale Touchdisplays/All-inOne-Computer von Sony ebenso gezeigt wie ein Hybrid Tablet von Sony und – endlich – auch ein Microsoft Surface.

Zunächst aber einmal die Software selbst. Windows 8 ist gewöhnungsbedürftig, keine Frage. Microsoft hat endlich mal den Mumm gehabt und sein System angepasst. Viele Jahre schon muss man seine Kunden ständig mit kleinen Häppchen bedienen um ja nicht von alt bewährtem abzuweichen, doch nun hat Ballmer und die Mannen aus Redmond ein Gesamtkonzept aufgebaut, so ist das Bedienkonzept auf den Tablets ebenso wie auf Smartphones wie auch Desktopcomputern gleich. Wer es einmal verstanden hat, wird sich auf allen Geräten sofort zurechtfinden. Mir geht dieser Schritt ehrlich gesagt zu weit, ich finde es sehr gut, dass Microsoft endlich mal innovativ wird und seinem Hauptsystem nicht nur einen Frühjahrsputz verpasste, sondern was – in vielen Bereichen – neues gemacht hat. Aber die Bedienung auf dem Desktop halte ich persönlich für misslungen, hier muss man den gewohnten Weg gehen dürfen, Microsoft muss dem Nutzer die freie Wahl lassen. Zurück aber zum Tablet, was soll ich sagen? In einem Wort eigentlich: WOW.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ervY6As5OcI

Was ich bei Android noch immer vermisse sind wirklich gute Anwendungen im Bereich Office. So liefert Microsoft Office 2013 auf dem Tablet aus und es rennt und rennt und rennt. Mit der Tastatur, welche sich im Case befindet kann man wirklich professionell arbeiten und auch seine Büroarbeiten von überall aus erledigen. Das Bedienkonzept mit den Kontextmenüs, dem Anheften von Anwendungen an der Seite und das Multitasking beeindruckt, sicherlich hackt es noch hier und da, aber da mache ich mir nicht so viele Sorgen, mit den ersten Patches wird sich auch das alles legen. Was mich bei den Tablets störte war der Bewegungssensor, dieser funktioniert noch sehr träge und man muss schon eine „kleine Erschütterung“ verursachen, damit der G-Sensor auch versteht, dass das Tablet gedreht wurde.

Von Sony gibt es einen Touch-All-In-One Computer, welcher es echt in sich hat. So liefert das ca. 22“ große 16:10 Display brilliante Farben und nimmt kaum Platz auf dem Schreibtisch weg, dabei sind alle Anschlüsse ebenso vorhanden wie ein physikalisches Laufwerk für DVDs. Die Tastatur kann ebenso verwendet werden wie die Touchoberfläche, der Anwender hat also freie Wahl. Die Geschwindigkeit war auch hier beeindruckend, doch leider liegen mir derzeit weder Preise noch Hardwarespezifikationen vor.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTBfSfogl9Q

Wie man es von Apple kennt, hat der Redmonder Softwareriese abgeschaut wo es geht – und das ist gut so! So liefert Microsoft mit Windows 8, dem Surface, Windows Phone 8, der XBox 360 und vielem mehr endlich ein geschlossenes System , welches einfach funktioniert, es harmoniert miteinander. Hat man Spiele auf der Xbox kann man diese ebenso auf seinem Tablet wie auch auf dem Desktop spielen und umgekehrt. Spielstände und Einstellungen werden im Netz gespeichert und stehen in allen Geräten sofort zur Verfügung. Auch hier hat Microsoft ENDLICH mal seine Hausaufgaben gemacht.

An dieser Stelle möchte ich mich beim Team von Gizmodo ganz besonders bedanken, dass ich mir diverse unterschiedliche Hardware und natürlich Windows 8 so direkt anschauen und Fragen an die Fachleute stellen konnte. Für mich ist damit klar, dass es so einige Videos in naher Zukunft auf hoTodi.tv geben wird.

Weiter wird es hier definitiv ein Tablet und/oder Smartphone mit Microsofts neuem System geben um auch weitere Erfahrung sammeln zu können. Ihr dürft also gerne Anregungen und Fragen da lassen für die kommenden Videos 🙂

Dies war das erste Treffen dieser Art an dem ich und damit auch hoTodi.tv teilgenommen habe. In Zukunft werde ich verstärkt auf solchen Events vor Ort sein und euch dann gezielt Videotutorials liefern können.

PS. Danke Tanja für das ausführliche Gespräch!

Windows 8 gibt es bei Amazon ab 50 Euro. Das Surface ist noch nicht zu haben.

113 Gedanken zu “hoTodi.tv bei Gizmodo in Frankfurt zur Präsentation von Windows 8 und dem Surface

  1. Keyboard is one of the main selling points of Surface, without it its
    incomplete and crippled while ipad doesnt need keyboard for comfortable
    usage. As for the apps; look at windows phone 7, the time its on the market
    and the app selection. It failed miserably in that aspect. Lets hope win
    rt/8 and wp8 will do better but you shouldnt hope for more than you get out
    of the box, and considering that MS should’ve priced surface cheaper to
    encourage people to buy their product and build up user base.

  2. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
    because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
    the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
    fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
    that can replace my laptop).*

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
    *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
    manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
    manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
    that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
    Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
    just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
    through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
    myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

    *Edit: I wanted to add for those that didn’t see from my bio page (or the
    comments below) that I am currently an employee at Microsoft. While my
    views will no doubt be biased to some degree because I am proud of the
    company I work for, I try to be as fair and balanced with my opinions and
    criticisms about their products as I am for any of the other technology I
    use. I am in no way connected to any of the teams that worked on the
    aforementioned products, nor am I a member of the marketing division. These
    are merely my thoughts on the upcoming releases of these products.*

  3. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
    *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
    manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
    manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
    that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
    Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
    just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
    through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
    myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

  4. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
    *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
    manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
    manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
    that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
    Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
    just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
    through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
    myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

  5. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
    because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
    the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
    fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
    that can replace my laptop).*

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
    *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
    manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
    manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
    that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
    Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
    just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
    through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
    myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

  6. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
    because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
    the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
    fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
    that can replace my laptop).*

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
    *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
    manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
    manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
    that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
    Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
    just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
    through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
    myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

  7. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
    because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
    the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
    fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
    that can replace my laptop).*

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
    *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
    manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
    manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
    that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
    Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
    just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
    through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
    myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

  8. Who the heck wants desktop apps on tablets? These apps aren’t even touch
    optimized. If people really wanted desktop apps on tablets, Windows 7
    tablets would have sold. People HATE desktop apps on tablets.

  9. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
    because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
    the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
    fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
    that can replace my laptop).*

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
    *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
    manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
    manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
    that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
    Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
    just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
    through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
    myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

  10. Don’t know about the Surface yet or perhaps you wanna know what it is
    capable of.
    Then, check out this video to get an overview of Microsoft’s first tablet
    running Windows RT.

  11. They are making a mistake. they are focusing on the kickstand and keyboard
    even though the keyboard is optional and costs $100…they are not focusing
    that much on the pure tablet experience, which is odd. in any case, i think
    this is a winning product. and the fact that so many people will have
    windows 8 means the metro apps will have a huge install base….

  12. I have to say it again……

    „IF YOU WANT TO BUY SURFACE FOR PROFESSIONAL WORK, DON’T BUY SURFACE WHICH
    USE WINDOWS RT“

    Windows RT can’t install legacy software, so you can’t use MATLAB, Photo
    Shop or any other software that runs on your current PC. So don’t buying
    the RT version Surface because it is cheaper than Pro one !

    If you just want to use IE, Office suite on Surface, then you can get one :
    )

  13. Yup. I think $100 is fair and reasonable price for a slick OEM magnetic
    cover that is also a keyboard. If I like it I’m buying at least one more
    surface this fall with my overtime cash. Sometimes you gotta spoil yourself
    hahaha

  14. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Edit:** I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the
    surface because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they
    deliver on the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it
    will be a fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for
    (tablet that can replace my laptop).*

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*
    about Windows for *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent
    of a package manager! Every individual application had to check for its own
    updates and manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am
    happy to see that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see
    Photoshop and Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and
    have everything just go through a centralized location where I can decide
    when updates come through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to
    deal with that logic myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

  15. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
    because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
    the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
    fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
    that can replace my laptop).*

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
    *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
    manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
    manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
    that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
    Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
    just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
    through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
    myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

  16. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Edit:** I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the
    surface because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they
    deliver on the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it
    will be a fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for
    (tablet that can replace my laptop).*

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*
    about Windows for *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent
    of a package manager! Every individual application had to check for its own
    updates and manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am
    happy to see that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see
    Photoshop and Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and
    have everything just go through a centralized location where I can decide
    when updates come through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to
    deal with that logic myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

  17. Apple fanboy? Maybe if you knew me personally you’d retract that statement. Also why would it matter that the app store is available in both versions? It’s still gonna have an embarrassingly low amount of apps. I really don’t care what anyone tries to tell me, this thing should be priced at $399.99 and $499.99 both WITH the keyboard.

  18. And what do you expect, launch an app store with 999999+ apps ? dude be real everything start from low to high, just like the android market did.. and the prices are Perfect compared to the Ipad, and don’t get me wrong I had an Ipad 2 but this thing is the next thing.. And trust me there’s a lot of things the surface will do that the Ipad can’t, just see the specifications.. and this is only the RT version, wait for the PRO version with an i5 3rd gen and FULL windows 8 OS, Ipad < Surface..

  19. I realize everything starts from „low to high“ which is why I had said they should’ve released the pro version first, so you wouldnt be completely dependent upon the app store. The prices may look „perfect“ to you now, but wait two-three months for some other win8 tablets to hit the market and you’ll look back at this thing and laugh. There’s tablets coming out that have almost as many features as the Surface Pro, yet are priced the same as this one, the Surface RT.

  20. Crippled how? You are seriously missing some pieces of brain. How much is a 32GB iPad? Hmm… $599. How about Surface 32GB, $499. Obviously you missed 1st grade math where you would have learned that $599 is not equal to $499. Surface works as great as iPad without type / touch cover and is enhanced when you add the cover.

  21. Source? This is buzzing everywhere, lots of people want them. Not necessarily me, I’m happy with my Nexus 7 for now, but c’mon, this thing is going to sell.

  22. If it was an iPad ad, it’d just be a minute and a half of;
    „JUST FUCKING LOOK AT HOW JEALOUS YOUR STUPID FRIENDS WILL BESDFLKJDSLKFJ“

  23. @bjzapll r definitely is right. i seriously couldnt believe when my brother say this to me. Listen to this, even my colleagues used to make dime well weekly doing some small works and watching funny stuffs. i found it from here. you can also try it <<< bit.ly/QTZIpu?=njdxfds

  24. ◆◇◆◇◆いきなりの書き込み失礼します。お金にお困りの方、いらっしゃいますか?実は宝くじで100,000,000円当選したのですが、その使い道に困ってます…馬鹿みたいな話ですが事実です。単刀直入に申しますとこの当選金をどなたかにお譲りしたいと思ってます。既にお譲りが済んだ方もいますが、少額でのお譲りが多かったため結構な額が残ってます…本日中にお譲りする事も可能なので遠慮せず仰って下さい。出来る限りご希望の金額を、と考えております。もし、お受け取りになりたい方いましたら、サイト内ですと書き込みが削除されます場合が御座いますので、こちらの→【http://437.jp】リンクより、スムーズにお話をすすめる事ができますので、どうぞお早めのご連絡をお待ちしております。◆◇◆◇◆

  25. ◆◇◆◇◆いきなりの書き込み失礼します。お金にお困りの方、いらっしゃいますか?実は宝くじで100,000,000円当選したのですが、その使い道に困ってます…馬鹿みたいな話ですが事実です。単刀直入に申しますとこの当選金をどなたかにお譲りしたいと思ってます。既にお譲りが済んだ方もいますが、少額でのお譲りが多かったため結構な額が残ってます…本日中にお譲りする事も可能なので遠慮せず仰って下さい。出来る限りご希望の金額を、と考えております。もし、お受け取りになりたい方いましたら、サイト内ですと書き込みが削除されます場合が御座いますので、こちらの→【http://473.jp】リンクより、スムーズにお話をすすめる事ができますので、どうぞお早めのご連絡をお待ちしております。◆◇◆◇◆

  26. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Edit:** I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the
    surface because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they
    deliver on the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it
    will be a fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for
    (tablet that can replace my laptop).*

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*
    about Windows for *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent
    of a package manager! Every individual application had to check for its own
    updates and manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am
    happy to see that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see
    Photoshop and Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and
    have everything just go through a centralized location where I can decide
    when updates come through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to
    deal with that logic myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

    *Edit:** I wanted to add for those that didn’t see from my bio page (or the
    comments below) that I am currently an employee at Microsoft. While my
    views will no doubt be biased to some degree because I am proud of the
    company I work for, I try to be as fair and balanced with my opinions and
    criticisms about their products as I am for any of the other technology I
    use. I am in no way connected to any of the teams that worked on the
    aforementioned products, nor am I a member of the marketing division. These
    are merely my thoughts on the upcoming releases of these products.*

  27. ◆◇◆◇◆いきなりの書き込み失礼します。お金にお困りの方、いらっしゃいますか?実は宝くじで100,000,000円当選したのですが、その使い道に困ってます…馬鹿みたいな話ですが事実です。単刀直入に申しますとこの当選金をどなたかにお譲りしたいと思ってます。既にお譲りが済んだ方もいますが、少額でのお譲りが多かったため結構な額が残ってます…本日中にお譲りする事も可能なので遠慮せず仰って下さい。出来る限りご希望の金額を、と考えております。もし、お受け取りになりたい方いましたら、サイト内ですと書き込みが削除されます場合が御座いますので、こちらの→【http://473.jp】リンクより、スムーズにお話をすすめる事ができますので、どうぞお早めのご連絡をお待ちしております。◆◇◆◇◆

  28. ◆◇◆◇◆いきなりの書き込み失礼します。お金にお困りの方、いらっしゃいますか?実は宝くじで100,000,000円当選したのですが、その使い道に困ってます…馬鹿みたいな話ですが事実です。単刀直入に申しますとこの当選金をどなたかにお譲りしたいと思ってます。既にお譲りが済んだ方もいますが、少額でのお譲りが多かったため結構な額が残ってます…本日中にお譲りする事も可能なので遠慮せず仰って下さい。出来る限りご希望の金額を、と考えております。もし、お受け取りになりたい方いましたら、サイト内ですと書き込みが削除されます場合が御座いますので、こちらの→【http://473.jp】リンクより、スムーズにお話をすすめる事ができますので、どうぞお早めのご連絡をお待ちしております。◆◇◆◇◆

  29. ◆◇◆◇◆いきなりの書き込み失礼します。お金にお困りの方、いらっしゃいますか?実は宝くじで100,000,000円当選したのですが、その使い道に困ってます…馬鹿みたいな話ですが事実です。単刀直入に申しますとこの当選金をどなたかにお譲りしたいと思ってます。既にお譲りが済んだ方もいますが、少額でのお譲りが多かったため結構な額が残ってます…本日中にお譲りする事も可能なので遠慮せず仰って下さい。出来る限りご希望の金額を、と考えております。もし、お受け取りになりたい方いましたら、サイト内ですと書き込みが削除されます場合が御座いますので、こちらの→【http://473.jp】リンクより、スムーズにお話をすすめる事ができますので、どうぞお早めのご連絡をお待ちしております。◆◇◆◇◆

  30. ★★★【 誰にでも出来る簡単ラクラク高収入 】★★★
    誰にでも出来ちゃう簡単高収入アルバイトをご紹介します♪
    勿論…“男女は問いません“、面接等の面倒臭い事は、
    一切なし!!!こちらのアルバイトの魅力は、
    『携帯があれば誰でも簡単に高収入が得られてしまう』って、
    トコロです♪♪平均日給も、
    なんと…【30,000円以上】です!!!こちらも魅力のひとつです♪
    【携帯1つで月収1,000,000円も夢じゃない!?!?】
    詳しいお話や質問等は、下記のリンクからお気軽にどうぞ♪
    【http://cc77.info】
    ※こちらのサイト内では、一切高収入アルバイトについての、
    お話は出来兼ねます。お手数をお掛け致しますが、
    ご了承下さいませ。

  31. So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
    and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
    releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.

    *Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
    section. You have been warned.*

    *Surface*
    First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
    $499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
    all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
    which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
    producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
    tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
    especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
    wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
    Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.

    The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
    with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
    R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
    a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
    less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
    Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
    Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
    well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.

    Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
    edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
    into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
    that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
    (since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
    their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
    specifically.

    Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
    for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
    for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
    Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.

    The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
    with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
    non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
    Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
    I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
    and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
    on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
    themselves ported to ARM for the RT.

    Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
    Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
    EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
    other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
    Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
    be upgradable to 8G).

    *Edit:** I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the
    surface because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they
    deliver on the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it
    will be a fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for
    (tablet that can replace my laptop).*

    *Windows 8*
    Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
    understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
    handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
    your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
    just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
    Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
    tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
    desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.

    From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
    once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
    my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
    to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
    bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
    fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
    any noticeable problems.

    I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
    been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
    moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
    solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
    features or something because I haven’t cared enough.

    One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
    tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
    enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
    touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
    An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
    touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
    Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
    sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
    frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.

    IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
    have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
    IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
    not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
    pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
    some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
    that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
    feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
    „spare them“ from IE.

    Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
    as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
    productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
    but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.

    *Windows App Store*
    I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
    again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
    much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
    in on some of those.

    There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
    store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
    ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
    on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
    fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
    the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
    made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
    Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
    you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
    were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
    stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
    sell well.

    This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
    that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
    Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
    device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
    you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
    see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
    not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
    done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
    shouldn’t be too difficult.

    And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
    write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
    the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*
    about Windows for *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent
    of a package manager! Every individual application had to check for its own
    updates and manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am
    happy to see that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see
    Photoshop and Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and
    have everything just go through a centralized location where I can decide
    when updates come through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to
    deal with that logic myself.

    Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
    limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
    completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
    applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
    center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
    something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
    manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
    software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
    side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
    installations.

    It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
    since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
    I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
    the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
    on-the-go gaming, and the like.

    *Windows Phone 8*
    I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
    bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
    the specs seem solid.

    The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
    earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
    really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
    don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.

    I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
    amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
    my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
    to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
    the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
    this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
    it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
    nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
    probably looking at checking out the 8X.

    I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
    hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
    will improve.

    I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
    market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
    themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
    in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
    perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
    amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
    Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
    keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
    icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
    icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
    though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
    that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
    not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
    up the game a little.

    *Conclusion*
    Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
    points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
    point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
    are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
    2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.

    I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
    them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
    are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
    they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
    brings for this software and these devices.

    *Edit:** I wanted to add for those that didn’t see from my bio page (or the
    comments below) that I am currently an employee at Microsoft. While my
    views will no doubt be biased to some degree because I am proud of the
    company I work for, I try to be as fair and balanced with my opinions and
    criticisms about their products as I am for any of the other technology I
    use. I am in no way connected to any of the teams that worked on the
    aforementioned products, nor am I a member of the marketing division. These
    are merely my thoughts on the upcoming releases of these products.*

Kommentar verfassen

Diese Website verwendet Akismet, um Spam zu reduzieren. Erfahre mehr darüber, wie deine Kommentardaten verarbeitet werden.