Microsoft's cloud service - SkyDrive - is shortly to be no more, but will be instantly re-incarnated as OneDrive. This is as a result of a court case between BSkyB and Microsoft which the latter lost. BSkyB Group - more commonly known as Sky in the UK - considered the name 'SkyDrive' an infringement of copyright and that people might believe it was something to do with them. The judge agreed, so Microsoft were ordered to rename it and they have now announced that it will shortly become OneDrive. It is a rebranding exercise only; everything will work as before without change and no data will be lost.
Sometimes Microsoft ships operating systems that a lot of people don't like and which are widely perceived as being dogs. Examples that come rapidly to mind over the years are Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows Me. But sometimes they produce real gems that don't get the sales or publicity that they really deserve. One such product was Windows Home Server, which was withdrawn from retail sale on 31st December 2013 (but stocks are still available, so move quickly). Windows Home Server - WHS - started life in 2007 with an announcement at the CES show, although it was the best part of a year before it was readily available. It was based on a slightly cut-down version of Microsoft's then flagship server operating system, Windows Server 2003 R2, supplemented with a number of innovations to make it more useful and easier to use in a home environment. These included the Dashboard, providing at-a-glance status information and a simplified way to manage the system, and the highly-acclaimed Drive Extender. Usually on a Windows computer, each disk drive has its own letter to identify it. So, the first drive is C, the second is D, the third is E and so on. In a server environment there might be multiple drives; what Drive Extender did was transparently merge them all into one single pool. Add another drive and it became part of the pool, without any need to worry about whether it was G: or M: or whatever. Additionally, WHS would make multiple copies of files and store them on different drives, such that data would not be lost in the event of a drive failure, must like the way a RAID system operates. At the same time, HP announced a range of 'baby servers' running WHS. They were joined by a handful of other, smaller manufacturers, but it was painfully obvious even in the early days that there was no widespread support for this innovative product. A few years later, Microsoft released a follow-on product in the form of Windows Home Server 2011 (WHS 2011). In some ways this was more of the same, but updated to use grown-up Windows Server 2008 R2 and with additional polish. But - to the shock of enthusiasts and pundits - the innovative Drive Extender technology was gone. This time round HP did not launch a supporting server, and shortly afterwards pulled out of the market altogether. An even bigger shock took place in 2012 when Microsoft announced there would be no further editions of WHS. Instead, home users were pointed in the direction of Windows Server Essentials - at ten times the price... Retail sales of WHS 2011 would end on 31st December 2013, although the product would be supported until 2016. Intriguingly, manufacturers can still supply "embedded" versions until 2025, although none appear to have chosen to do so. Much of the technology pioneered in WHS has subsequently appeared in other Microsoft operating systems. For instance, the Dashboard appears in other server products and Drive Extender has re-appeared in Windows 8 under the name Storage Spaces. WHS failed for several reasons. Firstly, it was ahead of its time. There is now a proven market for home storage solutions, but it is satisfied by NAS products that are simple and easy to use. Secondly, because of its complexity, WHS appealed mainly to technical people and enthusiasts, who appreciated being able to purchase a "real" server operating system for a fraction of the normal price. And thirdly, Microsoft did not really put a lot of weight behind the product in terms of marketing. As stated at the beginning of this article, stocks of WHS 2011 are still available from the likes of eBuyer, CCLonline, Amazon and others. It costs between £35-£40. Some people are buying it not for use as a server, but for use as a general purpose operating system on a desktop or laptop. This is an attractive proposition for people who really do not like Windows 8 and are prepared to put in the effort to get it working. WHS 2007-2013. R.I.P. We are proud to announce the release of an installation guide for the latest release of Microsoft's server operating system for small business, Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials. Written from a real-world perspective and based upon years of experience, this beautifully written and illustrated guide takes you step-by-step through the installation of Essentials in a typical small business. It contains the equivalent of nearly 60 A4 pages: not too many, not too little, but just right! The guide is available exclusively from Amazon Kindle and can be found here. A new generation of gaming consoles is hitting the shops in time for Christmas, in the form of the PlayStation 4 from Sony and the Xbox One from Microsoft. Whilst we don't usually cover gaming, these machines are significant in that they illustrate the way in which entertainment and computing are converging. The PlayStation 4 (PS4) launches in the UK on November 29th. It is claimed that it has 10 times the processing power of its predecessor, which will make it the most powerful computing device in many households. This powers a new generation of internet-connected, interactive games and entertainment features. Or does it? Somewhat surprisingly, there's actually quite a lot of things that the PS4 cannot do. Out of the box, it doesn't play Blu-ray movies - you have to update the software in order to do this. Want to play an ordinary audio CD? It doesn't do that. How about playing MP3's then? Nope. Existing games from the PS3, PS2 and PS1 don't work either. Plug in an external USB drive for more storage? Not supported. Connect to a home DLNA network for serving? Nah. Existing peripherals (controllers, headsets and such) don't work either. A more comprehensive list can be found on their North American PS4 site at http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/10/30/ps4-the-ultimate-faq-north-america/ It is not unreasonable that Sony wants you to buy new stuff rather than use existing items. After all, they are in this business to make money. Some of the issues could be addressed in software updates. But some of the decisions (no support for audio CDs and MP3s for instance) are because they want you to subscribe to their online streaming services. In the not so very distant future, physical items such as CDs and DVDs are set to vanish and the PS4 pre-dates these developments. Interestingly, Microsoft's Xbox One, which launches on November 22nd, still does support most of these features. It will be interesting to see which one has read the market correctly. Microsoft shipped the latest version of Windows on October 17th. Known as Windows 8.1, it is not really a new version at all. Rather, it is Windows 8 with what would have been called a Service Pack in days gone by. It is intended to improve the overall experience of using Windows 8, plus fix various problems and things which people simply didn't like. New computers in the shops will have it installed at this stage; for existing Windows 8 users it is a free upgrade from the Windows Store. For testing purposes we installed a full copy on a brand new machine. Depending on the speed of your internet connection, getting Windows 8.1 may take a little while as it is several GBytes in size - not too bad on a fibre connection but could be a couple of hours on a slow broadband connection. The actual installation process itself depends upon the speed of the computer and whether you are doing an upgrade or a clean install. One thing to watch out with the latter is that the installation goes out of its way to give the impression that you need a Microsoft account or, failing that, an email address to sign-in with. In fact you don't, and by being persistent you can get past it. If you are in a business or school environment you may not want to be messing with Microsoft accounts and such. Given that the version number has only gone from 8.0 to 8.1 there aren't, as you might expect, many differences. At one stage Microsoft were touting the return of the Start Button. Well, it is back, but all it does is take you to the Start Screen and there is still no Start Menu (you still need something like Classic Shell for this): Having said that, the Start button is very useful if you right-click it. This brings up all sorts of useful stuff - see the screen shot above.
Other than that, there's not much. The full-screen Apps have now been tweaked so you can run two side-by-side. Some of them are quite pretty, but the whole concept is still daft to most people. There are additional personalisation options for the Start Screen and lock screens. Er, and that's about it. Microsoft have used this opportunity to tweak a few things here and there. There's certainly nothing wrong with Windows 8.1, but nor is there anything to particularly get excited about either. If you like the Windows 8 approach, this is more of the same. And if you don't, this won't convince you! Western Digital have introduced their first file servers. That is, conventional file servers that run Windows Server, along the lines of those sold by Dell, HP, IBM, Fujitsu etc. Earlier in the year the introduced the highly regarded Sentinel DX 4000; this did run Microsoft software but was configured as a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device (see http://ctacs.weebly.com/1/post/2012/10/how-much-but-at-least-its-available-for-sale.html). The new servers are the DS 5100 and DS 6100. They look remarkably like the DX 4000, in fact it appears to be exactly the same case. But inside there is more oomph; both use Intel Xeon processors, the CPU of choice for file servers, and can hold up to 16GB RAM and 16TB of storage. The operating system is Microsoft's Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials; this is the latest version of Server 2012 but features a simplified interface to make it more friendly to a small business. It is also restricted to 25 users and 50 devices, although this is not an issue in the sort or organisation being targeted by Microsoft and Western Digital. As with the Sentinel DX 4000, the kit is not exactly cheap. The DS 5100 with 8GB RAM and 4TB storage is £1918, whereas the DS 6100 has 16GB and 16TB storage and costs £3418. This makes them about 1/3rd more expensive than comparably specified Dell kit, although they are a lot cuter. It's hard to believe, but Microsoft's unbeloved Vista operating system is now 6 1/2 years old, making it older than Windows XP was at the time of Vista's launch in January 2007. But the years have not been particularly kind to Vista which is now on life-support, given that Microsoft ended mainstream support for it in October 2012. At this stage, only about 5% of computers still use it. Vista had a difficult birth. Microsoft usually releases new versions of Windows in the Autumn, as this is the busiest time of the year for new PC sales. But new computers with Vista pre-installed went on sale at the end of January, normally a quiet time following the New Year sales. Retailers were not impressed with the timing, particularly if they had old stock to sell. Vista immediately gained a reputation for poor performance, as it seemed to have more demanding system requirements than Windows XP, so much so that Microsoft continued to allow XP to be sold on low-end laptops for several years thereafter, particularly on the new netbooks that were then coming into fashion. The problem was that many cheap computers were simply under-specified with some laptops, for example, being sold with just 512MB RAM (yes, I know, mobile phones have more than that these days). Stuff such a laptop with a top-heavy anti-virus program and the junk that manufacturers cannot resist installing and it was a recipe for disaster. In fact, subsequent testing revealed that on a correctly specified computer Vista would usually outperform Windows XP, but by then the damage was done. I recently had to revitalise some Windows Vista laptops - quite unusual, can't immediately recall the last time I had to do this! It was quite an interesting experience. For instance, the customer wanted the latest version of Internet Explorer (10) installed, but it is not available for Vista so it had to be Internet Explorer 9 instead. This wouldn't install until Vista Service Pack 2 was installed first, plus it then needed another important update applying. About 1/2 dozen reboots later and it was running (in contrast, Chrome and Firefox don't have these sort of restrictions, which seem to be imposed by Microsoft for marketing rather than good technical reasons). There were several other popular programs that wouldn't run either, including Office 2013. In some ways it was sad to see how poorly Vista is being treated in its old age. Whilst never a fan, I have to state that I never encountered a single problem on a computer that could reasonably be attributed to Vista as such. Strictly speaking, the far more successful and acclaimed Windows 7 is really only Vista with a lick of paint and a few tweaks - think of it as Vista 2. Don't believe me? Bring up a command prompt on the two systems and type VER to display the real Windows version number... Windows 8 may have generated a huge yawn (or a huge "What on earth is that about?") when it launched last year, but that has not stopped Microsoft pressing ahead with the next release, imaginatively named Windows 8.1 and which is available as from October 17th. As might be expected given the version number, the differences are relatively minor. The much lamented Start button makes a return - sort of, as it merely takes you to the Start Screen rather than a proper Start Menu. The Start Screen itself now has the ability to easily display your own choice of wallpaper as a background. The computer can now be set to boot directly to the Desktop, avoiding the Start Screen altogether. Internet Explorer moves to version 11. There are a couple of tweaks to searching, SkyDrive and in a few other areas. And that's about it. Windows 8.1 is available as a free downloadable upgrade to existing Windows 8 users from October 17th. From the following day, it should be available on new computers on sale in stores. It's not going to set the world alight, but offers some minor improvements for those who like what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows 8. Microsoft's Surface was launched alongside Windows 8 last October. It is a bit like an iPad, but runs a special version of Windows known as Windows RT and comes with a keyboard as standard (the cover cleverly doubles as a keyboard). It also comes with Office 2013 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). It is beautifully made, with a light but strong magnesium case. Made for Microsoft by a company called Pegatron, it's actually a very nice piece of kit. Problem is, not many people want to buy it. It is said that Microsoft's forecast was for sales of 2 million in the first 3 months; in reality, it shipped around 400,000 in the first 5 months. By way of comparison, Apple sold 14 million iPads in that same quarter. Despite a price cut to £399, sales are reported as very slow. But Microsoft are not giving up. For educational users, the price has now been slashed to £199 in the UK and $199 in the USA. In addition, Microsoft have given away 10,000 units to US schools. The aim of this is to help kick-start the market; at $199 it is less than half the price of an iPad. The UK price of £199 is perhaps less compelling, but still generating interest in some educational circles. Question is: what happens next? Does this indicate that Microsoft are pulling out and simply clearing stock? Or maybe getting rid of stock prior to the launch of a new model (perhaps one that can more easily connect to networks)? Will the price for regular consumers - the sort of people who shop in John Lewis and PC World (the few retailers that sell it) - also fall to £199 in a couple of months? At £199 or less it starts to become an impulse purchase, appealing paradoxically to those who don't understand its limitations as well as those who do but can live with them. It will be interesting to see what happens next! Windows 8 is one of those 'love it or hate it' type of products. In terms of performance and features, it has a lot going for it. Many of the things which were annoying in previous versions of Windows have been put right. It starts up more quickly than Windows 7. Even on modest hardware, it performs smoothly and responsively. What's not to like? Well, mainly the big thing which has changed - the user interface, now referred to as the Modern Interface rather than Metro (but we'll continue to refer to it as Metro for now). This article is about how to fix/workaround some of the annoying new features. The Metro Interface The bad news is that you can't really disable as it is so integral to the operation of Windows 8. On a touchscreen computer it works quite well, but on ordinary screens (that is, 99% of them) it's a joke. But you don't have to use it any more than you need to. Click the Desktop tile or press the Windows key and you are back to something a bit more familiar, which is what most people do. However, given that you will see the thing quite a lot, you may want to remove the clutter of the dozens of tiles and give it a minimalist look. Simply right-click a tile and then from the bottom of the screen choose Unpin from Start. The applications aren't deleted in any way, just removed from the Start Screen. A few minutes of doing this and things will look a lot better. Restore the Start Menu Bizzarely, Windows 8 doesn't have a Start Menu, thus making it hard to find things. To put one back you will need a third party utility. There are plenty of these about. The best ones have to be paid for, but there are free ones as well. Some of them have peculiarities, but if you are missing the Start button badly then they are worth checking. A free, popular one is Classic Shell; find it at http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ Not So Charming The corners of the screen on a Windows 8 have significance - move the mouse cursor into one and things happen. For instance, moving to the bottom right-hand corner will cause the so-called 'Charms' to be displayed. You'll probably find all sorts of things popping up all over the place during the normal course of using the computer and it's incredibly annoying. Fortunately, you can switch it all off using the Classic Shell program mentioned above. Make the Desktop Usable How do you find your various documents folders in Windows 8? The answer: with difficulty. There is no Start Menu and hence no options for Documents, Music and Photos. One solution is to use the Desktop; however, the default Desktop in Windows 8 is rather barren so it is necessary to first populate it. To do so, right-click on it and choose Personalise, followed by Change Desktop Icons. Place ticks against Computer, User's Files, Recycle Bin and Control Panel. Then click OK. How Do I Shut it Down? When Windows 8 was designed, it seems to have been assumed that we'd all be using tablets or laptops by the time it came out. There is no particular need to shutdown a tablet (this concept will be familiar to iPad users), so the option to do so is deliberately obscure in Windows 8. For the record, what you have to do is move the mouse into the right-hand corner of the screen so the Charms appear, click on the wheel-thing (Settings), click on Power and choose Shut Down (obvious, eh?). However, it is possible to create an icon on the Desktop to turn the computer off. To do so: right-click the Desktop and choose New Shortcut. In the box type C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /S /F /T 2 and click Next followed by Finish. If you don't like the look of the icon, right-click it and choose Properties. Click Change Icon. You will receive an error message - click OK to ignore it and carry on to choose an icon that you like the look of. What's Happened to Skype? If you're an existing Skype user, the initial signs are encouraging: there is a Skype button on the Windows 8 Metro screen so all you have to do is is enter your Skype ID and password and you are in business, right? Wrong. The first thing that will happen is that you will be prompted to download and install a new version. To do this you need a Microsoft ID; if you are a Hotmail user then you are okay, else you will need to create one. This involves the usual 20 questions and trying to guess the squiggley letters (glyphs) to "prove that you are not a robot". Bottom line: what should take a minute or two can quickly become half-an-hour and you end up with yet another email address and password to remember. But there is a better way: simply head to www.skype.com, click Downloads and click the 'Get Skype for Windows Desktop' button. The Free, Hidden Anti-Virus Program A Windows computer needs an anti-virus program. When you buy a new computer, it normally comes with a trial version of something, maybe McAfee for example. This will work for a couple of weeks but then you need to create Yet Another Account and pay for it with a credit card. Many will be happy to do so, but it's not necessary. It turns out that Windows 8 already has a perfectly good free anti-virus program included - they just don't go out of their way to tell you. It's from Microsoft themselves and called Windows Defender (it's a renamed version of their Security Essentials and not the old program of that name). All you need to do is uninstall the trial version of McAfee/Norton/whatever; you will eventually get a message in the Windows Action Center saying that no anti-virus program is running and it will let you activate Windows Defender. Job done! Finally If you don't like the look and feel of Windows 8, the tricks and techniques described here will give you the best of both worlds: a computer that looks like Windows 7 but with the performance and benefits of the latest technology. |
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