Author Archives: intunedin

Troubleshooting Windows 8 Hyper-V Networking

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Today I experienced a weird issue after installing the Hyper-V role on a Windows 8 client, during which the network adapter model changed, a phantom NIC appeared,in the Hyper-V UI and my VM failed to connect to the network. There were also issues when trying to create a new Virtual Switch, but thankfully it was something that a quick search on the Intel site turned up a few suggestions.

The system has an Intel DH67CL desktop board installed, and the physical NIC is the Intel 82579V (aka V), but after Hyper-V was installed and configured it started reporting itself as the 82579LM (aka LM), which then meant that the Virtual Switch in Hyper-V wasn’t letting the client connect to the network. The first sign of this was that the VM wasn’t able to pick up an IP address via DHCP, and attempting to disable and enable the NIC did not improve the situation.

Going back into Hyper-V Manager, the Virtual Switch settings gave me a choice of using either the the V or LM NIC, but device manager only showed that I had LM. Uninstalling the hardware through device manager and rescanning made the NIC reappear as the V variant. Hmmm, maybe things weren’t going to be as simple to resolve as I expected. Unfortunately I didn’t get a screenshot until after I had resolved the issue, but here’s how it should look.

Virtual Switch

Thankfully the Intel site revealed what I was after in the second search screen, which was a utility for resolving this exact issue where the non-volatile memory on the NIC was reporting the wrong hardware, apparently something that is more frequent under Windows 8. This machine has been running Windows 8 for an extended time period without issue, so it really seems enabling Hyper-V was the trigger for this.

Intel Search Results

I grabbed the download from the Intel site, the utility description was as follows…

This utility resolves an issue where during system resume, the Intel® 82579V Gigabit Ethernet PHY Network Connection erroneously reports the device id as an Intel® 82579LM Gigabit Ethernet Controller Network Connection, resulting in a Windows* Code 10 error and loss of network connection.
Not all systems with the Intel 82579V Network connection will see this problem. Systems using Microsoft Windows* 8 are more susceptible to the issue.
If you experience this error, Intel recommends that you update the non-volatile memory for your network connection by downloading and running the NVM Update Utility.
Three versions of the utility are available to support three different operation systems (Windows 32 bit; Windows 64 bit; DOS).

Steps to run the update tool:
1. Download the utility.
3. Open a command prompt window with administrator privileges
2. Select the utility in the directory or folder based on the operating system installed
a. 32-bit Windows use the utility in the Win32 directory
b. 64-bit Windows use the utility in the Win64e directory
c. DOS use the utility in the DOS directory
4. Run the executable file from the common prompt
5. The NVM image will be updated. Reboot the computer for best results.

Compressed Folders

Obviously I needed the 64 bit version, how else would I be running Hyper-V! Assuming I needed to run this as an admin, it was time for Windows Key + X to let me launch an elevated command prompt with ease.

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Running the command in verbose mode indicated that a machine restart was required, and voila – after a reboot everything worked as planned.

Admin

Of course, I wasn’t satisfied, I went back to the Intel site for their update utility after discovering my network drivers were a year old, so why not update them. And the graphics driver. And the audio driver. Now the scary piece of all of this… it’s my long running Media Center machine. If you aren’t familiar with the site, take a look here. For those of you who are Media Center users you know that I’ve broken several of the golden rules in regards to deploying extra roles and updating drivers with disregard to system stability, but that’s what System Restore and backups are for.

Intel Update Center

In case you were wondering, the VM that I moved over to this machine is for Threat Management Gateway, which I primarily run as a caching solution. There is a bit of hardware juggling going on at home at the moment, which necessitated this move, but I’ll drill into this in a future post.

Adding Windows Intune To The CIE

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With last week’s update from CIE 4.1 to 4.5, the Office 365 based version added support for Yammer and CRM Online, moving into a position of having scenario elements that the VM based version doesn’t offer just yet. One of the elements that is still missing though is the incorporating of Windows Intune into the scenarios.

This is something that isn’t all that difficult to do, depending on how complex you want to make it, but for the sake of keeping things simple the following approach gives you an easy way to give incorporate Windows Intune without having to worry about resetting the client machine or tenant for each delivery. Let’s start with my preferred client for showing Windows Intune on a non-traditional PC – Windows RT.

Why Windows RT? First of all, it replicates much of the look and feel that the Windows 8 Enterprise clients display, so it’s another opportunity to highlight the new UI and various hints and tips for navigating. It also allows the use of the Windows Store App, rather than the web based Company Portal. You can also easily hook a Windows RT device to a projector, many locations don’t have a visualiser to allow the projection of phone devices onto a larger screen, so this way everyone gets to see it before they get a chance to try it. You can use your own Windows RT device knowing that your own information is safe in your own profile while the attendees browse through whatever is in the user profile you provide them.

Alternatively, if you have an iOS device it’s easy enough to enroll those too, and you may even have a volunteer from the attendees who wants to add their own device. Just make sure you remove their device at the end of the session, otherwise someone could accidentally remote wipe it in a future session. Not a good thing to have occur.

Why not just use one of the Windows 8 laptops or tablets that is in use during the session? There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that if you are doing locally hosted deliveries of the CIE, the clients are going to have the SCCM client installed, and you probably won’t have time between sessions to address this. Also, by using a Windows RT device, it isn’t going to be a core part of the CIE delivery, and it will be light enough to pass around the room for people to try.

How do you weave the Windows Intune story into the CIE? My opinion on this is that it needs to be incorporated into the first scenario – Get A Head Start. This is where the mobile device discussion normally takes place, so it’s a natural fit. Don’t dwell on the management side of Windows Intune, instead focus on the client side UI, as it’s the user experience that matters during a CIE.

First of all, for the sake of consistency, brand the Windows Intune tenant as Contoso. Because you aren’t going to be doing a complete integration of the two environments, you only need a single user tenant for the purpose of the demonstration. This means that it’s easier to just wear the cost of a single user annual subscription, rather than continually recreate a trial tenant when it expires. This will still allow you to add up to 5 device, so it’s not really going to be a limitation in a simulated environment like this.

The steps for adding a Windows RT device to a Windows Intune tenant are quite simple, here are some screenshots to get you started. First of all, search for Company Applications in settings.

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This will shoot you back to the desktop, where you will be rewarded with a UAC prompt for Company Applications. It’s from Microsoft, so of course it’s trustworthy…

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The next step is adding your Windows Intune sign in details and password, and when prompted for the management server, you will need to enter manage.microsoft.com.

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Once this information has been verified you will be provided with a link to the web based listing on the Windows Store.

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Click on View in Windows Store. It’s almost like they read my mind – they have branded the sample page with Contoso! What a coincidence, especially considering it could have been NorthWind Traders, TailSpin Toys, and many of our other fictitious friends.

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Install the App, which won’t take long as it’s quite small.

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Once installation is complete, launch the Company Portal from the Start Screen.

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Time to sign in again, this time through the Company Portal App

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At this point you are ready to enroll the device against your account.

Screenshot (6)

Success – you are now logged in and able to install Windows RT apps from your Windows Intune storage or via deep links to the Windows Store.

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Here you can see a deep link to the Remote Desktop App on the Windows Store.

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That’s a really quick overview, and ignores setting up the Windows Intune tenant and publishing some Windows RT Apps, but that wasn’t the goal of today’s post. Maybe it’s something that will be topic of a future post…

Windows RT In The CIE (Sung To The Tune Of R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.)

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The Customer Immersion Experience (CIE) is an important part of Microsoft’s strategy to get customers to see how their latest technologies work together, from a scenario driven approach rather than just focusing on the features and benefits of individual products. One of the challenges that Microsoft faces is that most people haven’t seen how well integrated these solutions are, and the CIE helps to address this.

While there is no official support for Windows RT devices in the CIE at this point in time, there are a few things that can be shown to help drive the Windows devices story, these are the latest Mail and Lync apps, as well as both of the included versions of Internet Explorer. There are a few things that need to be taken into account before including Windows RT, and I’ll highlight these below.

Before I go any further, I need to mention that Windows RT devices shouldn’t be used by a CIE attendee as their primary device, instead it can be passed around with a different user account to the personas on the Windows 8 devices. You can also hook them up to the projector to show a mobility scenario, while the attendees can follow what you are doing. The reason why you shouldn’t use a Windows RT device is the same reason why someone using a MacBook, for example, would be a problem. You will have users with different sets of capabilities on their devices, which will impact the experience that all in the room will have.

First of all, because the CIE uses a self signed certificate, you will need to import the certificate into the Windows RT device. While many might not like that Windows RT has a traditional desktop that can be easily accessed, the ability to go into the certificates snap-in in the MMC to import the certificate into the appropriate store makes life easier for those with Windows skills.

I’ve previously had someone mention that they prefer the way iOS devices handle self-signed certificates – they don’t give any warnings about security implications at all, those of us in the real world, where risks need to be minimised, I’ll take stronger security any day of the week. In a production environment the use of self-signed certificates should be limited, so I don’t really see this as a major pain to deal with on a day to day basis.

If you try to connect to the Exchange Server inside of the CIE environment from within the Mail app, it will alert you to the need for the certificate to be imported. While it may not exactly be a user friendly message that it presents, it at least presents enough information to get you started.

Once the certificate is imported, the Mail app will connect to Exchange, but you will need to make sure that you tell the mail app to bring in more than two weeks of mail to get it to show all of the messages. Not a hard thing to do from the Settings Charm, but an easy thing to overlook. You will need to use the Mail app as there is no native Outlook client available on Windows RT at the time of writing, despite there being ongoing rumours about it’s coming availability, something Microsoft has not confirmed.

If you haven’t already installed the Lync app from the Store, sign in using a Microsoft account. Like Outlook, there is no Lync desktop application for Windows RT, so you need to use the Lync app. The Windows Store apps aren’t normally installed and configured on the Windows 8 devices, so this gives the opportunity for people to see both the Mail and Lync apps running.

You also need to be aware of the Office 2013 applications that are preinstalled are not the same bits that are installed on the Windows 8 devices, so you won’t be able to utilise capabilities such as the DRM or Excel PowerView scenarios.

You can, however, show a great deal of Office Web Apps, Excel Web Services, and Dynamics CRM, for example, through either of the Internet Explorer versions that are included. Be careful of going to any SharePoint sites that still have a dependency on Silverlight, as Windows RT doesn’t include support for it, even though it does include Adobe Flash support.

That’s just a quick overview of some of the things you can do with Windows RT in a CIE environment, and how to configure it, but if you want more details on how to configure everything in a step by step I’ll happily oblige.

Hardware Essentials For Your Surface Pro

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In the growing anticipation of the local launch of the Surface Pro, I’ve put together a list of items you may want to add to the your accessory arsenal to maximise your productivity. One of the downsides of downsized devices is that it can compromise some of the things that help you get the most from your new purchase.

Type Cover

As I’ve previously mentioned in my article on the Surface, moving from a Touch Cover to a Type Cover dramatically improves the typing experience. The colourful Touch Covers do attract attention while you are in public, so be prepared for questions if you want to go down this path. My recommendation is to skip the Touch Cover, and spend a few extra dollars on the Type Cover. If you already have a Touch Cover, give it to somebody as a gift, you won’t use it again after buying a Type Cover.

USB 3.0 Hub

I’m not going to call out specific brands or models, instead I’ll focus on what you need when your device has a single USB 3.0 port – a USB 3.0 hub. There are plenty of choices out there in terms of cost and number of ports, your usage requirements will be what determines the right choice. Another important factor is the size if you are going to be throwing it in your travel kit.

USB 3.0 To Gigabit Ethernet Adapter

A previous encounter with an Acer S7 left me disappoint with the included choice of an ASIX AX88772B based USB 2.0 to 100Mb/s Ethernet adapter. 100Mb/s Ethernet only uses about a third of the real world throughput that USB 2.0 is capable of, which is still much lower than the throughput of Gigabit Ethernet. That kicked off an investigation into USB 3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet adapters. There didn’t seem to be too many choices, most of them based on ASIX’s latest AX88179, so I settled for  the following item from Startech.

Startech
USB 3.0 To Gigabit Ethernet – note the blue connector

While it only gets about half of the throughput that GbE is capable of, that’s still 5-6 faster than 100Mb/s Ethernet, and much faster than most WiFi offerings that are available today. For casual usage you won’t really notice a difference between the built in wireless capabilities of the Surface Pro and GbE, but as soon as you need to copy down some ISOs, application installs or media files, the performance improvements will make it worthwhile.

I had to go to the SIIG website to grab the latest drivers in hopes of addressing an issue where some websites could not get resolved. I had read about this issue when researching what to buy, so it didn’t involve a great deal of trial and error, just a small driver to download and install.

USB 3.0 Hub With Gigabit Ethernet

I’ve ordered a SIIG unit, and can’t report back on it’s throughput yet, but this could turn out to be a winner. While multifunction devices do have benefits from a device consolidation perspective, I’m always wary of where the compromises are being made. One of the obvious ones in this case is that all data is being pushed over one USB 3.0 port, which could be a disadvantage on a PC with two or more USB 3.0 ports, but it’s a non-issue with the single port on the Surface Pro.

USB 3.0 Ethernet Hub
USB 3.0 Hub with Gigabit Ethernet – lots of blue and an ethernet port

The other thing to be wary of is that you have put two eggs in one basket, so if something goes wrong, all connected devices will suffer along with network connectivity. If the device works as expected, and doesn’t have any major shortcomings, I’ll consider getting a second because I don’t see the need for a device like this diminishing any time soon.

USB 3.0 Docking Station

Again, there are a few choices in this area, but due to the success I and others have had with Targus devices I have to give them the nod. Some of the factors that should influence your choice are as follows…

1. Has it passed Windows 8 logo testing? While this is not an absolute guarantee that everything will work perfectly 100% of the time. However, I place more faith in hardware vendors who do testing as it provides long term advantages to the PC ecosystem due to several years of working with OEM vendors that had to get their PCs through Vista and Windows 7 logo testing to meet certain technical requirements.

2. Do the video outputs meet your requirements? The world used to be simple when it came to video out, but now displays have a variety of physical connectors which they may possess – HDMI, VGA, DVI, DisplayPort, as well as the different sized variations of some of these.

3. Is it Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet? Copying substantial amounts of content from your network can be frustrating, Gigabit makes it less so.

Full Sized Mouse And Keyboard

This is where personal preference is going to play the biggest role, and many people already have their favorites. The inbuilt kick stand of the Surface Pro means that you have flexibility with where you can place the device, but the fixed angle means that you might need to place it somewhere that gives the best result from a comfort and light reflection consideration. This means that in some environments you may need to move the display further away than is comfortable in order to see what is on screen.

Microsoft has included a tablet stand with their Wedge Mobile Keyboard which doubles as a keyboard cover to give you more flexibility with stand angles, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as your permanent keyboard if you have space for a full sized keyboard. Full sized keys and a number pad are far from luxuries in my book, but if you are fine with a smaller keyboard, take a look at the Wedge.

Wedge Keyboard

Wedge Mobile Keyboard and the included stand/cover.

Microsoft’s Wedge Touch Mouse and Sculpt Touch Mouse have both been in my test environment for a few months now, and for my usage the nod has to go to the Sculpt. It’s larger and more comfortable in my hand, and the tactile feedback while scrolling is a nice touch for those of us who mourn the loss of clicking scroll wheels.

Sculpt

Sculpt Touch Mouse

The Wedge Touch Mouse is a completely different beast altogether. If you use it in public, it will get attention due to design. The four way touch scrolling is very useful in some applications, and it’s size means that it can be carried around with adding too much extra bulk at all.

Wedge

Wedge Touch Mouse

USB 3.0 Extension Cable

This may seem like an odd recommendation, but the angled sides of the Surface Pro can be problematic with some USB devices, I’ve experienced this first hand with a Windows To Go drive from Kingston. In this scenario Microsoft does not recommend using a USB 3.0 Hub, instead the extension cable is preferred option.

USB 3.0 Extension

A Webcam

Yes, the Surface Pro already includes two webcams, but in your home or office environment you probably want something isn’t dependent on the angle and location of the Surface Pro. This also gives you the ability to upgrade to something with better video quality and better handling of things such as low light conditions.

LifeCam Cinema

LifeCam Cinema – supports up to 720p, but hamstrung by Office 365 Wave 14

I’ve been using the Microsoft LifeCam Cinema for a while now, and haven’t had the need to upgrade to the LifeCam Studio due to some of the video restrictions placed on Lync in Office 365 Wave 14. Wave 15 removes these limits, so stepping up a level is something I will do sooner rather than later.

LifeCam Studio

LifeCam Studio – supports up to 1080p, more than ready for Office 365 Wave 15

Windows 8 App Updates–Is It Time For You To Retire Outlook?

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The new updates for Mail, Calendar, People and Messaging have started trickling through, so it prompts the question – do Windows RT users rejoice because Outlook is no longer needed? No.

While I had previously posted that the messaging from Microsoft around Outlook on Windows RT had turned into “Do you really need Outlook, just improvements to the free apps?”. While these improvements to the free apps will help reduce absolute reliability on Outlook, unfortunately there is a great deal more to be desired. Drag and drop of messages into folders would be a nice start…

Anyway, I was expecting these updates to be bigger in scope and synchronised with the Office 365 release, and I was wrong on both counts. I really want to use these apps without pining for Outlook, but alas, it is not that time yet.

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Is this (the shape of) your next PC?

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Over the last few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to get up close and personal with a few too many Windows 8 tablets and laptops, and there’s been a form factor variation that seems to be a winner in the long term, and that’s the dockable tablet. The main one I have been able to spend a few weeks with is the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2, but there was a brief dalliance with the HP ElitePad and some of it’s different expansion sleeves.

What’s so special about this form factor? The dock is really the key differentiator, as it  acts as the stand as well as providing HDMI, USB, ethernet and audio ports. Docking is a simple process, and everything lights up once you are connected. No fumbling with power and USB cables, which makes it very user friendly. Here’s an image from Lenovo which highlights the ports that are available.

ThinkPad-Tablet-2-PC-Back-View-with-Dock-9L-940x475

Through Bluetooth or USB you can connect your preferred mouse and keyboard, have your headset connected, as well as a wired network connection to help out your non-wired neighbours. It’s a great solution, it would be great to see the dock size be standardised for a vendor so that it could survive at least one generation of tablet updates.

One of the issues with alternate dockable tablet form factors is that some essentially dock into a keyboard that may just have a power connector and a single USB port. This means that in order to keep the user experience simple you would need to look at something like the Targus USB 3.0 solutions I have used previously. The last thing you want is for a user to plug in all of the required connectors whenever they are at their desk, with the cables protruding from all over the device.

An unanswered question is what types of docking solutions may be in the works to take advantage of the extra connectors that the Surface Pro has. If Microsoft is serious about Surface Pro in the enterprise, then the idea of specific docking solutions, by Microsoft or other vendors, will be something that is needed. All I can say for now is watch this space.

The Lenovo and HP devices are currently Atom based, 32 bit, and limited to 2GB of RAM, so they aren’t going to be desktop replacements, but over time there should be more advanced hardware in these small form factors, without compromising the long battery life these devices have. After my hands on time with the Lenovo I can really see them challenging the current generation of Windows RT devices, including Surface.

Why the challenge to Windows RT? Well, the main benefits of Windows RT – low power consumption, lighter devices with longer battery life also apply to the latest Atom SoCs from Intel. These devices have an ace up their sleeve in that they are x86 compatible, so your existing 32 bit Windows applications should continue to run, including the different flavours of Office. Yes, this means that you can run Outlook. Real Outlook. Sounds like a winner to me.

Targus To The Rescue

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Recently my colleague Loryan Strant aka The Cloud Mouth wrote a post about using one of the Targus USB 3.0 docking stations with his Surface Pro (purchased in the US during MVP summit, and before you ask, nobody from Microsoft Australia is discussing a local release date yet…). This is the type of usage we normally expect from various docking stations, but the ever shrinking number of ports on devices has made these more of a must have than a nice to have. I had previously used a Toshiba Dynadock both at work and at home, which I wrote about on my old TechNet blog. These were USB 2.0 based, so there were obvious bandwidth limitations to work with.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been involved in a number of events with an ever changing range of Windows 8 laptops, tablets, convertibles, and Ultrabooks. Part of the event was showing Windows 8 and Office 2013, which initially was easy due to one of the machines being a Toshiba Portege Z930 Ultrabook, which includes a full sized HDMI port and a full sized VGA port. This is pretty much as good as it gets when you have to present – two choices, and no adapters required.

Things took a turn for the worse over the next few events, as different devices were swapped in and out of my device kit, none of which included a VGA port, and the rest including a mini or micro HDMI port. Of course I didn’t have the required adapters or cables, nor did the staging company. Not the situation you want to be in with 5 minutes until your session starts.

Thankfully Targus had a booth at this event, and Aditya Soehono supplied me with one of a USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Dual Video Docking Station to use for the duration of the event. With full sized VGA and HDMI ports it was able to get me up and running in a very short time. To say it saved me from disaster is an understatement, so a very big thank you to Targus for their assistance. For anyone looking for these capabilities, as well as something that more devices are missing – a wired Gbe port, as well as two more USB ports, definitely take a look at this.

Targus

For anyone looking at buying a Surface Pro or other Windows 8 device with limited ports, the chances are that something like this is going to be a part of your future at home or the office. It’s probably not something you really want to travel with, that’s where the right adapters and cables have their place, but as a docking solution I highly recommend it.

Windows 8 screen resolution requirements being relaxed

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In a move that I’ve got mixed feelings about, Microsoft has announced that the minimum screen resolution for Windows 8 tablet devices is being lowered to 1024*768 instead of 1366*768. Side by side Windows 8 apps won’t be supported at this lower resolution though, and OEMs who ship these devices need to include a disclaimer along the lines of the following…

“The integrated display resolution of this system is below the threshold for snap, a feature that lets people view two Windows Store apps at the same time. App snapping will work if you attach an external display that supports a screen resolution of 1366 x 768 or higher.”

What’s Not To Like?

This lowers the already criticised consistency of working within Windows 8, and the side by side app capabilities are a big differentiator for Windows tablets in iPad compete situations. Now the matrix of Windows versions and capabilities will need an asterix or two to explain that this feature may not be available on your device.

At a time when higher pixel densities are being promoted by Apple and their Retina display marketing, the new Google Chromebook Pixel, and even the Surface Pro to a lesser degree, taking another step backwards in screen resolution is something I am not a fan of.

What’s To Like?

Most seem to think this is something that is acknowledging the move of Windows 8 to smaller form factors in time for the next holiday season. The value of side by side applications would be reduced in a much smaller form factor, but wouldn’t make the whole concept useless. You would just be much more selective about the apps you use in this manner.

Lower cost devices for emerging market scenarios are another scenario that this could enable, but these devices have an unfortunate habit of sneaking into mature markets, positioned as devices for education or other cost sensitive customers. Yes Intel folk, you know what I’m talking about here.

What I Would Prefer

Oh, that’s easy. I wish the Windows team would implement a fix for all of the applications that just don’t scale well with text size settings. While there have been incremental improvements in each version of Windows, Windows 8 has taken a small detour on this journey. Obviously this is something that is easier said than done, otherwise it would have been addressed a long time ago, but encouraging Windows usage on a higher variety of screen sizes and resolutions is only going to make these issues more apparent.

 

Something Is Growing On My Surface

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And that would be me. I embraced the Surface with a sense of skepticism, knowing in advance the shortcomings of Windows RT versus Windows 8, and the limitations of the included versions of the Office applications, yet it hasn’t been placed in the “pile of questionable hardware devices for testing purposes that my wife wishes I would get rid of”.

What’s Not To Like?

I will deliberately keep this section short, too many articles and conversations on Surface and Windows RT focus on the negatives. There are some traditional Windows applications that I miss, but I’m coping without them. The current Mail/People/Calendar apps do not allow me to work the way Outlook 2013 allows me to, but it has forced me to use these apps more than I would on my Windows 8 based devices. I’m not completely sold on the Video app only allowing me to watch videos in two sizes on screen, neither of which are watching videos in half screen mode while being able to take notes, and the side by side split ratio doesn’t really allow the right balance to be made.

Surface Versus Surface Pro

As I mentioned in my last post, Surface Pro doesn’t fill a gap I have in my existing device line up. That’s not to say that I won’t get one at some point, but for now the combination of a 2012 Sony Vaio Z and the Surface is the combination that works for me at this point in time. The 13 inch screen of the Sony is on the edge of how small a screen I can run at 1920*1080 without using text scaling, which to me defeats some of the purposes of having a higher resolution display. Running the Surface Pro at its native resolution without text scaling is not a great experience due to the small size of the text, and based on empirical data, I assume my eyesight will only get worse, not improve as I get older.

Is Adding Outlook The Right Answer?

Originally I would have given a definitive yes as the answer, but now I’m not so sure. The reason my views are changing is that I already spend too much time on the Windows desktop on Windows RT as it is, and adding an ARM compiled version of Outlook 2013 would only make that balance worse. Instead Microsoft needs to deliver major improvements to the existing Mail and Calendar apps. I won’t comment on the People app because I haven’t really spent enough time in it to pass judgment. The Office 2013 desktop applications don’t provide enough of a touch friendly interface to enable them to be first class touch applications in Windows 8 and Windows RT, so I don’t see an Outlook 2013 port as the real solution, just a stop gap measure.

All Hail The Windows Desktop

This somewhat contradicts what I wrote above, and is a polarising topic, but there are some people who think that access to the Windows desktop is a weakness of Windows RT, but for me it provides comfort and easy access to advanced settings and features I need access to. Snap, PowerShell, adding certificates, Internet Explorer presented the way I am used to it, applying local policies, and more. I accept that I am part of a small percentage of the audience for Windows RT devices, but without it I doubt I would bother taking my Surface around as secondary device.

Connected Standby

I discovered an interesting side effect of the Surface’s connected standby – it keeps my internet sharing active on my Nokia 920. In comparison, my other laptops lose the connection when sleeping, meaning I have to start internet sharing after waking the laptops. This isn’t normally a big problem, but recently the only power socket in a hotel room that I could use where the phone charger would fit was in the bathroom, so I had to walk between rooms to reset connections until I connected my Surface.

Battery Life

Surface doesn’t have the best battery life of the current Windows RT devices, but it’s a device I don’t have to charge daily. Even recent usage on a flight between Sydney and Los Angeles with occasional use when I needed to write some notes or update a to do list, and watching a few training videos, barely made an impact on the battery life. Normally after this flight the first thing I look for is a power source so that I can recharge and get back online, but this time round it was a more leisurely affair.

User Profiles

I have a user profile set up on my Surface that connects into the Microsoft CIE environment, so I can happily hand the device around during CIE deliveries so that attendees can experience Surface without me having to worry about them reading my email, updating my Facebook status etc,

Kickstand

The lengthy flight from Sydney to Los Angeles highlighted some of the issues that can occur with the kickstand. There were a few times I pushed the Surface too far back and the kickstand slipped off the rear edge of the tray. The Surface didn’t fall, the gap was too small, but still something to be wary of in other situations. The single angle of the kickstand wasn’t a problem for me, but if the person in front of me had been fully reclined, then it would have been an issue. Balancing on your legs can be problematic, except maybe for someone long femurs that are parallel to the ground.

Type Cover

If you have a Surface and don’t have the Type Cover, you really should get one. While initial impressions of the Touch Cover are usually favourable, they are normally favourable to it not being worse than it is. The Type Cover keys have travel, you know when you have hit a key and your touch typing will be better. As a long time Windows user I know Windows keyboard combinations, and Windows RT supports these Windows keyboard combinations. Using a Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad was another thing that frustrated me, it just didn’t work the way I wanted it to.

Device Compatibility

Okay, this isn’t perfect but overall it’s been pretty damn good. I tried the USB to Ethernet adapter from an Acer Aspire S7, and my USB 3G modem, and Windows RT doesn’t like either of them,  Otherwise I’ve been connecting different printers, mice, keyboards and other Bluetooth devices with great success. Having a single USB port has been problematic for me sometimes, but it has driven the use of additional Bluetooth devices which I’ve had sitting around unused for a while.

BitLocker

Most of my external HDDs and flash drives are encrypted with BitLocker, and Windows RT can access these once the password is entered. There is confusion about the BitLocker capabilities of Windows RT, which are best explained as follows

Internal storage is encrypted with a key applied after you sign in with your Microsoft account. This means that if you haven’t signed in with your Microsoft account the disk is encrypted, but with an open key. This is not a good state to keep your Surface in, so sign in with your Microsoft key. This is handled by the TPM 2.0 capabilities of the device.

The ability to encrypt external drives with BitLocker isn’t available, and this also means that you can’t write to a BitLocker encrypted drive. While it would be nice to be able to write to the drive, the next paragraph shows why it may not be the best option with current generation hardware.

Windows RT can read external drives that have been encrypted with BitLocker, but this is something that is very resource intensive. The image bellow shows the incredibly high CPU utilisation across all four of the Tegra 3 cores while decrypting and copying the content, which is less CPU intensive than encrypting the files on the drive.

BitLocker CPU
Surface’s Tegra 3 CPU usage while copying files from a BitLocker encrypted drive. Ouch!

Security

This is a mixed bag, I like that Windows RT doesn’t blindly accept self signed certificates, and that I can use the same methods inside of Windows to import certificates I choose to trust. Where the story doesn’t hold up as well is that not all of the Windows 8 apps recognise these certificates. The Mail app for example, does use them, and it even tells you they are required. The Lync app, on the other hand, just doesn’t work. The solution here is don’t use self signed certificates apart from in testing or for some very specific scenarios, even if you have worked around their limitations in the past.

Windows Intune Company Portal

The Company Portal app for Windows 8 and Windows RT is the way that Windows Intune users can install new apps that have been published by their administrators. On Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows, these apps are available via a web page. Windows Intune can publish the application from the online service, or it can push users to the Windows Store via a deep link.

Surface Intune

Leverage Your Existing Windows Skills

This is both incredibly useful and incredibly frustrating at times, depending on what you are trying to do. As mentioned in the above, many of the tools and technologies that are available in Windows 8 are available in Windows RT. The frustration comes when you discover some of the subtle and not so subtle differences with Windows RT and the tools or features that you want aren’t there.

Choosing The Right Windows 8 Device

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In the wake of the release of Microsoft’s Surface Pro I’ve been surprised by some of the reviews and reactions, both online and in person. Perhaps the most surprising things I’ve been hearing are from those that are disappointed by the battery life and the free space available, along with those who surprised to find that the Surface Pro isn’t the perfect device for everyone. I’ll address these items in today’s post, as well as what you should take into consideration when choosing the device that is right for you.

Choosing the right computing device is all about choosing the compromises that you are happy with, and I’ll start by saying that at this point the Surface Pro is not a device I’m plannng on purchasing any time soon. Not because I think there is anything inherently wrongwith it , but rather that it doesn’t fill a gap in my current hardware lineup. As a point of reference, my primary laptop is a Sony Vaio Z – i7, 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD, and my secondary or should I say companion device is a Surface, and a fading number three is my third generation iPad.

A S(t)ore Point

First of all, I’ll address the issue of storage on the Surface Pro, as I view these as variations of the same concern/complaint. An installation of Windows 8 and the Office 365 trial take a certain amount of space. If Microsoft used Surface Pro as the opportunity to drastically reduce the footprint of Windows 8 without affecting functionality, all of their OEMs would have cried foul. OEM licensing for Windows is strict in many areas surrounding customisaton, and a non-level playing field would have caused a huge amount of unrest. The criticism of the amount of free disk space is something that needs to be applied to any Windows 8 device with limited storage, rather than being a criticism singling out the Surface Pro. While I can’t see the 64GB Surface Pro serving much more of a purpose than a cheaper option for prize draws, giveaways and an option on the pricing waterfall, those who won’t move it out of areas of high bandwidth connectivity may find it’s limited free storage acceptable.

More Power To You

A similar view needs to be taken of battery life. If somehow Microsoft was able to squeeze out double the battery life from a certain size battery versus other OEMs, some would have been crying foul again. Either Mirosoft would have had access to some new battery or other hardware technologies, or they would have had to use software optimisations that others didn’t have access to. Considering the long term views of laptop battery life as leaving much to be desired, Microsoft could not have waited until the Surface Pro to reveal them. Microsoft could have included a larger battery at the expense of weight, size and usability, trading one complaint for several others. I already have a laptop power supply with a USB charging port built in, and seeing it included with the Surface Pro was a nice touch.

Intel Inside. The Good Kind.

The inclusion of an Intel i5 CPU is a good choice from a balanced feature and performance perspective. Sure, an i7 would have been faster for some things, but the battery life and thermal issues would have been more pronounced. An i3 may have allowed longer battery life, but there are some hardware capabilities that the i3 lacks which mean that the AES operations that BitLocker uses would have been more CPU intensive. Again, it all comes down to tradeoffs. The Sony Vaio Z, as well as a loan unit of the recently released Acer 13.3″ S7, are both i7 based, and both have the high pitched cooling fans kick in more than I like. Cramming an i7 into the Surface Pro would not have been a great idea with today’s CPUs, but no doubt faster and cooler options will be available for use later in the year.

There are other CPU options available from Intel and AMD, including several good Windows 8 device designs based on Atom CPUs, but you are going to make some serious compromises here in terms of performance versus battery life. While Atom performance has increased since the netbook days, and battery life can approach ARM based devices. As well as the tradeoff in CPU performance, you are also limited to 2GB of RAM on these platforms. For some people this will be a showstopper, especially if paired with a slow HDD or slow Flash memory based drive, as can be the case. Why this artificial limitation? Originally it aligned to Microsoft’s Starter editions of Windows, which was licensed to run on limited hardware platforms, effectively creating a new market segment of lower priced options that were less likely to cannibalise higher margin products.

Is 4GB RAM Enough?

For a general purpose PC/Tablet, 4GB of RAM is going to be more than adequate, and combined with an SSD, even if there is some paging it’s not going to be as disruptive as it was back with older, slower mechanical drives. 4GB of fixed memory is a problem for anyone who wants to take advantage of Hyper-V on Windows 8 Pro and run several VMs at once, which I do on my Sony Vaio Z. However, the limited storage on the Surface Pro is going to limit the number of VMs you can run anyway, unless you want to lug around an external USB 3.0 drive. This raises the next area for investigation, the ultra portable compromises you will need to make, which don’t just affect the Surface Pro.

While I would have liked to have seen an 8GB Surface Pro with a 256GB SSD option for the sake of it being a better candidate for Hyper-V, we need to take thermals into account again. Running multiple VMs means a higher CPU load, which will cause the Surface Pro to run warmer with more fan noise. What this is starting to highlight is that a configuration like this would have encouraged usage scenarios that may not have really suited the form factor.

Get Ready To Accessorise

When Apple introduced the MacBook Air, the number of standard ports that weren’t available natively were noted by many. Over time the world of Ultrabooks has adopted this approach, with mini VGA and HDMI connectors and USB ethernet adapters, increasing the number of accessories you need to carry around. Add a USB hub to the mix, potentially a powered one with it’s wall adapter, and this whole ultra portable story isn’t quite as good as it seemed. Maybe going for something slightly larger, and getting a better keyboard instead of some of the weak keyboards on ultraportables, and you may end up with a better computing experience. Of course it won’t look as good though, but hey, if you were doing this to look good, you wouldn’t have read this far.

While the Sony Vaio Z isn’t perfect, it does have full sized GBe, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, VGA and HDMI ports, so adapters aren’t required. The USB ports are too close to each other though, and I rely on USB extension cables more than I like when using wide USB devices. But at least it’s two free USB ports. The Acer S7 has different pros and cons with the USB ports. The pros are that they are further apart and are both USB 3.0. The downside is that the thinner base of the S7 means tha thicker USB devices really need to be used with a USB extension cable. You also lose one of the ports when you use the included USB to Ethernet adapter, which is only 10/100, not GbE. Trying to do network based installs using this approach can be problematic at worst, and slow at best.

Keyboard and Touchpad Considerations

I made the mistake of buying the Sony Vaio Z online without having first tested the keyboard. The minimal travel of the keys, and my constant brushing of the touchpad make me regret this decision sometimes. The other thing you really should check with the keyboards is the key layout, especially things like arrow keys, page up, page down etc, depending on your usage habits. If you are using multiple devices you will find that it can be less frustrating if you choose devices with similar layouts.

Another keyboard issue you need to take into consideration with the Surface and Surface Pro is that neither of the keyboard options provide backlit keys. This isn’t always going to be a problem, but there are some scenarios where it is going to be an issue. I would also strongly encourage the type keyboard with the more traditional keys, it transforms the typing experience on the device.

If you want to use touch gestures on the touchpad, make sure that the touchpad is big enough to support these gestures without the gestures making the touchpad unusable. Going back to the Sony Vaio Z as an example, it supports Windows 8 gestures with recent Synaptics drivers, but it can be frustrating to use because it’s not  a large trackpad. This isn’t an issue on the Acer S7, the touchpad is large, so it’s easy to use the touchpad without triggering unwanted gestures.

Screen Resolution

At the time I was buying I purchased this based on it having the smallest 1080p display and TPM so that I could use it with Windows 7′s DirectAcces capabilities. The Surface Pro now meets this requirement, but I wonder about the usability of the Windows desktop at 1080p on such a small screen. I’m not a fan of the text size scaling capabilities that Windows hasn’t really gotten right after multiple attempts, and in many ways I still view 1080p as a compromise after running 2560*1600 at home for five plus years. Things get interesting when you start working in the Windows 8 apps, where screen resolution is less of an issue, and you don’t necessarily need as high a resolution display. Unfortunately I don’t spend enough time working in these apps for it to be a major factor in my decisions or recommendations, but over time this is something that could become an important factor.

The other factor that I knew would be problematic with the Surface and Surface Pro is the fixed angle kickstand. I learned this almost two years ago when I received an Acer Iconia W500. An interesting device under Windows 7, with way too many compromises, but with the Windows 8 pre-releases installed it was my primary Windows 8 machine for quite a while. I wrote about some of my Windows 8 experiences on my old Microsoft blog, you can read them here, here and here. Windows 8 couldn’t magically fix the design issues of the device, but it did highlight how well the Windows 8 interface could utilise the graphics capabilities of the AMD APU as opposed to getting bogged down by the CPU capabilities.

Touch

I’ve left touchscreen capabilities until last even though they are a major element in Windows 8. Despite what you may think, Windows 8 works incredibly well for non-touch devices. Whether it’s new mouse capabilities that have been added, gestures on the touchpad, or keyboard shortcuts, touch isn’t always the best way to do things. I don’t think Windows 8 laptops need to have touchscreens for all usage scenarios, and before long it won’t be much of a cost consideration. When in laptop mode or on the traditional Windows desktop I don’t use touch much at all, but as soon as I’m in tablet mode or using Windows 8 apps, touch is natural.

Putting It All Together

Hopefully this post has highlighted some of the things you need to take into consideration when choosing an ultraportable laptop, slate or convertible for Windows 8. Thin and light usually means tradeoffs have been made, but only you can decide which tradeoffs are worth it for you. In the rush to go small don’t forget the extras you may need to carry around, such as USB ethernet adapters, mini HDMI to VGA connectors, external storage and USB hubs. These can also add to the cost of the device, as well as replacing the extras that you may lose. Weigh up all the pros and cons, and feel free to ask for help in making a decision.