Technology Ramblings

So was a little surprised this morning - Nov 23 - to see build 17046 of Windows 10 released to Fast Ring & Skip Ahead Insiders considering we are in a holiday week here is the US. Continuing the theme we've seen with the last couple of updates the focus of 17046 was improvements to both Edge and Input methods.  For Edge MS added a feature that I've been used to for years with Chrome and that is auto-form fill for things like addresses.   On the input side there is a new Emoji Panel if your into them and finally there was one Shell update that allows you to navigate directly to UWP app settings right from the start screen vs navigating the settings app.  In addition the build included about 15 fixes. So while the good news is that 17046 was supported on both my AMD based laptop and Intel Atom tablet - the bad news was it's still a slow update - 70 - 80 minutes on laptop and 100+ on tablet. I'm happy to report that the update to 17040 practically eliminated gree

On Nov 16, MS released Windows 10 build 17040 to Fast Ring and Skip Ahead Insiders.   17040 contained some Settings improvements for SDR and HDR along with Touch Keyboard and Writing Pad input improvements with a new gesture control.  And along with some button improvements for Chinese handwriting - contained about 20 bug fixes. Luckily I was able to install 17040 on both my test machines.  My one test laptop is AMD based and due to a bug check problem with 17035 was blocked from receiving it.  At the time of the 17035 release MS announced the block but I was expecting it to be lifted the following day.  Unfortunately it wasn't so never got a chance to run with it.  17040 Lifted that block. Like many test builds - this one again was slow to apply - nearly 90 minutes for my laptop and over 2 hours for my tablet. I will say the touch keyboard improvements seem nice - but I don't do enough of it on my tablet.  Similarly with the handwriting input.  The one place I do handw

It been a while since I've written about the state of data center networking and here are some new trends, products and approaches I'm seeing. First is the topology changes.  New data center networks are based on something called the Spine / Leaf architecture.  The spine is typically made up of a group of very high speed switches that connect to a number of leaf switches at top-of-rack (TOR).  This connectivity creates a 2 tier fabric where each leaf switch connects to each spine node.   In addition to the fabric itself, several legacy Layer 2 protocols like Spanning Tree (STP) are being replaced with Transparent Interconnect Lots of Links (TRILL) or Shortest Path Bridging (SPB).    Many data centers are transitioning to this model as they upgrade gear or begin to make the transition to Software Defined Networking (SDN) by adding overlay network capabilities like VXLAN or NVGRE One design consideration here is insuring that your leaf switches have enough uplink ports

On Nov 8, MS released Windows 10 build 17035 to Fast Ring & Skip Ahead Insiders.    The main focus of this build was on new features for Edge including what MS calls Near Share - a BT based local quick sharing capability, the continued evolution of the Settings area by adding Sound control, and then input improvements from on-screen keyboard and handwriting panel to Japanese Input methods.   Along with these new features where around 35 fixes. MS also added one new feature to it's Store app which is the ability to purchase a limited portfolio of Surface hardware and accessories via the app.  To me just like the ability to purchase Office is long overdue - but at least now it's available.  And with the holiday season coming - why isn't the new xBox One X in there ?   I was only able to install 17035 on one of my test machines as my test laptop runs an AMD CPU and during the release announcement MS noted a bug check issue with AMD based machines and blocked the upda

With both Apple & Microsoft recently releasing their most recent quarterly results - I thought it might be interesting to examine where both companies started, are heading now and how they'll do moving forward.. Both companies trace their lineage back over 40 years now.   Microsoft was founded in April of 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen with Apple following a year later in April of 1976 - with Co-founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne.   Microsoft was all about software with their primary focus on a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8000 while Apple's focus was on the hardware with the Apple 1 computer. Even though Apple went public some 6 years before Microsoft in 1980, Microsoft exploded due to the PC boon and its Windows and Office product lines. For many years MS was the largest company in the world when measured by market capitalization and reached a then record valuation of $618.9B on 12/31/99. But then the dot com bust happened and over the next

On Nov 2 - IDC released their Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker data for Q3 2017. The overall market sold 373.1M units a 2.7% increase over Q3 2016.  Just to give you some perspective that 373.1M I estimate to be 120M+ units more than the entire PC market for 2017.   The top five ranking did not change.    Samsung is still #1 worldwide with 83.3M units sold an increase of 9.5% and a 22.3% market share.   Apple is still number 2 with 46.7M units sold an increase of 2.6% - so pretty much in line with the overall market growth and a 12.5% market share - so about the same as last year. Huawei is still a strong #3 with 39.1M units sold - a 16.1% year over year growth and a 10.5% market share.  Back in my post on Q2 sales, I had predicted that Huawei may surpass Apple for #2, but Apple had a good Q3 with a lot of promotions during the summer. Oppo is #4 with 30.7M units sold - a 19% growth over 2016 and a 8.5% market share Xaiomi is #5 with 27.6M units sold a stagger 102