Technology Ramblings

Back in December of 2013 - I posted an article on the future of Microsoft Exchange.  In the article I asked two questions... 1. Will there be an Exchange 2016 and 2019 ? 2. If so will you implement it in a traditional on-premise configuration ? Back then I said yes and maybe.    For question 1 I was correct, this week MS announced the "first look" at Microsoft Exchange 2016 at the Ignite Conference in May as well as the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) that many top partners and customers utilize to get early builds and prepare for deployment by release. In the official Exchange Team Blog they called out 4 highlights... A new approach to document collaboration that makes it easy to send links and collaborate without versioning issues of attachments Faster and more intelligent search, to help users quickly find what they need in their mailboxes and calendars Significant improvements to eDiscovery search performance and reliability Better extensibility, incl...

Friday - like many I updated one of my Nokia Lumia 635s to Windows 10 TechPreview 2 for Phone.   While some are calling it build 10051 or 10056..the official version after installing is 10.0.12354.56... I was running the previous 9941 build along with many of the additional apps I normally run, so Adobe, Banking Apps, Speedtest, etc etc... The new build showed up as two updates and downloaded and appeared to install fine in about an hour. But I almost immediately noticed some issues.   First the default Mail, Calendar and People apps where missing from the Start screen.  Second, Cortana and in fact search of any kind was not working.  You would get a tactile response from the search icon - but nothing would happen and it you went into Settings and tried to configure Cortana & Search - nothing would happen.  Finally several of the settings categories didn't seem to work correctly or allow activation of specific features.   So I knew something was w...

On March 30, MS released the latest public update to Windows 10 - build 10049.  At this point I am calling Windows 10 feature complete.  I really don't expect to see any new capabilities added to Windows 10 between now and release "sometime this summer" which all tend to agree in most likely late September.   One of the major adds this build was Spartan - MS's eventual replacement for Internet Explorer. More on Spartan below.  As always I loaded 10049 on both a traditional desk and a 8" Atom based tablet. Both installs worked well via Windows update albeit somewhat slower than 10041.  I had a much better experience this time with the tablet than updating from 9926 to 10041.    One thing MS did not correct in 10049 was the mis-packaging/installation of the Mail, People & Calendar apps - which still required a command line uninstall and then reload from the Windows store. One path MS is starting down as a part of the prep for release is up...