Technology Ramblings

Since the announcement of Windows 10 Tech Preview for phones I've been looking forward to seeing how MS was going to move forward with this OS and installed build 9941.12498 on a Nokia Lumia 635 running Cyan Firmware. MS made the install pretty painless.  You download the Windows Insider app from the Store - request a preview build and login with your Microsoft Account - once completed - you go into settings and use the Update Phone settings app to get the build.   It's about a 45 minute process.   You also need to have Preview for Developers app installed as without it many of the Store Apps will not update. But the install easily grabbed all my current settings and when completed my accounts were all there - mail, contacts, calendar were all sync'd up and apps like OneDrive were all working correctly.    I do have to say that MS has improved the overall user experience of synchronizing content and settings based on your MS account.  Even Music &...

So as a part of its Windows 10 strategy MS announced the concept of Universal Apps and this last week released preview editions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint to Windows 10 Tech Preview folks along with an update to build 9935. I've been running the tech preview as a secondary OS on my desktop and as primary on my Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet.  On the Desktop I'm only running the new Universal Office apps - on my tablet I have both Office 2013 and the universal apps. So the good news is at least they can coexist on the same device.   As many of you are aware getting multiple versions of Office to live on the same device was often an exercise in futility. I've really seen not much new with 9935 versus 9926.  The only area I had any challenges with is getting the latest Intel HD graphics drivers to install on my Venue Pro.  They fail with a compatibility error which means there are probably some Dell mods that have been made the impact the generic Intel driver....

Yesterday I loaded the latest build of Windows 10 Tech Preview - 9926 onto both a traditional desktop and a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet. The desktop is an HP Pavilion E9280t with Core i7, 8GB RAM and 256Gb SSD.  It was configured for dual-boot Win 8.1 / Win 10 and had the previous 9879 build. The install was easy and painless via the Update & Recovery section of Settings and took about 30 minutes.  So nothing exciting here - I'll combine general comments after my comments on the tablet install. The Venue 8 Pro is a 5300 series model with Atom 7730, 2Gb RAM and 64GB onboard storage + a 64GB SD card running Win 8.1.  I had to do a bit of storage cleanup prior to upgrading.  I downloaded the ISO to the SD card and made sure there was at least 16GB of primary storage available prior to upgrading.    One nice feature was the ability to simple mount the ISO as a DVD and then run setup in Administrator Mode.  This was a nice option versus having to...

The numbers are in for 2014 and Windows Phone has not fared very well.   In all but two major markets (Germany & Australia) Windows Phone lost market share. According to Kantar World Panel - in the US Windows Phone share dropped from 4.6% to 3.0% an over 30% drop.  The big gainer in Q3 and Q4 was Apple with a 4.3% increase from 43.1 to 46.4%.  The iPhone 6/6Plus was a huge hit (in fact I bought one).   I blame this drop purely on MS's poor execution and fractional release of their fall product line up.  In the US only 1 of their new phones - the 830 was made available and on only 1 carrier AT&T.  Additionally the phone was way overpriced @ $499.   The one device that seemed very promising - the 735 - did not even make the market as it was delayed by Verizon and not available on any other US carrier.   I was able to purchase an unlocked NA LTE version that works fine on TMO or AT&T for $299.    According to AdDulpex...

In my last post I discussed my predictions for 2015 in the end user computing and mobile spaces.   Now let's switch to the corporate side.... On the server side of things, two big changes... First is the introduction of the newest generation of Intel Processors with DDR4 RAM and Haswell architecture.  This continues the evolution of the server to be a virtualization platform.  You see much higher CPU Core density - moving from 12 - 14 to 18 - 20 / CPU and much higher memory capacity.   Start thinking 1.5TB of RAM in a 2U server.   But at much higher cost.  DDR4 ram is impressive with it's improved speed and capacity but is very expensive - so are the high core count processors.  So while you can certainly support more VMs per server - the servers will be more expensive.   This trend will continue through 2015 and in to 2016.   You'll buy fewer server, but pay more for them. Second is the dramatic change in server storage in both capacit...

Being Jan 1 - I'll try my hand at some technology predictions for 2015. Let start with end-user computing - desktop, laptop and tablet.   On the hardware front, I see three trends...    First is the expansion of ultra-low cost devices.  There continues to be a huge push downwards on the price of devices driven by Chromebooks.  There appears to be a target price of $199 for a entry laptop in the 11 - 12" range.    These are by no means powerful devices, but with the expansion of cloud based services from Google and MS, the number of these good enough devices will explode in 2015.   Second will be the opposite end of the spectrum - more ultrabook style devices for the corporate world.  They come in all sorts of traditional clamshell or hybrid designs and 4K will start to show up more and more in displays.  Almost all of these will come with M.2 SSD drives, and 8 - 12 hour battery.  And will fit into that $800 - $1200 range. Fi...

One of the gifts I bought this year for my granddaughter was a GoPro Hero 3+ Silver Edition camera.  Best Buy had an excellent bundle that included an LCD Touchback and 16GB SD Card that saved me over $100 versus purchasing separately.   In addition, I also bought the 3 way arm/tripod combination.  This is one of the cooler little mounts I've ever seen and extremely light and versatile. The Hero 3+ is actually an amazing little piece of technology - and I emphasize the little.   Weighing in at only 74g and maybe 3" wide by 2" high and about an inch thick the main camera almost feels like a toy.  Even with the housing - the whole unit weights in at 134g - so about the same as my Nokia 735 smart phone.  My 8 year old granddaughter ran around with it no problem.  Combined with the 3 way arm/tripod - she can easily use it to record all sorts of activities and can easily manage the device at 8 years old. Many years ago I was one of...