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...

Overall Windows 10 build 10041 is a pretty fair build and I believe is pretty close to being what MS used to term "feature complete" in previous Windows editions.    While there are still certain aspects of Windows 10 that I am not a fan of - I don't think there is going to be much change in the core experience. With the exception of the Spartan browser - I believe all of the pieces parts that make up Windows 10 are included in the 10041 build and what ships come this September is going to be pretty close to the experience current provided by the 10041 build.   But not all is copacetic when it comes to installation on some devices.  This last weekend I decided to update my daughters HP Pavilion DV6t laptop to 10041.   This is a Core I3 based laptop with 6Gb of RAM and an Intel 525 SSD.   The results were pretty bad both from an update of Windows 8.1 standpoint and from a clean install standpoint booting from DVD.  While both installation m...

On March 16th - MS announced the release of a new Office 16 preview - called Preview for Business.  So like any techie - I registered at the MS Connect site - downloaded - did a quick peruse of the installation instructions and tried to install.  What a mess.... The install not only wiped out my existing Office 15 install - but then failed to install itself leaving me with without any Office at all and was a part of the cause for me to have to completely re-install Windows 10 build 9926 on my Dell Venue 8 Pro. So I am partially at fault for this.  I didn't read the instructions deep enough to understand that this release was targeted toward Office365 Business License E customers and not stand alone Office users like myself.   So I was a little too quick to pull the trigger on this preview. But I also blame MS for helping to make this such a mess.  I have previously installed Office 16 preview apps from the MS Store and they easily ran...

Okay - so MS finally released the next public build of Windows 10 - build 10041 and I loaded on both testing platforms I've been using - a traditional desktop and an 8" Atom based tablet. First - As with 9926 - the desktop install was a breeze - run Windows update - new build shows up - and installs.   The tablet on the other hand took some doing to get the build to show up in Windows Update at all.  With 9926 - one of the updates that came down the line was for the Intel HD Graphics driver.  That update would consistently fail with a compatibility error with the device in my case the Dell Venue 8 Pro.   I even tried to download the latest drivers direct from Intel but ran into the same issue.  The challenge was that MS never provided an option to skip trying to download and install that update - so every subsequent time you tried to run windows update - the HD driver would show up - download and try to install yet to fail again.  In Windows 10 M...

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 &...