Technology Ramblings

On Dec 19, MS released Windows 10 Build 17063 to Fast Ring & Skip Ahead insiders.   By far the largest update so far in the Redstone 4 branch - 17063 contained over 30 fixes, plus updates to Edge, Cortana, Settings, Input methods, the Linux Subsystem, The Windows Shell, Windows Defender, The People app and even the Snipping tool. But the headline features are Timeline and Sets.    Timeline is best described as an activity tracking feature that allows you to open a task view that displays your most recent activity and then scroll "backwards" in time looking at files you worked on or articles you read and quickly return to them.  There is a new "task view" button for the task bar or you can use the Windows Key + Tab to reach the timeline view.   For me it displayed Office docs I had opened each day along with Web pages I visited and MSN app page clips - so from News or Money or Sports, etc.    So the web page part only works wh...

I've written several times about "cord cutting" options that are out there.  There is a big movement by cable & satellite companies as well as content producers to move towards streaming based IP based delivery of content instead of Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM) and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation ( QAM) that has been used for years. Even today many cable and satellite companies provide a hybrid delivery method where both FDM/QAM and IP are used.  Often when you order a movie you are in fact streaming content. With streaming however there is a challenge and that is getting the content compressed enough to provide quick downloads while still maintaining the quality of video and audio.  Especially as we've progressed from 480p to 1080p and now 4k content along with Dolby Atmos and DTX audio. As anyone who has purchased an HD movie from iTunes or the MS store has noticed you often are downloading anywhere from 4 - 8GB of data.   That file siz...

In a previous post I discussed the two new ARM based PCs from Asus and HP that were announced at the Qualcomm SnapDragon Technical Conference. The following day both Intel and AMD announced similar designs.  AMD will partner with Qualcomm while Intel may utilize their own LTE modem technology which they are heavily involved in. The key here being support for eSim based devices.   With LTE 5 around the corner and the potential for 1Gbps to 10Gbps speed depending on device density - it will change the way we think about mobile computing. As I stated n my previous post - I've installed LTE modems in my laptops for years. I tried to stay away from the LTE Wifi Hub or phone tethering approach since I felt having an device that focused specifically on the communication was well worth the $120 - $160 I would pay.  Combine that with the GPS & Voice capabilities that most of these modems provided and you suddenly did have an extremely mobile laptop. eSim extends t...

On Dec 5 at the Qualcomm SnapDragon Tech Summit in Hawaii, Terry Myserson of MS along with Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm announced the first two "Always Connected" PCs from MS partners HP and Asus. These devices that were first mentioned and demo'd back at the WinHEC conference in Shenzhen China nearly a year ago and now coming to fruition.  Along with HP and Asus, Lenovo also announced a product coming in early 2018. All of this aligns with my prediction that these devices will be available by the time of the Windows 10 Redstone 4 branch milestone in March of next year. Both the new Asus NovaGO and HP Envy X2 devices are powered by Qualcomm 835 processors with LTE connectivity.   The NovaGo is a 2-in-1 laptop format and supports 1 Gbps LTE while the HP is more of a Surface style tablet with 4G LTE.   The HP however also supports Pen Input.  Both units support Windows Hello. Both units claim battery life in the 20+ hr range along with support fo...

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 g...

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 i...

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...