Wednesday 31 October 2012

Windows 8 with Windows Home Server 2011


Just a quick one this time…. Hopefully.

After running the "Release Preview" and "Enterprise Trial" versions of Windows 8 over the last several months, I actually managed to get my laptop into a state where I was happy to blank it off and install Windows 8 Pro as its only operating system.

With the caveat that all new Windows installations tend to boot quickly (until you start filling them with… erm… useful applications) I'm impressed with the boot time of the system. This is a two year old laptop with mechanical HDD, yet I can boot to the log-in screen in 19 seconds (of which eleven seconds are taken by the BIOS check). This is fast enough that I'm tending only to sleep the system if I need to keep the desktop state. As a result I'm shutting down now (I used to sleep) in preference - although this is also partly down to the issue that sometimes after waking the machine (from sleep) the cursor tends to be a little erratic.

I'll have more thoughts on Windows 8 over future posts no doubt (but frankly there are enough reviews out there that I'm not going to bother adding to the noise), however in case you were in any doubt: I like the new OS, but I am aware there are issues that need to be resolved, some fairly major.

One thing I am pleased about is the apparent simplicity of adding the Windows 8 laptop to the Windows Home Server backup schedule. This, as you would hope is done exactly the same way as earlier versions of Windows, and seems to be running without issue.



The one thing that has got me puzzled is that I have only managed to connect via remote desktop from the web page once (as in the very first time I tried), after which I get the following error (every time since):



I have no idea why this is happening. I can connect without issue via the remote desktop client. Unfortunately I'm not given an opportunity to fix this issue, and don't know where I should look on the server to make changes. Even Google seems bereft of answers (or indeed questions). No doubt I'll have a poke around, but I'm not feeling confident at this stage.

Other than that annoyance, so far so good. Hopefully my desktop will be converted soon too.

Now to start filling the laptop with crap again!

Friday 26 October 2012

Close, but no cigar


With the initial underwhelming release of the Microsoft surface (the price is a shade more than I hoped although probably not unreasonable, but with no GPS or NFC I feel there is a missed opportunity), and the general feeling that the next wave of devices should be substantially better, I had convinced myself not to get a tablet for another six to nine months. 

Then Saturday evening I settled down to a little surfing on my more than capable laptop. Five minutes in the screen flickered, then died. 

Bugger. 

Powering off and even removing the battery failed to help, but something odd was happening, the bios and boot loader screens were displaying, but as soon as the OS selection menu should have appeared power to the screen would stop (as seen by that completely black appearance where even the backlight is off). 

This was all very strange and it looked like this would be my third laptop in a row rendered useless by a failing graphics chip. 

So Sunday saw me reluctantly looking over the few details I can find on upcoming convertible tablet/laptop convertibles. 

Nothing I could see grabbed me. Several look good, especially a couple of models from Acer and Lenovo, but nothing without significant compromise from what I have convinced myself I want (not necessarily need). 

I consider myself a power user, and compared to most this is probably true, but I came to a realisation some time ago that for 90% of my usage something way behind the bleeding edge would be perfect. 

I don't play games seriously on my laptop, just the odd puzzler and other simple stuff. In fact the main need I have for a powerful processor is video editing and encoding, along with the ripping of my CD collection, and even most of this can be done adequately on a mid range laptop now. 

I do run many applications concurrently, and being a developer I also need plenty of memory and a decent speed processor, but easily less than I probably think I need. 

What I want is something along the lines of the Asus Transformer line, a mid range Ivy Bridge i5, at least 4 but preferably 8 Gb ram, at least 8 hours real world battery life but the more the better (12 hours or above would make me very happy). But here's the killer - something that docks so I can have the kind of setup that Mike Taulty wrote about. 

It looks like I'm a little too early to get all this in a suitable package. It seems to me that the technology is very close, but not quite there. 

So I started thinking about how I can manage without a proper laptop until something suitable is a reality. I have the Xoom, and whilst this is a marvellous device it doesn't quite tick enough boxes to work all the time, in the same way that a Windows RT device doesn't (think development and video tools). 

All things considered though it looked like the Xoom would need to fill the gap until details of all the release devices were available, possibly longer. 

Then I got to thinking - my laptop actually contains two graphics chips, perhaps one had failed but the other was still working, hence why the initial boot screen displays (although still looking a bit odd that it fails at the OS selection screen). A quick jump to the BIOS revealed I can change the setting for graphics from Switchable to force Discreet, after which I rebooted and everything works fine again, soviet with power/performance being less than optimal now. 

Suddenly, and to more relief than I'd imagined I have a working laptop again, but it has revealed a few things about myself in the process: I've been looking forward to getting a convertible tablet/laptop ever since my last Windows tablet died (from a failing graphics chip) several years ago, and thought I'd rush out and get something as soon as the new devices were released alongside Windows 8. However it appears I'm actually a little more controlled than I gave myself credit for. This is good. 

Or is it just that the devices I've seen so far have just not been particularly compelling? 

Either way, in sure that when a device does eventually come out that meets enough of my criteria, I'll get it. 

But at least now I'll be more sure that the decision wasn't completely rushed

Tuesday 16 October 2012

XBox Music - One Month On

As mentioned in my previous post, I've been subscribing to the Zune Music Pass recently, to see how well it suits me and how much use I'll get from it. I have now been subscribing for a little over a month, and as such now seems like a decent time for a quick update on how I'm finding it.


My primary usage has been on my phone. I've been making use of both download and streaming methods of listening. Primarily I will download albums for listening to during my daily commute, but also I've been increasingly streaming music directly rather than downloading.

A nice feature of the Windows Phone client is the ability to save the current track list as a playlist. Doing this doesn't download the tracks, instead it refers directly to the online location of those tracks, which speeds up the entire process should I want to listen again as it avoids the need to search the marketplace first. It only saves a couple of minutes but is very convenient and means I don't have to keep those tracks in my phone memory.

On plugging the phone into my main PC downloaded tracks are copied to the PC library automatically. This isn't quite the behaviour I want but it's not the end of the world. I would guess there is a setting somewhere in the Zune PC software to stop this happening, but it doesn't seem like an unreasonable default. Possibly more of an issue in future will be the fact that this also registers the PC as one of the current download devices, of which you are only allowed a finite amount.

The phone interface is simple enough that it's my go-to device, meaning that so far I have not really made much use of streaming music from the web. I did try this near the start of my subscription and I don't recall it being very impressive. This will be something I'd make more use of if I worked from home, but currently not a high priority.

I encountered an issue a few days ago where the phone seemed to lose track that I am an active subscriber. The effect of this was that every track I tried play only had the option to buy, while streaming resulted in 30 second preview clips. This is exactly the same behaviour you would see if not subscribing. I checked my account status online and everything was active, so it appears to just be a glitch in the system. It's not the end of the world as the problem was sorted the following day, but likewise I believe I have seen this behaviour before, so if it happens too often I'll not be overly impressed.

Saturday also saw me finally renewing my Live gold subscription for the Xbox. I had been sitting on a pre-paid code for this for several months, but not having had the time for online gaming recently I was keeping this until such time as I would make more use of it. The tipping point came when I tried to stream a Zune track from my Windows 8 laptop to the Xbox. Not having an active Live Gold account I suspected playback might be prohibited, but then again for £8.90 a month you'd kind of expect this scenario would be an exception (much like the BBC iPlayer).

Apparently not. What the hell Microsoft?!!!

But with this (not insignificant) downside aside, the interface and playback on the Xbox is great. If available the screen cycles through artist photographs on playing tracks (if not then recent or random album covers from your collection are displayed), and the interface is controllable via Kinect voice and movement. It's all very swish. I've only tried streaming tracks, I don't even recall if there is an option to download locally (see the comments or an update later since I'm writing this on my commute, so can't verify this for sure right now).

Going back to the Kinect integration, this is where the killer feature is also found…. almost.

I can regularly be found barking orders to the Xbox (and amusingly more than once I've heard a call from another room asking "who are you talking to?"), but something I'd never bothered doing is searching Bing via voice. I guess I had nothing to look for in the context of the Xbox. Now I do.

With the Zune app there is an option to voice search Bing for music. Calling something like "Xbox, Bing Squeeze" will then launch the Bing app and perform a search for the aforementioned artist… bringing back a list of results for both music and video. This worked first time for the five or so artists I searched for, but I expect plenty of misheard requests going forward. Either way, this king of thing has been available for some time on the Xbox and other Microsoft technologies like Windows Phone, and is a general reason why I tend not to be overly impressed at Siri. Whilst the Siri integration on iOS is better than much of what Microsoft offers on their various platforms, the Microsoft voice algorithms are some of the best around though.

There are also a couple of clues in that last paragraph that explain why the voice search isn't all it promises to be. It's all very impressive, but the integration is not quite there. When asking Bing to perform a search, you have to (confirm) exit the Zune app, you're then dropped into the separate Bing app that performs the search, then put back into the Zune app to play your final selection. Anyone with experience of switching apps on the Xbox will be painfully aware how slow this process can feel.

It's not the end of the world, but it does take the edge off the user experience. I would like to be able to search and queue up music this way without interrupting playback of the current track. Perhaps this will be improved in the next dashboard update… hopefully.

So looking to the future I see on ZD Net that more details have just been revealed about the Xbox Music service that will be coming to Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and the next Xbox update. Some of the details have left me a little confused at the moment (like exactly what the problem is running the new software on Windows Phone 7, especially when iOS and Android devices will eventually be covered), but I dare say things will be clearer as I read more, so I'll update in a future posting.

For now though I'm pleased to say that I'm making more use of the service day by day, and once the questions of the upcoming changes to the service make sense to me, I can see myself switching to a yearly subscription. I'm also starting to listen to a lot more recent stuff and classic albums I have missed.

Talking of which, right now I need to search for something else interesting to listen to…

Here's a video from Microsoft on the new service.

• Update: It seems the Xbox is getting updated now, with Windows 8 being updated on 26th October and Windows phone soon after release.