SkyDrive Pro is a local and online file storage and synchronization service from Microsoft that integrates with SharePoint 2013 and the SharePoint Online features of Office 365. It differs from the consumer version of SkyDrive in that an organization can manage SharePoint [...]]]> The Microsoft SharePoint teamed just released the SkyDrive Pro Windows client application.

SkyDrive Pro is a local and online file storage and synchronization service from Microsoft that integrates with SharePoint 2013 and the SharePoint Online features of Office 365. It differs from the consumer version of SkyDrive in that an organization can manage SharePoint libraries to easily share and allow users to collaborate on content with co-workers.

Once the standalone client is installed, users of SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online in Office 365 can sync their local machine’s SkyDrive Pro folder and any SharePoint 2013 or Office 365 team site document libraries.  This lets users access their files both on and offline.

The SkyDrive Pro client does not require Microsoft Office to be installed.  However, it can also be installed with Office (Office 2013, Office 2010, and Office 2007).

Using it is straight forward. Most of the time synchronization is automatic. It is possible to manually initiate syncing from your computer. Find the blue cloud icon in the Windows computer’s notification area (system tray), right click and select Sync now.

You can download the SkyDrive Pro installation file here.

This change allows us to work on a new message and still access the other messages in Gmail. The new compose window has a [...]]]> Google is changing the Gmail compose window. It now pops open a small window over the inbox that is separate from the inbox, but still locked to the inbox browser window.

This change allows us to work on a new message and still access the other messages in Gmail. The new compose window has a small arrow control that pops out the compose dialog into a separate browser window. This lets you move the compose window around your screen.

I prefer the separate compose window over the default new compose window. There is a simple way to go there, bypassing the new compose window.

Hold down the Shift key when you click on the Compose button and a separate browser compose window opens.

Wintel’s rule over the world of electronic digital computation has come to an end. It began in the 1980s due to design choices made for the original IBM PC. [...]]]> Introduction

I believe it is useful and important to consider Windows 8 in the context of the changing technology landscape that confronts Microsoft today.

Wintel’s rule over the world of electronic digital computation has come to an end. It began in the 1980s due to design choices made for the original IBM PC. Microsoft and Intel went on to rule the computer world. Their combined hegemony was known as Wintel. Today, the rapid shift to touch screen devices, running energy efficient ARM-powered processors is superseding Wintel.

ARM chips are used to run most smartphones and touchscreen tablets. Intel chips are too power-hungry to work effectively on mobile devices. Intel chips are much more expensive than ARM chips. ARM processors are manufactured by many companies, including: IBM, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Samsung and Texas Instruments. Apple iOS devices—iPhones, iPads, iPods—run on Apple designed ARM processors.

The PC business, desktops and notebooks, one of Microsoft’s strengths, is a stagnant no-growth or slow-growth market. Microsoft’s other major businesses, servers and the Microsoft Office business are fine for the moment, but run the risk of falling prey to the decline of the importance of Intel-based equipment.

Microsoft missed the market shift, led by Apple’s iPhone in 2007, to touch screen smartphones and now to tablets. They were not alone. Research In Motion (BlackBerry) was also caught flatfooted. Consequently, Microsoft is playing catch up with Apple and Google touch screen operating systems, iOS and Android, respectively. It may not be able to catch Apple or Google.

Microsoft only recently began shipping operating systems and software designed to run on ARM chips. Windows Phone 8, an operating system for mobile phones, has had minimal success against Android and iPhone models to date. Microsoft also created a version of Windows, called Windows RT, which runs only on ARM devices.

Windows RT is NOT Windows 8[1].

Apple is wildly successful selling their touch screen devices powered by iOS. iPads are dominant in the tablet marketplace, followed by Google’s Android-powered tablets. Amazon’s successful Kindle Fire, and Kindle Fire HD models run Android. Before October 26, 2012 Microsoft was not in the modern, touch screen tablet market.

I believe desktop operating systems, designed for keyboard and mouse, reached their peaks with Windows 7 and Mac Snow Leopard (OS X v10.6.x). But today, tablets are where the computational action is in the consumer market and to a much lesser degree in the enterprise marketplace. These devices either replace or augment personal computing. Many people don’t take laptops with them as they travel but substitute tablets instead. Others have replaced laptops and occasionally desktops in their homes with tablets. OS X Lion (2011) and Mountain Lion (2012) are disappointing tweaks wherein Apple is trying to create a common user interface with iOS on iPads.

Microsoft needs to adapt to the changing computing landscape. They need to protect their existing business while responding to the new opportunities. They need to keep consumer and business customers happy by running legacy, windowing applications on new versions of Windows, while creating a touch screen Windows ecosystem. Microsoft also has to protect and extend their Microsoft Office application business at the same time.

Their strategy for traditional keyboard and mouse/touchpad desktops and laptops is to meld a touch screen UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) with a windowing operating system. They call this Windows 8. Because Microsoft cannot ignore the tablet marketplace they designed a version of Windows, Windows RT, to run on ARM devices. They also created reduced feature versions of some Office applications to work on these ARM devices.

I believe ARM computers and servers will appear at some time in the not-too-distant future. They will work well-enough, be less expensive and more energy efficient than Intel computers and servers. Thus Microsoft needs to develop its ARM architecture operating systems and applications now, even if it fails in the mobile device market.

Windows 8

I am ambivalent about Windows 8 (W8). The computer that I am writing this article on is running Windows 8 Pro, one of the three versions: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Enterprise. Windows 8 was released to the general public on October 26, 2012. After exploring Windows 8 for about 15 months, I believe I have enough experience to provide an evaluation.

W8 is both good and bad. W8 is designed to work with both traditional keyboard and mouse inputs, and with fingers and gestures. The UI/UX suffers from this dual nature. This is particularly noticeable when one runs W8 on a traditional desktop or notebook computer, as I do.

My experience with W8 is limited to traditional, non-touch screen computers, both desktop and notebook, that have keyboards and mice or touchpads. I imagine that W8 on a touch screen device is a better experience. I explored buying a touch screen monitor to use with W8. Prices for standalone touch screen monitors are much higher than traditional flat panels. I decided to forgo buying one at this time. If prices decline, as I expect they will, I am likely to buy touch screen monitors in the future.

There are five major strengths and four fundamental weaknesses that I see within Windows 8. When I weigh the pluses and minuses I conclude that W8 is inappropriate for most people due to the confused and confusing UI/UX. There are simple solutions to the UI/UX problem, which I write about below.

Strengths

Windows 8 is fast.

Windows 8 installs much faster than any previous version of Windows. A recent reinstall of Windows Vista on a client’s laptop took me 8 hours. Those were 8 hours struggling with the DVD install and then loading drivers from the manufacturer’s website. It took me 20 minutes to do the same thing on this Windows 8 machine. This Windows 8 machine has a solid state drive (SSD) that makes everything faster, but it doesn’t explain the magnitude order of difference for the two OS installs.

Windows 8 is fast to boot. It takes 11 seconds from a powered off state for this W8 machine to get me to the sign on screen. It takes a few seconds after signing on to get to a usable machine.

Windows 8 is fast to shut down. It takes only a few seconds to power off, sleep or hibernate the machine. This is less necessary than it has been in the past. Windows 8 handles resources much better than Windows 7. You will need to sleep, hibernate or power off your Windows 8 computer less.

I have not formally tested application load times, but it seems Windows 8 loads applications faster than a comparable Windows 7 machine.

Windows 8 is secure

Windows 8 is the most secure desktop operating system available to the average PC user. It is more secure than the Mac OS X or earlier versions of Windows. It has infrastructure improvements that appeal to geeks but make the average person’s eye glaze over. It has advanced kernel memory randomization. It sandboxes running applications. It makes use of the Intel trusted platform module (TPM) on today’s CPUs.

There are two changes that should appeal to the average user. Firstly, the home user and small business no longer need to buy antivirus software. Windows 8 has Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) built in. Microsoft wrapped MSE into Windows Defender as the default malware protection in W8.

If you buy a new computer with Windows 8 installed, it is possible that the manufacturer will include a trial version of commercial antivirus software, such as McAfee or Symantec’s Norton products. If you choose not to purchase a subscription to the commercial program, then you should uninstall the trial version and make certain that Windows Defender is on and armed.

SmartScreen in Windows 8 protects us from ourselves. It makes it harder for malicious software to install on your W8 computer. The default setting will let you install anything you want, but will warn you if Microsoft doesn’t recognize the application. System administrators or parents can set this so that only software they approve will be installed.

Microsoft provides a service to software developers where they can purchase a certification that insures their software will pass the SmartScreen filter. This is a double-edged service, it provides Microsoft with an additional revenue stream, thereby making software more expensive, but it also protects us from malicious software.

Windows 8 is convenient

Microsoft wants you to create and use a Microsoft Account to log on your W8 computer or Windows RT device. The account consists of an email address and a password. You can use any email account you want or a free one from Microsoft. You surrender a bit of privacy when you use the Microsoft Account and gain quite a bit of convenience. The Microsoft account connects your computer to Microsoft’s cloud. Many of your settings, preferences, and apps easily follow you between different PCs. For example:

• Friends’ contact info and status automatically stay current from places like Hotmail, Outlook, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
• Share your photos, documents, and other files from places like SkyDrive, Facebook, and Flickr.
• Apps you buy and download from the Windows Store, can be loaded on up to five PCs running Windows 8 or Windows RT.
• Personal settings are automatically synced online and between the Windows 8/ RT PCs you use. This includes themes, Internet Explorer favorites and history, and content for Microsoft apps and services.

Windows 8 is connected to the cloud

Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service for file storage, sharing and synchronization is built in to Windows 8/RT. The SkyDrive modern UI app is pre-installed. There is a Windows Essentials 2012 download that adds a link to your SkyDrive in the desktop application File Explorer (AKA Windows Explorer).

SkyDrive provides 7 GB of free online storage. It has been around since 2007. Microsoft has improved it over the years and it now works better than Google Drive, much better than Apple iCloud, but not as well as Dropbox. In fact, Office 2013 wants to save your documents to your SkyDrive by default. There are free SkyDrive apps you can install for Mac OS X, iOS and Android devices.

You can buy additional storage for an annual fee. The fees are comparable to Google Drive and less than what Apple charges for additional iCloud storage or what Dropbox charges.

Windows 8 plays well with hardware

Unlike Apple which tosses over legacy hardware with abandon, Microsoft tries to provide drivers for older hardware. Windows 8 has lots of drivers pre-installed and it works with drivers designed for Vista or Windows 7. Most of your printers, scanners and cameras will continue to work with W8, but not with Windows RT.

Windows 8 works exceptionally well with multiple monitor setups. Vista and Windows 7 worked well with multiple monitors. W8 is better. In the two older Windows versions the taskbar only showed up on your primary monitor. W8 shows the taskbar on all your monitors. Unlike OS X 10.8.x (Mountain Lion) you can have your desktop on one or more monitors and a full screen app on another one.

Weaknesses

Windows 8 suffers from multiple OS personality disorder.

Windows 8 is confusing to users because it is confused about itself. Is it a touch screen operating system? Is it a traditional, desktop oriented, windowing operating system? It’s both. This does not work well on a non-touch screen computer. I suspect it has its issues on a touch screen device when the user wants to use the desktop and legacy, windowed applications designed for a mouse and keyboard.

Many of the things you know how to do in Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, have been changed. Many are still there. It is hard to remember what was moved, what wasn’t and what was added.

Windows 8 hides too much of the UI/UX.

One of the key new technologies in W8 is the Edge UI. This technology makes the sides of the screen and the four screen corners hot zones that can reveal features or perform actions if the user invokes them in the correct way. For example, the lower left corner, where the Start button used to be on Windows 95, 98, 98SE, NT, ME, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, 7 and Server 2008, hides/reveals a Start Screen icon that takes you to Start Screen if clicked in the right manner. The upper left corner hides/reveals a task switcher icon, which can be invoked to take the user to the task which icon is displayed or can be swiped down to reveal a task switcher panel that works like Alt+Tab. BTW, Alt+Tab still works, as do most of the previous versions of keyboard shortcuts. The upper and lower right corners hide/reveal the Charm Bar with its five ‘charm’ icons.

Trying to figure out how to turn off Windows 8/RT is an exercise in frustration. There is no Start button with a Shutdown button. The Shutdown link is well hidden.

Full screen, modern UI apps may be even more frustrating for the uninitiated. Printing is a convoluted process. There is no print icon. Right-clicking on a blank space in the app won’t get you a print control either. Instead, you need to expose the Charm Bar, click on the Devices charm, and then select the printer to send the job to.

Windows 8 has a steep learning curve.

As you might have gathered from the two prior Weaknesses sections, it takes quite a bit of effort to learn where everything is and how to access it. If you don’t feel comfortable with Windows XP you will never master W8/RT.

What is baffling about this is that it wasn’t necessary to pull the virtual rug out from Windows users’ virtual feet. We could have continued to use the familiar while Microsoft added new features. It is sadistic to have made such a radical shift in the UI/UX without a compelling need.

Windows 8 suffers from too many choices.

The preceding Weaknesses are nothing compared to the confusion of choice that Windows has become. I think of it as the cereal aisle problem. Suppose you went to the supermarket and your shopping list only had the word cereal. It did not specify which cereal. You will spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out the choices and selecting your cereal. What grain should you buy? Do you want corn, wheat, oats or something else? You decide on corn. Do you want Corn Chex, Corn Flakes, Corn Pops or Frosted Flakes? Is that too hard? Select either Count Chocula or Cheerios instead. Now what size box do you want, individual serving size, the small box, the medium box, the large box or the giant one?

The consequence of buying the wrong cereal is limited. You wasted your time and a little bit of your money. You can easily rectify your choice the next time you go to the supermarket.

Choosing a computer is more problematic. You spend hundreds if not more than a thousand dollars. You will be stuck with the computer for a long time.

Windows 8/RT makes the decision truly difficult. Do you want Windows 8 or Windows RT?

If you choose Windows RT, forgoing legacy applications like Outlook, Photoshop or QuickBooks, do you want the Microsoft Surface tablet or one made by a Microsoft hardware partner, like Lenovo or ASUS? But why buy an RT tablet with so few apps available when compared to Apple’s iPads or Android tablets?

Suppose you want to go with Windows 8. Do you buy a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet (available January 2013) or a similar device running Windows 8 Pro made by a Microsoft hardware partner? Or do you want a convertible device (it’s a tablet and laptop) like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga or the ASUS VivoTab? Maybe you just want a regular laptop or a traditional desktop machine?

Do you want Window 8 or Windows 8 Pro? (Go Pro.) How about Windows 8 Enterprise with some great additional features like Windows To Go? Windows To Go lets you copy your operating system and key applications on to a USB memory stick and take it with you. You plug the flash drive into another computer and boot to your version of Windows 8 Enterprise, wherever you are. It sounds like a great feature and something that many of us want.

But you can’t have it. You need to be a Microsoft subscription customer, what they euphemistically call Software Assurance (SA), to qualify. You need a minimum of 10 seats to make that economical. Typically, a business would only start with SA when they have 25 seats.

It may be easier to buy a Mac and load Windows 8 in a Boot Camp partition or a virtual machine. There are fewer choices in Macs. The choices are somewhat more rational. Buy a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac or Mac mini. Four basic choices is much easier than the Windows 8 hardware and operating systems world. Oh, you wanted a tablet, then buy an iPad.

Why consider Windows 8, at all

Windows 7 is not forever. We have about two more years while computer manufacturers can sell us a PC with Windows 7 installed. We only have about a year more to buy Windows 7 in boxed DVD form. Retailers can’t sell that after October 25, 2013. Furthermore, Microsoft support for Windows, both mainstream and extended is not perpetual. Mainstream support will cease January 12, 2015. So if you don’t want to switch to Mac you may find yourself buying a Windows 8 computer in the next year or three.

Fixing the UI/UX

It is relatively easy to make Windows 8 work the way we expect—boot to the desktop, use a Start button and Start Menu, suppress the hot corners if you want and almost never see the Start Screen. There are lots of free and commercial utilities that attempt to do that. I have tested 10. There are more.

Stardock’s Start8™ is the one that I and many others like the best. It puts back the Start button, gives you a Windows 7 style Start Menu and lets you configure the UI/UX to your liking. It costs $4.99. I have used it in both beta and final forms for several months. It gives me back the familiar UI that I want, but lets me explore the unfamiliar UI/UX of Windows 8, as and when I want.

With Start8™ installed and configured, I find Window 8 to be an exceptionally good operating system that I can recommend to customers, friends and family.

You can buy an upgrade version of Windows 8 Pro now for $39.99 if you want, by going to and filling out Microsoft’s upgrade offer. This upgrade pricing offer expires January 31, 2013.

[1] Modern UI apps (alias full screen or Metro-style), designed for distribution through the Windows App Store will run on both Windows 8 and Windows RT devices. Legacy, windowing applications designed to run on Intel architecture, like QuickBooks or Adobe Photoshop cannot be loaded, much less run on Windows RT devices.