Category Archives: microsoft

microsoft, sharepoint

Colligo Briefcase: offline SharePoint for iPad and iPhone

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I took a quick look at Colligo Briefcase, an offline SharePoint 2007 and 2010 client for the Apple iPad and iPhone. There is a free Lite version, limited to 50Mb and with cut-down features; Briefcase Pro which costs a modest $2.99; and Enterprise which adds centralized management.

SharePoint is a powerful collaboration platform, but Microsoft’s client support if you would rather not use a web browser is surprisingly poor. You are really meant to use Office, which of course does not exist on iOS, and even then the offline support is poor.

I used Briefcase Pro, which connected first time to my on-premise SharePoint server. I selected which lists and libraries to sync, and a few minutes later everything was available. Impressive. Better, in fact, than Microsoft’s own SharePoint Workspace on a PC; but that is not saying much.

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Briefcase lets you easily preview Office documents. I am sure there are certain formatting or content types that do not work, but I found this effective for Word and Excel. OneNote is not supported for preview; a shame. I could not even get OneNote documents to open in OneNote on the iPad.

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I confirmed that Briefcase works fine offline. In Airplane mode, I could still browse and preview documents.

I tried but was unable to connect to Microsoft’s SkyDrive. There may be a way. This would be useful, since Microsoft’s own SkyDrive app does not work offline.

My biggest concern with Briefcase is security. What if confidential documents are in SharePoint and the iPad or iPhone is stolen? Briefcase Enterprise has a remote wipe capability, but it is still a concern. You can set an additional PIN on the app:

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More worrying though is how data can leak out of Briefcase into other locations. Imagine a user has an iPad and has agreed to Apple’s default settings for iCloud and Pages, the iPad word processor. In this mode, documents in Pages are automatically synched with iCloud.

Now the user wants to edit a Word document that is in Briefcase. She hits Open in … and selects Pages. Pages does not just open the document, it imports it. The user views or edits it in Pages. Now that document is sent to iCloud, and in due course will turn up on other iOS or Mac computers belonging to that user.

Another issue with Pages is that there is no easy way to get it back into SharePoint. Pages can use WebDAV, which should work, but must be configured separately. This may be why Colligo suggests Documents to Go. Supported apps have an Open in Briefcase option that enables upload.

The Enterprise edition of Briefcase lets administrators disable the Open in command to improve security. This is unfortunately necessary if you require any sort of security for SharePoint data accessed through Briefcase.

It is a shame there is no quick way to open a Briefcase document in the web browser. There is a Copy Link option, which you can paste into Safari, but you have to re-authenticate and it is not seamless.

A few niggles then; but given that most users will do more viewing than editing while on the go, Briefcase is an excellent and, for the Pro edition, low-cost way to use SharePoint offline.

.net, microsoft, professional

Windows Server 2012: a great upgrade

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Remember how everyone hated Windows Vista but admins loved Server 2008? The awkward truth: they were built on the same core code. History may be about to repeat with Windows 8 and Server 2012, which also share code.

That said, I actually like Windows 8; but it is controversial because of its dual personality and the demands it places on existing Windows users to learn new ways to navigate the user interface. Server 8 has the Start screen too, but it boots to the desktop and most tools are available through the new Server Manager in any case, so I doubt it will cause much concern.

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That is, if you install the GUI at all. Microsoft is a convert to the “No GUI on a server” idea and you are meant to install Server Core, which has no GUI, where possible, and run Server Manager on a Windows 8 client. There is also an intriguing intermediate option called the Minimal Server Interface, which has the GUI infrastructure but no Explorer shell or Internet Explorer. It sounds odd, but I quite like it; it is a bit like one of those stripped down Linux desktops where nothing gets in the way of the apps.

The Windows Server Evaluation Guide [pdf] does a good job of covering what’s new but runs to 177 pages, posing a challenge for those of us asked to review the new operating system in the usual 1500 words or fewer. I have had a go at this elsewhere. I will say though that from my first encounter with Server 2012, then called Server 8, at a press workshop in September 2011, I was impressed with the extent and significance of the new features. It does seem to me a breakthrough on several levels.

Virtualisation is one of course, with features like Hyper-V Replica doing what Microsoft should be doing: bringing features you would expect in large-scale enterprise setups within reach of small organisations. If you are not ready for public cloud, a couple of substantial servers running Hyper-V VMs with failover via Hyper-V Replica is an excellent setup.

Another is the effort Microsoft has put into modularisation and automation.

For modularity, Server 2012 is not quite at the level of the Debian server which hosts this web site, where I can add and remove packages with a simple apt-get command, but it is getting closer. You can now move between Server Core and full GUI simply by adding and removing features; it sounds easy, but represents an enormous untangling effort from the Windows team.

On the automation side, PowerShell has matured into a comprehensive scriptable, remoteable platform for managing Windows Server. I love the PowerShell History feature in the Active Directory Administration Center, which shows you the script generated by your actions in the GUI.

Storage is a big feature too. The new Storage Spaces are not aimed at Enterprises, but at the rest of us. We are beginning to see an end to the “help, we are running out of space on the C drive” problem which can cause considerable problems. You can even mount virtual disks as folders rather than drive letters, another sign that Windows is finally escaping its DOS (or CP/M?) heritage.

Annoyances? Lack of tool compatibility is one, specifically that you the new Hyper-V manager will not manage 2008 R2 VMs, and the new RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools) require Windows 8.

More seriously, there are times when the beautiful new Server Manager UI gives mysterious errors, and as you drill down, you are back in the world of DCOM activation or some such nightmare from the past; which makes you realise that under the surface there is a ton of legacy still there and that Windows admins are not yet free from the burden of trawling the web for someone else with the same troubling error in Event Viewer. Maybe this is common to all operating systems; but Windows seems to have more than its share.

Never mind; this is a great upgrade and shows that Microsoft, for all its frustrations, is still capable of turning out strong products.

hardware, microsoft, windows

Gadget Writing: some posts you may have missed

There are two sites at ITWriting.com and if you follow the RSS feed for this one you may have missed the posts at the other. This site covers software development and IT admin topics, while Gadget Writing covers mobile devices, audio, general software tips and reviews, and in general has a more consumer flavour.

Among the popular posts is the Desktop Windows 8 survival guide which is a guide to those awkward issues you will encounter when using Windows 8 on a traditional keyboard and mouse PC rather than a tablet. This has been considerably updated and expanded from its first version.

Gadget Writing has its own RSS feed which is here.

Here are some other recent posts:

This may be why your computer is crashing

I was asked to look at a PC which was misbehaving. Sometimes it worked, but increasingly it was freezing or crashing. Sometimes the hard drive would corrupt and needed Windows repair before it would boot. I took a look. I … Continue reading →

Review: Audyssey Lower East Side Audio Dock Air for Apple AirPlay

Based in Los Angeles, Audyssey specialises in audio processing software. This is used in home theatre equipment such as multi-channel receivers, and also finds its way into TVs, mobile devices and cars. In 2010 Audyssey started making its own audio … Continue reading →

Farewell to the Squeezebox

It looks as if Logitech has discontinued the Squeezebox, a range of devices for playing music streamed from the free Logitech Media Server. Logitech also runs a streaming service on the internet, Mysqueezebox.com, which supports internet radio, Spotify integration and … Continue reading →

The one thing missing from Windows 8 tablets announced so far: simplicity

This week at IFA in Berlin PC manufacturers have been showing off their shiny new Windows 8 tablets. Vendors are competing for who has the cleverest way of combining touch-screen, tablet, trackpad and keyboard into a single portable device. Here … Continue reading →

Free competition: Win a Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ secure USB Flash Drive

Ever worry about exposing confidential data by losing a USB Flash drive? Easy to do; but worry no more. A DataTraveler Locker+ secure drive is password protected, and after 10 failed attempts the data is wiped. Read our full review … Continue reading →

Understanding Windows 8 Storage Spaces: confusing but powerful

Early users have been running into trouble with Windows 8 Storage Spaces. The same technology is used in Server 2012. I posted about the issues here. Storage Spaces is a way of virtualising disk drives. You manage physical drives in … Continue reading →

Review: Kingston DataTraveler Locker+G2 secure USB Flash drive

Ever lost a USB Flash drive? Do you even know? There are so many around now that it would be easy to drop one and not to notice. Most of the time that does not matter; but what if there … Continue reading →

Review: Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12. Stunning accuracy, a few annoyances

I am writing this review, or should I say dictating, in Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12, the latest version of what is in my experience the most accurate speech recognition system out there. Accuracy has got to the point where the … Continue reading →

.net, microsoft, windows

Guest post with a view from the enterprise: Microsoft is getting it right with Windows 8

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The following is a guest post from a contact who holds a senior IT role in the finance industry.

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I think Microsoft is getting it right. I don’t recall saying this about anything they have done before, which makes this a matter of some significance to me. My view on W8 is that it is a purely transitional state to a brave new world and that a number of strategic concerns are driving W8’s capabilities. Here’s what I think is going on:

1. MS thinks the the PC is over.

Well, that may be a bit extreme, perhaps it would be better to say that given MS’s dominant position, the PC will be over before anyone can take it away from them, so now is the time to maximise the cash being extracted from this cow by minimizing the investment.

The implication is that computing is heading in 2 directions – ‘down’ to phones and tablets and ‘up’ to the cloud. MS is trying in the cloud space, if not perhaps succeeding brilliantly. In the phone/tablet space

W8 is (at least potentially) a serious contender to iOS.

2. MS loves enterprises (and people who sometimes look like them, e.g. educational organizations)

Office is where MS’s money is coming from. Office is the (only?) reason the W8 has a legacy desktop. This enables corporates (many of whom won’t take W8, but there had to be a story for them) and educational users to upgrade while staying with Office.

Also, notably, Apple is conspicuous for sticking to the mass retail market. This is making a number of tricky issues for enterprises such as mine when it comes to developing corporate mobile applications on iOS.

3. MS is taking good UI chances

This is a big one. Apple has always had good old WIMP GUI right. In the new world they have opened in iOS, the UI, while easy to use, is fundamentally application-centric. In fact the iOS home view of app icons is scarily reminiscent of the Windows 3.x Program Manager.

The W8 ‘modern’ UI with its active tile concept provides something that opens up the possibility of a task-oriented UI. This could be a huge benefit to enterprises and is, at least, a good marketing angle for MS.

4. Corporate users could be excellent gateway users

What if every corporate BlackBerry user wanted to get rid of Blackberry Enterprise Server? oh – they do :-). What’s the alternative? Nothing from Apple (and no sign of anything coming). a huge slice of those corporates already use Exchange (must be 99+%). What if MS was able to offer secure mobile device management with a modern UI platform? Looks like a good way of capturing a lot of that market. Think of all those corporate mobile users with a W8 phone – MS gets to bypass head-to-head competition with Apple for this slice of the market. How many people bought Windows PCs because they had to learn Windows at the office? ok, maybe not a huge number, but it’s not a bad (affluent) group to use as the basis of chipping away at Apple mind-share.

5. What if those corporates were looking to replace PCs both real and virtualized) with tablets?

It’s already the case that an iPad can do anything that the vast majority of enterprise users do with their PC (once you include VPN desktop access). Put office on the device (with cloud storage) and an enterprise can be shown a way to make massive reduction in desktop PC costs. The only compelling reasons for another type of device are software development and large UI footprint (multi-monitor). The MS Surface offers the possibility of a device that:

  • looks like your new corporate mobile device
  • can do everything (including Office) that your PC can do
  • is at a much lower price point

so that’s my view in the crystal ball. If MS were thinking that the PC was dead and wanted to avoid a (probably losing) head-on fight with Apple, their entrenched position in the enterprise looks like their best starting point. Offering enterprises a possible post-PC future with unified mobile and desktop UX based on Windows phones and tablets with Azure or private cloud back-end looks like it might be a strategy. the coming (already started) implosion of RIM looks like an opportunity for Windows phone to kick-start the adoption process.

What would W8 look like if this was what MS was thinking?

  • it would have a modern UI, distinctly different from Apple’s, not being WIMP-like
  • it would be NOW, to help point to a future enterprise based on W phones and tablets to help capture the RIM refugees.
  • it must contain Office, at all costs to sustain the enterprise story

oh look, that’s what W8 is like. So, for all the noise around how nasty W8 is, I think it’s indistinguishable from what it would be like if MS really had a plan that might work. The inelegant dual-UI can be thought of as a consequence of the need for a migration path for existing apps, a recognition that all those office users are starting out on PCs and (possibly) that they couldn’t engineer a real modern UI office in time.

The final irony is that Vista may turn out to be the biggest boost for this strategy. Major enterprises that I have seen have generally moved their desktop fleet onto every second (or more) big Windows release.

Nobody moved to Vista, those who were due to move held off because it was so awful. Everybody went (and most are still in the process of going to) Windows 7. As a result, none of the enterprise customers have to actually implement W8 for their desktop fleet – they just have to drink MS’s Kool-Aid for the future and be able to use W8 phones and tablets, where most of the ugliness disappears.

.net, microsoft, windows

The Windows Runtime App Certification Kit: not too good detecting crashes and hangs

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Now that I have a lovely ITWriting.com App I thought I should check out whether it is ready to fly.

I therefore ran the App Certification Kit that installs with Visual Studio 2012.

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The tool asks you to select an installed app and then exercises it. I saw my app open, though I did not see it get beyond the first screen.

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Eventually – bad news:

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However, there is only one thing wrong with it:

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Yes, the version installed is the debug build. I can fix this simply by rebuilding in release configuration.

What does the Kit test? Here is the list:

  • Crashes and hangs test
  • App manifest compliance test
  • Windows security features test
  • Supported API test
  • Performance test
  • App manifest resources test
  • Debug configuration test
  • File encoding
  • Direct3D feature level support
  • App Capabilities test
  • Windows Runtime metadata validation

That sounds most impressive and makes a great list for you to show to your customer.

I am sceptical though. If the app was not exercised beyond the opening screen, might it not be a bit buggy after all?

I inserted the following line of code into the the Click event handler for reading a blog:

int iCrash = 1 / string.Empty.Length;

I then rebuilt the app in release mode and ran the App Certification Test. Great news!

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and specifically:

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Thanks though to my umm, bug-unfix, the app crashes whenever I click to read a blog.

I mention this not to poke fun at the App Certification Kit, but to observe that it does not do a good job of automatically detecting crashes and hangs.

The implication is that the human testers are the ones who will do this before an app is admitted to the store. I think they would find my obvious bug; but how much time will they have to test every feature of an app?

.net, microsoft, professional, software development, windows

Developing a Windows Runtime app: some observations

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What would it take to create a Windows 8 Modern UI content reader for this site? Just for fun, I built a simple one; or rather, I slightly adapted Microsoft’s Metro style blog reader tutorial.

The app only has four screens (or pages) but despite its simplicity I found the tutorial somewhat fiddly. Getting the data from the WordPress RSS feed is simple, thanks to the Windows.Web.Syndication namespace which is part of .NET Framework 4.5. Most of the work is in the user interface, which means switching between XAML and C#. Of course as a developer I would rather work in C#.

Further, the Visual Studio editor for C# is better than the editor for XAML. In C# I can easily navigate the code using Go to Definition, Find all References, and so on.  In XAML it takes longer to find things like referenced styles and resources. Plus XAML is XML, which I find harder to read than an elegant language like C#. Even commenting out a line is more hassle in XML.

I did not like the colours used by the tutorial for the list of posts in SplitePage.xaml. It took me a while to work out what to change. Was the colour defined in a resource, or in a template, or in a style, or directly coded as an attribute of the relevant TextBlock object?

Of course you can open the XAML in Blend if you prefer, the designer-oriented tool that comes with Visual Studio 2012. Blend is more complex than the Visual Studio XAML editor, but may be better once you have figured out how it works.

The amount of work involved in making your app well-behaved is proportionately larger if your app is essentially very simple. You have to deal with different layouts for different screen sizes and orientation, as well as the small Snapped layout. You also have to consider what happens if your app is suspended and resumed.

The above means that despite the apparent simplicity of a Modern UI interface, with its chunky buttons, there is more to consider than with, say, a Windows Forms application whose window is never rotated and over which you have full control.

Still, I was pleased with my app which has reasonable functionality based on a small amount of work.

Visual Studio 2012 is impressive, though I did experience some screen corruption after switching back and forth between the Metro and Visual Studio environments for debugging. Restarting Visual Studio fixes it. Using the simulator seems more robust in this respect.

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The App Bar

One thing though. If you squint at the above screenshot, you will see that I have put a Read button to the right of the post title. Clicking or tapping this opens the post in a embedded web browser view that is nearly full-screen. However, this Read button is not included in the tutorial, which says:

On the split page, we must provide a way for the user to go to the detail view of the blog post. We could put a button somewhere on the page, but that would distract from the core app experience, which is reading. Instead, we put the button in an app bar that’s hidden until the user needs it.

This may in fact be an excuse to include an App Bar in the tutorial; but I disagree with it. With the App Bar, the user has to right-click or swipe down to display the App Bar, and then click or tap the View Web Page button.

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That is two actions rather than one. Is it really better than having a small button in the UI?

It seems to me that tucking things into the App Bar is fine in cases where there is real merit in an immersive experience, such as in the web browser, but less compelling when you already have a screen with a back button and a scrollable list. I was also concerned that users might not realise they needed to display the App Bar in order to use the app properly.

Let the design debate continue.

Design-centric

Microsoft’s Modern UI continues a trend which began with Windows Presentation Foundation (the first incarnation of XAML), which is to make a platform richer for UI designers and more challenging for developers who lack design skills. Nothing wrong with that; but if you remember how easy it was to snap together an app in Visual Basic 3.0, you may feel that something has been lost.

I guess that recognition of that fact was one of the motivations behind Visual Studio LightSwitch, in which you define the data and business rules, but the screens are generated for you. LightSwitch has complexities of its own though.

embarcadero, microsoft, software development, windows

Third-party compilers locked out of Windows Runtime development

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Embarcadero’s chief scientist Allen Bauer has posted about the problems facing tool vendors who want want to support Microsoft’s Windows Runtime (WinRT) platform with their own compilers, which he calls “Windows 8’s ‘dirty little secret.’”

The issue is that in order to enforce security and isolation in WinRT apps, Microsoft prohibits certain API calls. Even if you find a way to use them, applications that use these calls will not be accepted into the Windows Store, which in effect means no public distribution.

We are very keen on supporting WinRT with native Delphi & C++ code. Right now, the issues surrounding the WinRT space center around the fact that many OS-supplied APIs which are required by anyone implementing their own language RTL are actually off-limits unless you’re the VC++ RTL DLL. You know, little things like RtlUnwind for exception processing and VirtualAlloc (et. al.) for memory management… Any calls to those APIs from your application will automatically disqualify your application from being an "official" WinRT application capable of delivering through the MS app store.

Right now the VC++ RTL DLL is given special dispensation since that is the library that makes the calls to those forbidden APIs and not directly from the user’s app. We’re currently rattling some cages at MS to find out how or if they’re going to allow third-party tools to target WinRT. Until we can get past that, targeting WinRT isn’t actually possible from a deliverable product sense. We are able to build WinRT applications with Delphi that work with a developer certificate, however they all fail the application qualification checks because of the aforementioned (an other) APIs.

Bauer adds that there are other restrictions that make it hard to create an alternative toolchain:

For instance, you cannot merely open any file, access the registry, and even use the loopback (127.0.0.1) adaptor. LoadLibrary cannot be used to load any arbitrary DLL; you must call LoadPackageLibrary and only on a DLL that is present in the digitally signed appx package. WinRT is a seriously locked down sandbox or "walled-garden" with some extremely high walls.

Embarcadero’s answer has been to create a framework that makes desktop apps look and behave somewhat like WinRT apps. I posted about these fake metro apps here. Even Live Tiles are supported. However, these apps cannot be distributed via the Store either, but only through a desktop setup. In addition, they lack the security of true WinRT, and access to the Contracts system for safe exchange of data.

The company does have a .NET tool in the works, called Prism, that will build WinRT apps.

Who is the villain here? Embarcadero’s concern is understandable, since it is locked out of creating a native code compiler for WinRT. On the other hand, to what extent can Microsoft relax the restrictions without blowing a hole in the WinRT security story. There are parallels with the complaints from Google and Mozilla that they cannot compete equally with IE10 in the Modern UI environment.

Thanks to .NET support, Microsoft does have a measure support for alternative languages; it is the Common Language Runtime after all. What would be better though would be to support LLVM, as Apple does on iOS, though this is not likely to be on Microsoft’s roadmap.

Thanks to Eric Grange for pointing me to this post.

microsoft, windows

Reactions to Windows 8

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However this thing turns out, the reactions as Windows 8 rolls out are a great sideshow. The first steps with Windows 8 are demanding for users familiar with older versions as some things are different and some things worse than before. Some things are better, too, but getting over that initial hump can be a problem. I am starting to collect some of the reactions that caught my interest, and will update this post with further links as I find them.

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This distinctly non-PC blast from Igor Ljubuncic is based on the Consumer Preview but I quote it because it does a good job of presenting the “no way never” perspective:

Would you sacrifice your entire user base in a rich and profitable tier for the sake of a feeble chance that you might hold a small share of a new market segment that has significantly lower profit margins? Sounds like stupidity to me. … Windows 8 Consumer Preview is a technological, ideological and functional failure. It’s hard to see how no one lost their job over this.

Here is Tim Edwards in a piece with a number of inaccuracies – but remember, first impressions are still first impressions, even if some of the assumptions one makes turn out to be wrong:

Windows 8 is the worst computing experience I’ve ever had. As a desktop operating system, it’s annoying, frustrating, irritating, and baffling to use.

First impressions from Krishnan Subramanian

This is a great user interface and the underlying platform changes are pretty good. However, this interface is not suitable for desktop (Laptop) experience. … with all the “steep learning curve” factor and the fact that many enterprises just upgraded to Windows 7 makes me wonder if Windows 8 will be a flop show in the enterprise space even with their $40 pricing strategy

Windows 8 a Cognitive burden says a usability expert

Windows 8 is optimized for content consumption rather than content production and multitasking. Whereas content consumption can easily be done on other media (tablets and phones), production and multitasking are still best suited for PCs. Windows 8 appears to ignore that.

Mary Branscombe who knows Windows 8 as well as anyone outside Microsoft has a thorough review concluding:

Keep an open mind, spend some time getting used to the charm bar and the Start screen. Once you do, we defy you not to be impressed by Windows 8.

Another from the long-time-watcher Windows camp (but not always pro-Microsoft; he was the one who proclaimed Longhorn “a train wreck”) is Paul Thurrott who says:

For all the whining, hand-wringing, and ivory tower opining over Microsoft’s decision to wed an awesome new mobile platform with its superior desktop OS, few of these critics ever paused for a moment to consider an awesome possibility: This time, more really is more.

Balanced read but not convinced by the system: Preston Gralla on Computerworld:

With Windows 8, Microsoft is making a bet that it can please both tablet users and traditional computer users with a single OS. That bet didn’t pay off for me. On a tablet I find it an excellent operating system. On a traditional computer, it doesn’t work nearly so well.

Yes, it’s that bad says Woody Leonhard in a curious piece which exaggerates the difficulty of using Windows 8:

While Windows 8 inherits many of the advantages of Windows 7 — the manageability, the security (plus integrated antivirus), and the broad compatibility with existing hardware and software — it takes an axe to usability. The lagging, limited, often hamstrung Metro apps don’t help.

Nik Rawlinson on CNET UK says Windows 8 is worth the upgrade but …

The OS represents a serious attempt to unify computing across PCs and tablets in a cohesive way. It’s impressively quick, apps are presented in an original manner that avoids the repetitiveness of Android and iOS, and it hooks in well to your life on the Internet.

While the learning curve may be steep, there are more than enough similarities between Windows 7 and 8 to ease the transition. It’s well worth the upgrade, but it’s not yet the ultimate operating system Microsoft wants it to be.

A balanced piece from Avram Pltch at laptopmag.com:

If you’re a Windows 7 user and you don’t have a touch-screen device, you can safely skip this upgrade for now and wait to see how this new ecosystem of apps matures. However, if you’re buying a new laptop or tablet, Windows 8 provides a compelling experience that’s worth the learning curve.

PC Pro has divided its conclusions into Windows 8 for desktops and laptops, and Windows 8 for touchscreens and tablets. As you might expect, it is more favourable towards the latter. On desktops:

Windows 8 has relatively little to offer those who do their computing on a desktop or laptop PC. This isn’t a terrible thing – Windows 7 wasn’t exactly broken to begin with – but it means that upgrading to Windows 8 is far from essential.

but on tablets:

Microsoft has delivered a compelling – and in many ways, much more powerful – alternative to iOS and Android. It’s not perfect, and much depends on the quality of forthcoming apps and hardware, but if the goal of Windows 8 is to rejuvenate its appeal across the whole spectrum of touch-enabled devices, then we believe it’s succeeded.

My comment: the point of Windows 8 is to bring desktop and tablet OS together so is this the right way to appraise it?

Jon Honeyball lost patience with Windows 8 which he says is a car crash (one up from a train wreck?):

Any existing user will be tearing their hair out at this nonsense: the flipping backwards and forwards between Metro and the desktop, the lack of a Start button, the way all that history has been hidden away. Ask a user to find Control Panel and see the laptop being thrown into a nearby bin.

.net, microsoft, windows

Installing Kodak All-in-One Printer driver on Windows 8

6 Comments

I have been busy upgrading computers to Windows 8 now that the RTM is available. So far so good, though I ran into a problem with a printer which, oddly, worked fine in the Windows 8 Release Preview.

The printer is a Kodak All-on-one. Kodak has a universal installer for all its all-in-one printers. When I ran this, I got a message that .NET Framework 2.0 was needed and would be updated.

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It would then try to install .NET 2.0, but fail.

Easy, I thought, just install .NET first. In Windows 8, you do this through Control Panel – Programs – Turn Windows features on or off.

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I installed .NET Framework 3.5, which includes 2.0, and re-tried the Kodak printer install. Same message, same error.

I also tried running the installer in compatibility mode for Windows 7 and Windows XP. No go.

Time for some serious troubleshooting. I presumed that if I could figure out what the installer was looking for when it failed to detect .NET Framework 2.0, I could fix it.

First, I checked the official instructions for detecting .NET in an installer. This was already correct.

Next, I downloaded Process Monitor to see if I could spot the registry query or file search the installer was making. I noticed that aio_install.exe, the Kodak installer, unpacks a setup into a temporary location and runs from there. I copied the extracted files and ran the setup. Using Process Monitor, I discovered a registry query to HKCU\Software\Kodak\BootStrapInstallStatus and the REG_DWORD key InstallStatusKeyForDotnet. This was currently set to 1. In a spirit of experimentation I changed the 1 to a zero.

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Next I re-ran setup. It worked perfectly.

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I still do not know why that registry key was set, but I am not inclined to pursue it further. Possibly if .NET Framework 2.0 is already installed before you run the Kodak installer for the first time, the problem does not arise.

If you encounter this problem though, I suspect the following two steps will be sufficient:

1. Install .NET Framework 3.5 using Control Panel.

2. If installing the printer driver fails, check for the registry key HKCU\Software\Kodak\BootStrapInstallStatus\InstallStatusKeyForDotnet and set it to 0.

microsoft, windows

Windows 8 release now available; you should install it

Windows 8 is now available for download on MSDN and TechNet, which means the final code is in the hands of a large number of Microsoft-platform professionals. I have been trying out the release, which I installed both as an upgrade over the Release Preview (it does not really upgrade it, but does keep a few settings and documents), and as a clean install on a virtual machine.

The first thing I noticed was the default settings:

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You can click Customize to get more information and control over these settings, and I recommend that you do. The one that troubles me most is:

Let apps give you personalized content based on your PC’s location, name, and account picture.

I am not sure how the picture helps with that, but presume it is code for giving apps permission to use it and potentially to share it. The matter of sharing location is difficult; it certainly makes sense for numerous apps from Weather to TripAdvisor; but allowing third-parties to track your physical location is a big ask. Still, if you want the full experience you have to compromise your privacy; that is the choice.

Next I was interested to see what guidance Microsoft would give to new users. This appeared just after setup and before the Start screen is shown for the first time, and takes the form of one or two short but insistent animations:

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When I installed on a tablet, I got a second animation about swiping in from the sides.

It seems to me that Microsoft is trusting too much that users will enjoy “discovering” the Windows 8 user interface. Perhaps some will; but I was expecting to be offered something like a video and an introductory manual. I think users will click past this and still get stuck.

Next, I noticed the new aero-less desktop theme.

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I do not have strong feelings about this, but admit to some puzzlement about why Aero translucency has gone. Power consumption is a possibility, but why not offer it as an option for desktop users, for example? Still, this is a small detail as far as I am concerned.

Microsoft has chosen a flower for the default desktop background, not unpleasant though a bold choice in some ways. A flower is a strong, evocative image that some will therefore react against, given that a desktop background can be a sort of personal statement.

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Not many desktop backgrounds are supplied on the install DVD. There is a Flowers theme and another called Earth, which I found rather bleak.

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The default lock screen is a painting based, I think, on the Seattle Space Needle.

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Disappointments? My biggest disappointment is with the RTM Store. I was hoping for a host of new applications, but in fact the Store, while containing a few new apps, is still sparsely populated.

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This is a problem for Microsoft because Windows 8 badly needs a few compelling apps to persuade doubters that Metro, sorry Modern UI, is not worthless. I love Wordament, yes, but in general we still await great Windows 8 apps.

The best news, I guess, is that I have little to say about the install process. It was smooth, quick, and it worked. No unknown devices in Device Manager on the Samsung Slate; but I realise that this is the one device that everyone has been using to test Windows 8, so I guess this is not surprising. Not all PCs will fare so well.

Businesses should of course be cautious about rolling out a new version of Windows (and will be); and anyone installing this on a machine they use for real work will naturally take a backup first, in case of disaster or just some essential application not working.

If you can though, you should install this new release. Performance is good, it is a decent upgrade from Windows 7 even if you do not use a tablet, and it is only by using it for a while that you will get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of Microsoft’s new operating system.