Tag Archives: windows 8

mobile, tablets

Just three Windows 8 on ARM tablets at launch? Not good for Microsoft

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Bloomberg reports unknown sources stating that only three Windows on ARM (WOA) tablets will be available at launch:

There will be fewer ARM-based devices in the rollout because Microsoft has tightly controlled the number and set rigorous quality-control standards, said one of the people. The new version of Windows will be the first to use ARM processors, which are most commonly found in smartphones. Windows 7, the current version, only works with Intel’s technology. Three of the Windows 8 ARM devices will be tablets, the people said.

This may be nonsense but I can see this playing out badly for Microsoft. I am making several assumptions here:

1. The design of Windows 8 is all about tablets. If it fails on tablets, then it has failed.

2. Windows 8 Intel tablets will not compete with the Apple iPad and will probably not do well. The main reason is the old one: Windows desktop is mostly unusable with touch alone. I mean, you can get it to work but it is not much fun, and that will not change.  Supplementary reasons are that Intel CPUs are less efficient than ARM which means shorter battery life, and that traditional Windows applications expect lots of disk space and RAM, and that OEMs will want to pre-install anti-malware and other foistware, and repeat the mistakes of the past that are driving users with relief towards iPads.

I can also imagine Windows 8 Intel tablets being sold with add-on styluses and keyboards that are necessary to operate desktop applications, but a nuisance in all sorts of ways.

3. Windows on ARM has more potential to be a compelling iPad alternative. Metro-style apps are designed for tablets and will work well with touch alone. ARM devices may be lightweight and with long battery life. The locked-down Windows Store is some protection against excessive OEM interference. With Microsoft Office compatibility thrown in, these might appeal to a business user who would otherwise buy an iPad.

Despite the above, my guess is that Microsoft’s OEM partners will instinctively put most of their effort into Windows 8 on Intel tablets, because that it the way it has always been, and because of an assumption that someone buying a Windows 8 device will want to run Windows applications, and not just Metro-style apps.

The problem is that such people will try Windows 8 on Intel tablets, hate them because of the reasons in (2) above, and end up buying iPads anyway.

The counter argument? That Apple conquered the tablet market with just one model, so perhaps three is more than enough.

microsoft, windows

Fixing a Metro-style app in Windows 8 Consumer Preview

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I am a fan of Wordament for Windows Phone and Windows 8. This is a Metro-style app. I was annoyed though to discover that it was broken on my Windows 8 slate. That is, it could not be launched because it did not exist when searching the Start menu, nor in the “All apps view”, but it could not be installed because the Store considered that it was already installed.

I could go into Store – Settings – Accounts and see it listed under “View your apps”, where it also said it was installed.

There was some kind of warning of problems, in that from time to time Windows 8 had been offering to fix a problem with Wordament, usually after I had set the slate to sleep while the app was running. When prompted, I always accepted and let it do its stuff, but the result of the last effort was the app had disappeared completely.

How to fix this? I found one piece of official advice for a similar problem which suggested refreshing the PC. This is not much fun because you lose all installed applications other than Metro apps – ugh. I did a bit of digging.

My first thought was to try manually deleting the app to see if I could trigger a reinstall. I got a little way with this. I found that Metro-style apps are installed into the WindowsApps folder, which is a sub-folder of Program Files. However, if you double-click this folder you get an access denied message, though the message also invites you to continue.

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I did not wish to trample all over the security features of Windows 8, though following a hunch I did try restarting in safe mode. You can do this by choosing Settings – More Settings and clicking Restart now under Advanced startup. The PC restarts and you get to a “Choose an option” screen where you can click Troubleshoot. Next, click Windows Startup Settings and then Restart. This gets you the familiar F8 options including Safe mode.

In Safe mode you have read-only access to the WindowsApps folder, and there I could see the Wordament install files.

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Here you can verify that this is an HTML and JavaScript app, just as its creators said. The JavaScript is minified so opening it up is not all that rewarding.

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Still, I could confirm that the app was in fact installed, but I could not run it.

I had another idea. If all I needed was a shortcut to the app, perhaps I could grab one from another profile on the machine. I restarted in normal mode, created another user (which must be one with a Microsoft Live ID) and logged in as that user (shutdown /l logs off without shutting down). I installed Wordament, and it ran fine.

So where are the per-user shortcuts? Easy, just go along to c:\users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Application Shortcuts and there they are.

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Again I had to grab permission to access this folder, but doing this in a user folder is not so bad as in a system folder.

I copied the shortcut to the same location in my normal home folder and lo, Wordament reappeared in the Start menu.

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Not too bad; but it seems to me that Windows 8 should have a built-in way of fixing this kind of problem – perhaps it has, and I missed it.

rants, tablets

Backup and file history in Windows 8 Consumer Preview: a million options to confuse you

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How is backup in Windows 8? Does it have online backup? Do files sync to SkyDrive like Apple’s iCloud?

Reasonable questions. I had a poke around in Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Search for Backup in the Start menu:

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Not that then. Search in Control Panel:

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More promising. So what is File History, is that the essence of Backup in Windows 8?

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The essentials seem to be: File History is off by default. If Windows finds a drive other than the system drive, it will propose it for File History as above, otherwise it invites you to connect an external drive. Here are the Advanced settings:

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You had better make sure that everything you want to save is in a library, because while there is also an Exclude folders option, I cannot see an Include folders option.

But File History is not, to my mind, backup. It will not recover your system or your applications. Oddly, if you want to see all the backup options, do not search for backup; search for recovery.

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This is where things get strange. Go into Windows 7 File Recovery, which sounds like some legacy thing, and there is the old backup – yes, it does backup as well as recovery:

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Note that from here I can also create a system image or a repair disc.

Alternatively there is the new Recovery feature:

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Reset seems clear enough: a clean install, or at least, restoration of the OEM install that came when your PC was new.

Refresh though is more opaque. What exactly happens if you click Refresh?

Refreshing your PC reinstalls Windows and keeps your personal files, settings, and any apps that came with your PC and apps that you installed from Windows Store.

It seems to me that Refresh is essentially a Reset followed by restoration of Windows Store apps, settings, and your files as defined by Windows, probably the same as in File History but who knows? If you have a folder in your C drive called “Important stuff”, my guess is that neither File History nor Refresh will pay it any regard. Don’t do that.

The disappointment of Refresh is that it does not preserve other application installs, you know, like AutoCAD, Photoshop, that custom business app written in VB6 and somehow persuaded to work, and so on. Refresh could be less than refreshing for some users.

Advanced tools includes an option to create a recovery drive. It is not clear to me though what gets included here. On my system I was invited to insert a USB flash drive with at least 256MB capacity, which suggests that not much gets recovered.

Finally, I mentioned SkyDrive and online backup.

There is an online backup service built into Windows Server 8, but which is only available to test if you are in the USA. Might this also be offered to Windows 8 client users? It seems to me possible, but I cannot see it in the Consumer Preview.

What about SkyDrive? Microsoft is promising some strong SkyDrive integration, which will let you:

  • Open and save documents direct to SkyDrive in Metro
  • Have a SkyDrive folder in Windows Explorer
  • Get files from your PC remotely via SkyDrive.com

All good stuff; but I cannot see the desktop SkyDrive app in Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Details are here, where Microsoft’s Mike Torres says:

we aren’t talking about availability right now – but it won’t be available this week.

where “this week” means Consumer Preview week.

I have the Metro SkyDrive app on a Windows 8 slate that is not domain-joined. On my desktop PC, I domain-joined the Windows 8 install. Tried to run SkyDrive and got this:

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Hmm. Does that mean not using a domain-joined PC? I went to Users as instructed. There is no “Switch to a Microsoft account” option, but there is an option to “Connect your domain account to your Microsoft account to sync PC settings”:

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Hang on a moment. What, exactly, does this do? In particular, what does that last option, “Sign-in info”, mean? That if someone hacks my Live ID they have my domain login too?

How are app settings synced if I have different apps installed? What about different versions of the same app, or is this just Metro apps that can be presumed to be kept updated? What about PCs with different hardware that needs different settings, say Aero enabled on one but not another?

Again, reasonable questions, but don’t bother pressing F1. Nothing will happen.

Conclusion? If you want to backup your files or your system in Windows 8, you are in luck; there are a million options. I do not think you can call this simple though, and my guess is that wrong choices will be made and will be costly. 

My choice? Personally I like what Microsoft now calls “Windows 7 recovery”. It does an incremental backup of your entire PC, apps, “C:\important stuff” and everything. And it works. I do not see that any of the newer options replicates this.

microsoft, Uncategorized, windows

Crisis in Microsoft land: what next after the mixed reception for Windows 8 Consumer Preview?

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Microsoft will have expected some users to find the transition from Windows 7 to Windows 8 challenging, but I doubt it was ready for the reaction from its own community that it is receiving for Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

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The best place to start is the comments on Building Windows blog here and here – at the time of writing, around 1300 comments, most from users who have downloaded and tried the Consumer Preview. It is worth browsing through them if this is something you care about; some are knee-jerk negative reactions, but some others are thoughtful and wanting Microsoft to succeed.

Overall, the message is: don’t make us use Metro, let us stay in the desktop if we choose.

I’m still waiting for an explanation as to why my 30" desktop screen has to look like a smartphone, that’s what my smartphone is for.

My users range from tech savvy to plant workers and truck drivers. Like all of us, the start button is baked into our DNA … How can I make the desktop the default UI?  I’m not going to deploy metro desktop to my users as the default screen. I would rather deploy a slew of ipads and I’m no ipad fan that is for sure.

In 17 years of using Windows I have never used the Windows key. Interestingly I’ve never seen any user of a computer use the Windows key. I don’t want to learn and remember key combinations to do things that I can currently do trivially using the start menu.

Let me tell you something, I always have a gazillion webbrowser instances and tabs open (rarely less than 50 browser tabs and as much as 100) – I often run 5-10 Visual Studio instances simultaneously (and I know your usage statistics says average is 1, so you won’t make it easier to distinguish between them, but this is a different matter..) – usually have 10+ explorer windows – and I absolutely love working this way, I am productive this way and that’s what counts for me. I run 2 big screens with 2560×1440 resolutions to give me as much working space as possible, so I can easily switch between a lot of my open applications, browser tabs and explorer windows. Even if I had a use for some Metro UI application, I would be looking for a desktop alternative, so I could have it running side-by-side with my other applications – let’s be honest, one application at a time might be great for the average joe, but it’s a horrible solution for professional users.

Part of the problem here is that the Metro UI Windows 8 is more about solving a problem Microsoft has – how to compete with the iPad – than a problem its users face. It has been clear since Windows 8 was first previewed that the tablet UI and new Windows Runtime was Microsoft’s main focus, and that desktop users would get less value than they might normally expect from a major release. The reaction to the Consumer Preview though is more serious than that: many users are saying that Windows 8 is, for them, a substantial step backwards.

I am writing this in Windows 8 on a desktop and it is not that bad. Apps are easy to launch once you get the hang of Windows Key – Search, and there are workarounds for the annoyances. There is no doubt though: if you are working mainly in the desktop – which is inevitable for most users upgrading – the “immersive UI” does get in the way at times. Since it must run full screen, a Metro app obliterates the taskbar and handy features like the time and date which shows bottom right in the notification area. If there were an option to run Metro apps in a window, I would grab it.

The irony here is that the name “Windows” refers to the ability to run multiple apps in windows, as opposed to the single application UI offered by DOS.

Another issue is that if you switch between Metro and Desktop, you have to learn two ways to do common tasks. For example, I tend to use the taskbar previews to find browser tabs, since if you have numerous tabs open it is the quickest way to find the one you want. If you are in the Metro browser though, you have to right-click to show the tabs. Right-click by mistake in the desktop browser, and you get a context menu. Add to favourites? Different. History? Different. All friction if you just want to get your work done.

If you have multiple monitors, Microsoft’s “Move the mouse to the corner” idea for raising the Charms does not work well. The “Corner” is on the primary display, but if you have multiple displays it is not a corner but the border between two screens. You have to position the pointer just so to make it work.

There is more; but it is not my intention to iterate through every annoyance. I am more interested in the reaction overall and in what Microsoft will do next.

I will add that I admire what Microsoft has done from a technical standpoint in the Windows Runtime and that Windows 8 on a touch device with the right screen size has great promise as a new tablet operating system. It is my first choice for travelling; iPad and Android tablets are too limited, and I am more than ready to leave the bulky, awkward laptop at home.

Needless to say, few of those commenting will have tried such a device, for reasons I have described before. Windows 8 in a virtual machine is a worst case, and it is a shame that so many (for good reasons) are trying it that way.

What next for Windows 8?

It seems to me that Microsoft now has, broadly, three options for Windows 8.

1. Plough on regardless. This, I imagine, is the plan as it stands currently. Microsoft has deliberately made Metro unavoidable in Windows 8, I presume to ensure that it will not be ignored. There will be some refinements in the final release, improved discoverability of features users are struggling to find, but no fundamental change to the design approach. The plan as stated last month is that there will be no further beta, and the next public release will be the release candidate.

The question: can Microsoft do enough tweaking to win over a majority of its own community? Right now my sense is probably not. A negative reaction on release will be costly for the company and for all those third-parties who depend on its platform; yes, Windows 7 will have a prolonged life, but there will be loss of momentum for the platform overall.

2. Delay Windows 8 for further refinement. Go through the reactions to this broad public beta test, and work out how to fix the issues without losing the vision behind this “reimagined” Windows. Delay would be painful, of course, but less bad than a failed release.

The quick version of this would be to do what many are asking for: make the Metro-style personality in Windows 8 optional. Would that be such a disaster?

3. Release Windows on ARM (WOA) ahead of the full Windows 8. Most of the objections users have to Windows 8 do not apply to WOA, where Metro is primary, where all devices are touch tablets, and where those desktop applications (mainly Office) and utilities that are included are there to fill the gaps which Metro cannot yet fill. As for x86, users are still happy with Windows 7. When Vista was the current version, users could not wait for the next release, but there is no such pressure with Windows 7.

microsoft, windows

Two web browsers one too many in Windows 8 Consumer Preview

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A few days in, and the reactions to Windows 8 Consumer Preview are coming thick and fast, mostly strong reactions, with love for Metro on a tablet and hate from annoyed Windows users looking for the Start menu.

For myself, I have it installed on a tablet (Samsung Series 7 Slate bought for the purpose) and on a desktop, where I am using it for my work.

It is going OK, though one annoyance to add to the list is coping with two instances of Internet Explorer. It sounds simple: Metro IE is the no-plugin version, Desktop IE is the full version. There is more to it that that though. Where are you going to put your favourites, in Metro or in Desktop? Except that Metro IE has no favourites, just the option to “Pin to start menu”.

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More seriously, pages open in Metro IE are invisible in Desktop IE and vice versa, and the two browsers do not share cookies, so you might wonder why Amazon does not recognize you when you remember you signed in yesterday – but that was in Metro and you are now in Desktop.

Users are going to hate this, unless Microsoft can do some tweaking, or even (perish the thought) have a setting that says “Only use desktop IE”.

The IE problem is a consequence of the Windows 8 split personality, where one half almost literally does not know what the other half is doing. John Gruber says:

The recurring theme of these Windows 8 reviews: the brand-new Metro UI is elegant, clever, original and shows much promise; the updated classic Windows desktop is better than ever; the two environments don’t flow well together.

Nicely put, though I do not agree that Microsoft is trying to anticipate Apple supposedly converging OSX and iOS (read the rest of the link). I think Microsoft sees the future of the PC as tablet-shaped, or at least, that the non-tablet segment of the PC market is essentially legacy and will not grow. If some users stay on Windows 7 for ever, that will not matter much provided that Metro succeeds on tablets.

Microsoft could have put Windows Phone on tablets and matched Apple’s iOS and OSX split. It could have make Windows 8 the underlying operating system of both but maintained the split. It chose not to, except to the extent that Windows on ARM is pretty much iOS, where the desktop nearly disappears – it is relegated to a kind of runtime for utilities and Microsoft Office.

I do think Microsoft has work to do on the seams between Metro and Desktop, but I also believe that its main rationale in making Windows 8 dual personality is to force its uptake. The danger, if it had released Windows Metro as a separate OS, is that it would have won good reviews but failed in the market, as happened with Windows Phone in its first year. Microsoft is going for all-or-nothing: if Windows Metro fails, then Windows client fails with it.

PS the above grab is not a stitched screen, but an actual view of my dual monitor setup.

tips, Uncategorized

Windows 8 Consumer Preview tip: use compatibility mode for driver installation

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I have a Kodak ESP 725o network printer, and was trying to set it up on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The setup software detected the printer OK, then gave a strange error:

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“The application called an interface that was marshalled for a different thread.” Hmm.

The solution is to run the installer in Windows 7 compatibility mode. Doing this in Windows 8 takes a few steps. First, find the setup app in the Start menu:

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then right-click to show the options menu, or if using touch, drag the shortcut up slightly and release for the same result. Then click or tap Open file location.

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This shows the application in Explorer on the desktop. If you prefer to get there by another route, that is fine too. Right-click the executable, choose Properties, and then Compatibility. Select Windows 7 and click OK.

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Run the printer setup utility, and if you are lucky (as I was in this case) it will install the driver for you perfectly.

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microsoft, windows

Windows 8 Consumer Preview annoyances

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I have been running Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a dual-monitor desktop today. I encountered several annoyances. In no particular order:

The Start Menu

If you are working on the desktop, being dumped back in Metro every time you need the Start menu is disconcerting. It is not so bad on a touch slate, because the Metro Start menu is easier to use, but if you are using keyboard and mouse it is more annoying.

I am beginning to understand why this is. Conceptually, the Desktop is a Metro app, therefore it makes sense to start it from Metro. If Windows gets to the point where desktop apps are only used occasionally, this will work fine. Right now though, the desktop side is unavoidable. Explorer, full IE, Control Panel, even the Help app is a desktop app. This is a transitional thing that will be a long-lived annoyance.

This little issue also confirms Microsoft’s belief that touch and tablet really is the future of Windows. It is the big bet.

Horizontal scrolling

Windows 8 Metro has a lot of horizontal scrolling, the Start menu being one example. Swiping this with fingers feels natural, but using a scroll wheel on a mouse is odd because you expect that to give you a vertical scroll. There is a scroll bar as well, but the mouse wheel is easier.

App switching

App switching has been messed up in Windows 8. Long ago, users of Windows 3.1 used to complain that they lost the app they were working on. In reality, what used to happen was that Word would be running behind Excel, and they did not realise that Alt-Tab would bring it back, or forgot that Word was running. Sometimes users would open multiple instances of an app just to get it back. I wonder if we may see a return to this problem in Windows 8? The taskbar in Windows 95 was invented partly to solve it, but the taskbar no longer works because Metro apps do not appear there. If you are in Metro, you do not see the taskbar anyway, of course. Alt-Tab works fine, but users do not always think of that.

An interesting twist on this is that the desktop, from the Metro perspective, is a single app. Therefore, if you are in Metro and summon the column of running apps by moving the mouse to the top left corner and dragging down, only one desktop window shows even if you have several desktop apps running. Oddly, you can “close” the preview desktop app here, but it does not close the desktop or any desktop apps if you do, just removes it temporarily from the preview window list.

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App menus and context menus

In Metro on a tablet, you raise application menus by swiping from the top or bottom. That works well, but when using the mouse you are meant to right-click instead. The snag is that right-click isn’t ideal for bringing up app menus as it might need to show a context menu. For example, in the Metro browser right-clicking a link brings up a context menu:

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In this case then, the right-click does NOT bring up the app menus, such as the tabs and address bar in IE.

The Music app

The Music app looks great, but I have struggled to add any music to it.

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My music files are on a network share. There is no setting in the Metro Music app to add a folder to the library. It looks like you are meant to go to Explorer on the desktop side and add folders to your Music library. However, when I tried to add the network share I got this error:

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“This network location can’t be included because it is not indexed.” Follow the help links, and you eventually get to instructions for working around this problem by creating a local folder, adding it to the Music library, then deleting the folder and recreating it as a symbolic link to the network share. Hardly a user-friendly operation, but in my case even this did not work. I am now trying to index the share on the server, but it is still not working.

I do not see DNLA streaming support here either. Maybe it will come; otherwise you will have to go back to Windows Media Player, or a third-party app, to get full features.

Metro Mail problems

I have not yet managed to get the Mail app to work with Exchange. One of the annoyances here is that when it fails to set up the account, it does not give you a reason. A bit of research suggests that it is an autodiscover problem.

Another Mail issue is that you cannot modify the annoying signature, Sent from my Windows 8 PC:

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Nor can you use POP3 or IMAP, or forward mail. I was relieved therefore to find this statement from Microsoftie KeithF on the Answers forum:

We aren’t anywhere near done with the app and, as you’ve seen, there are some things we haven’t gotten to yet.  One of those is supporting custom domains and aggregated POP accounts correctly.  We’re working right now on finishing this off the right way.

This is worth noting because it gives hope that more features will arrive in the other apps as well. Currently they seem only part-done.

Multiple displays

Multiple monitor support is odd. The taskbar now extends across multiple screens, but annoyingly it is not properly extended, just sort-of copied, so you cannot add more shortcuts without scrolling. There are some other options, like “Show taskbar buttons on Main taskbar and taskbar where window is open.”

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There are oddities though. A Metro app apparently cannot be extended across two displays. The Start menu appears in one display, letting you work on the other, but if you have a desktop app stretched across two displays, the Metro side will overlay that part of the desktop app which is on its display.

Metro Messenger

Another app deficiency is that in the Metro Messenger app you cannot add a new contact, at least, not that I have seen.

Conclusion: not done yet

Windows 8 is not yet done. While I am not expecting any great change in the Start menu or essential mechanics and design of Windows 8, I do expect improvements in the Metro apps, the goal I suspect being to make this usable and enjoyable on a tablet without too many jarring visits to the desktop – though if you use Office, you will be going to the desktop a fair amount like it or not. We have yet to see what Microsoft will do in Office 15 to mitigate this.

A few days in, and I still believe that the Windows 8 compromise means that the Metro side is sub-optimal with Mouse and keyboard, and the Desktop side sub-optimal with touch.

There is a ton of promise though, and much depends on what Metro apps appear, and how successful Microsoft is at fixing deficiencies in time for the launch. Given the lead time needed by OEMs, there is not a lot of time left if this is going to be a 2012 operating system.

microsoft, mobile, windows

What’s in Windows 8 client for desktop users who do not need Metro?

2 Comments

Microsoft, rightly, is making plenty of noise about the Metro-style side of Windows 8, which is great for those using Windows 8 on a touch device. But has the company spent so much energy on that aspect, that there is little left for desktop users? That is arguable; but there are new features on the desktop side, as well as underlying operating system changes that benefit both sides of the dual personality in Windows 8.

Here are some that come to mind. The new copy dialog:

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and the task manager:

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and the Explorer ribbon:

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and Storage Spaces, a new approach to disk management:

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and SmartScreen which blocks your unsigned apps by default:

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and Windows to Go that lets you run in isolation from a USB storage device, and other security features including Trusted Boot (malware-resistant boot which uses UEFI 2.3.1), Measured Boot (uses TPM – Trusted Platform Module), and AppLocker which restricts access to files as controlled by Group Policy.

Then there are performance improvements: faster network connections (I have already noticed this when working with the preview), faster boot, longer battery life.

File History is a variation on what we have had before with backup but presented with a common-sense user interface:

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And Hyper-V, a big feature for power users:

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What have I forgotten? And is it enough to mitigate being bounced in and out of Metro by the new Start menu – or maybe you like the Metro Start screen better than the old one?

microsoft, professional, windows

Here comes Windows Server 8 beta: what’s new since the Developer Preview?

Following the release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Microsoft is now offering its server cousin. You can download Windows Server 8 beta here.

What’s new since the developer preview? Here are some highlights:

  • Metro UI screenshots to follow! There is a new Metro Remote Desktop client as well.
  • Voice over IP in Remote Desktop Services
  • SMB (Server Message Block) encryption, which you can turn on per share or for the whole server, encrypts all SMB data. SMB is the standard networking protocol for file access on a Windows network. The new feature is aimed at scenarios where data travels over untrusted networks. SMB has also been enhanced to reduce server/client round trips.
  • Always Offline is a new mode for offline files. Normally, if you use an offline folder in Windows then the local copies will only be used when the server is actually offline. In the new mode, the cached files are used anyway, giving local performance. By default the files will be synchronized every 120 minutes.
  • ReFS (Resilient File System) is implemented in the beta.
  • Hyper-V limits raised: up to 1TB in a VM, up to 64TB in a virtual hard drive.
  • Microsoft Online Backup: spotted as a non-functioning option in the Developer Preview, a new Online Backup Service is now implemented, You have to apply for an invitation if you want to try this out.
  • User Device Affinity is an enhancement to roaming profiles that lets you specify which computers a user may use for redirected data and settings.

This is new stuff since the Developer Preview; there a lot more that is new since Server 2008 R2