Tag Archives: windows

.net, software development, tech, windows

A glimpse into Microsoft history which goes some way to explaining the decline of Windows

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Why is Windows in decline today? Short answer: because Microsoft lost out and/or gave up on Windows Phone / Mobile.

But how did it get to that point? A significant part of the story is the failure of Longhorn (when two to three years of Windows development was wasted in a big reset), and the failure of Windows 8.

In fact these two things are related. Here’s a post from Justin Chase; it is from back in May but only caught my attention when Jose Fajardo put it on Twitter. Chase was a software engineer at Microsoft between 2008 and 2014.

Chase notes that Internet Explorer (IE) stagnated because many of the developers working on it switched over to work on Windows Presentation Foundation, one of the “three pillars” of Longhorn. I can corroborate this to the extent that I recall a conversation with a senior Microsoft executive at Tech Ed Europe, in pre-Longhorn days, when I asked why not much was happening with IE. He said that the future lay in rich internet-connected applications rather than browser applications. Insightful perhaps, if you look at mobile apps today, but no doubt Microsoft also had in mind locking people into Windows.

WPF, based on .NET and DirectX, was intended to be used for the entire Windows shell in Longhorn. It was too slow, memory hungry, and buggy, eventually leading to the Longhorn reset.

“Ever since Longhorn the Windows team has had an extremely bitter attitude towards .NET. I don’t think its completely fair as they essentially went all in on a brand new technology and .NET has done a lot of evolving since then but nonetheless that sentiment remains among some of the now top players in Microsoft. So effectively there is a sentiment that some of the largest disasters in Microsoft history (IE’s fall from grace and multiple “bad” versions of Windows) are, essentially, totally the fault of gambling on .NET and losing (from their perspective). “

writes Chase.

This went on to impact Windows 8. You will recall that Windows Phone development was once based on Silverlight. Windows 8 however did not use Silverlight but instead had its own flavour of XAML. At the time I was bemused that Microsoft, with an empty Windows 8 app store, had not enabled compatibility with Windows Phone applications which would have given Windows 8 a considerable boost as well as helping developers port their code. Chase explains:

“So when Microsoft went to make their new metro apps for windows 8/10, they almost didn’t even support XAML apps but only C++ and JavaScript. It was only the passion of the developer community that pushed it over the edge and let it in.”

That was a shame because Silverlight was a great bit of technology, lightweight, powerful, graphically rich, and even cross-platform to some extent. If Microsoft had given developers a consistent and largely compatible path from Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8 to Windows 10, rather than the endless changes of direction that happened instead, its modern Windows development platform would be stronger. Perhaps, even, Windows Phone / Mobile would not have been abandoned; and we would not have to choose today between the Apple island and the ad-driven Android.

linux, microsoft, tech

Windows on a Chromebook? How containers change everything

Apparently there are rumours concerning Windows on a Chromebook. I find this completely plausible, though unlike Barry Collins I would not recommend dual boot – always a horrible solution.

Rather, when I recently explored about Chromebooks and Chrome OS, it was like the proverbial lightbulb illuminating in my head. Containers (used to implement Linux and Android on Chrome OS) change everything. It makes total sense: a secure, locked-down base operating system, and arbitrary applications running in isolated containers on top.

Could Chrome OS run Windows in a container? Not directly, since containers are isolated from the host operating system but share its base files and resources. However you could run Windows in a VM on a Chromebook, and with a bit of integration work this could be relatively seamless for the user. Systems like Parallels do this trick on MacOS. Instead of the wretched inconvenience of dual boot, you could run a Linux app here, and a Windows app there, and everything integrates nicely together.

Microsoft could also re-engineer Windows along these lines. A lot of the work is already done. Windows supports containers and you can choose the level of isolation, with either lightweight containers or containers based on Hyper-V. It also supports Linux containers, via Hyper-V. Currently this is not designed for client applications, but for non-visual server applications, but his could change. It is also possible to run Linux containers on the Windows Subsystem for Linux, though not currently supported.

Windows RT failed for a few reasons: ARM-only, underpowered hardware, Windows 8 unpopularity, and most of all, inability to run arbitrary x86 Windows applications.

A container-based Windows could have the security and resilience of Windows RT, but without these limitations.

So I can imagine Google giving us the ability to run virtual Windows on Chrome OS. And I can imagine Microsoft building a future version of Windows in which you can run both Windows and Linux applications in isolated environments.

gadgets, microsoft, virtual reality, windows

Where next for Windows Mixed Reality? At IFA, Acer has an upgraded headset at IFA; Dell is showing Oculus Rift

It is classic Microsoft. Launch something before it is ready, then struggle to persuade the market to take a second look after it is fixed.

This may prove to be the Windows Mixed Reality story. At IFA in Berlin last year, all the major Windows PC vendors seemed to have headsets to show and talked it up in their press events. This year, Acer has a nice new generation headset, but Asus made no mention of upgrading its hardware. Dell is showing Oculus Rift on its stand, and apparently is having an internal debate about future Mixed Reality hardware.

I reviewed Acer’s first headset and the technology in general late last year. The main problem was lack of content. In particular, the Steam VR compatibility was in preview and not very good.

Today I tried the new headset briefly at the Acer booth.

image 

The good news: it is a big improvement. It feels less bulky but well made, and has integrated headphones. It felt comfortable even over glasses.

On the software side, I played a short Halo demo. The demo begins with a promising encounter with visceral Halo aliens, but becomes a rather dull shooting game. Still, even the intro shows what is possible.

I was assured that Steam VR compatibility is now much improved, but would like to try for myself.

The big questions are twofold. Will VR really take off at all, and if it does, will anyone use Windows Mixed Reality?

.net, database, microsoft, professional, software development, tech

SQLite with .NET: excellent but some oddities

I have been porting a C# application which uses an MDB database (the old Access/JET format) to one that uses SQLite. The process has been relatively smooth, but I encountered a few oddities.

One is puzzling and is described by another user here. If you have a column that normally stores string values, but insert a string that happens to be numeric such as “12345”, then you get an invalid cast exception from the GetString method of the SQLite DataReader. The odd thing is that the GetFieldType method correctly returns String. You can overcome this by using GetValue and casting the result to a string, or calling GetString() on the result as in dr.GetValue().ToString().

Another strange one is date comparisons. In my case the application only stores dates, not times; but SQLite using the .NET provider stores the values as DateTime strings. The SQLite query engine returns false if you test whether “yyyy-mm-dd 00:00:00” is equal to “yyy-mm-dd”. The solution is to use the date function: date(datefield) = date(datevalue) works as you would expect. Alternatively you can test for a value between two dates, such as more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.

Performance is excellent, with SQLite . Unit tests of various parts of the application that make use of the database showed speed-ups of between 2 and 3 times faster then JET on average; one was 8 times faster. Note though that you must use transactions with SQLite (or disable synchronous operation) for bulk updates, otherwise database writes are very slow. The reason is that SQLite wraps every INSERT or UPDATE in a transaction by default. So you get the effect described here:

Actually, SQLite will easily do 50,000 or more INSERT statements per second on an average desktop computer. But it will only do a few dozen transactions per second. Transaction speed is limited by the rotational speed of your disk drive. A transaction normally requires two complete rotations of the disk platter, which on a 7200RPM disk drive limits you to about 60 transactions per second.

Without a transaction, a unit test that does a bulk insert, for example, took 3 minutes, versus 6 seconds for JET. Refactoring into several transactions reduced the SQLite time to 3 seconds, while JET went down to 5 seconds.

gadgets, microsoft, retro, windows

All the way from 1997: Compaq PC Companion C140 still works, but as badly as it did on launch

I am having a clear-out which is bringing back memories and unearthing some intriguing items. One is this Compaq C140 PC Companion, running Windows CE, which launched in December 1997.

image

The beauty of this device is that it takes two AA batteries. I stuck in some new ones and found that it started up fine, not bad after more than 20 years. Most more recent devices have a non-replaceable rechargeable battery which usually fails long before the rest of the electronics, rendering the entire device useless (at least without surgery).

The C140 runs Windows CE 1.0 and has a monochrome touch screen designed to be used mainly with a stylus. 4MB RAM, 4MB storage, and comes with versions of Word, Excel, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks. There is also a calculator and a world clock. It is expandable with PCMCIA cards (though not many have drivers). The idea is that you link it to your PC with the supplied serial cable and synch with Outlook, hence PC Companion.

The odd thing is, looking at this device I still find it superficially compelling. A pocketable device running Word and Excel, with a full QWERTY keyboard, stylus holder so you do not lose it, what’s not to like?

A lot, unfortunately. The biggest problem is the screen. There is a backlight and a contrast dial, but it is faint and hard to read in most lights and you constantly fiddle with the contrast.

The next issue is the keyboard. It is too cramped to type comfortably. And the format, though it looks reassuringly like a small laptop, is actually awkward to use. It works on a desk, which seems to miss the point, but handheld it is useless. You need three hands, one for the device, one for the stylus, and a third for typing. The design is just wrong and has not been thought through.

I have searched for years for small portable devices with fast text input. I suppose a smartphone with a Swype keyboard or similar comes closest but I am still more productive with a laptop and in practice the thing that has made most improvement for me is that laptops have become lighter and with longer battery life.

Spare a thought though for Microsoft (and its partners) with its long history of trying to make mobile work. You can argue back and forth about whether it was right to abandon Windows Phone, but whatever your views, it is a shame that decades of effort ended that way.

android, tech, virtualization, windows

Hyper-V compatible Android emulator now available

An annoying issue for Android developers on Windows is that the official Android emulator uses Intel’s HAXM hypervisor platform, which is incompatible with Microsoft’s Hyper-V.

The pain of dual-boot just to run the Android emulator is coming to an end. Google has announced that the latest release of the Android Emulator will support Hyper-V on both AMD and Intel PCs. This a relief to Docker users, for example, since Docker now uses Hyper-V by default.

Google Product Manager Jamal Eason has made a rather confusing post, positioning the new feature as mainly for the benefit of developers with AMD processors. Intel HAXM does not work with AMD processors.”Thanks to on-going development by Intel, the fastest emulator performance on Windows is still with Intel HAXM,” says Eason, stating that HAXM remains the default on Intel PCs and is recommended.

However the new Hyper-V support works fine on Intel as well as AMD PCs. The official docs say:

Though we recommend using HAXM on Windows, it is possible to use Windows Hypervisor Platform (WHPX) with the emulator. Situations in which you should use WHPX with the emulator are the following:

  • You need to use Hyper-V at the same time.
  • You are using an AMD CPU.

The new feature is “thanks to a new Microsoft Windows Hypervisor Platform (WHPX) API and recent open-source contributions from Microsoft,” says Eason.

It is another case of Microsoft doing the hard work to make Windows a better platform for developers, even when they are targeting non-Windows platforms (as is increasingly the case).

gadgets, microsoft, tablets, tech, windows

Surface Go: Microsoft has another go at a budget tablet

Microsoft has announced Surface Go, a cheaper, smaller model to sit at the budge end of its Surface range of tablets and laptops.

The new model starts at $399, will be available for pre-order today in selected territories, and ships on August 2nd.

In the UK, the Surface Go is £379 inc VAT for 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, or £509.99 inc VAT for 8GB RAM and 128GB storage.

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I go back a long way with Surface, having been at the launch of the first device, Surface RT, back in 2012. The device was a flop, but I liked it. The design was genuinely innovative and sought to make sense of a Windows in transition from desktop-only to a viable touch/tablet device. It failed primarily because of the poor range of available apps, lack of user acceptance for Windows 8, and somewhat underpowered hardware. There were also keyboard issues: the fabric-based Touch keyboard was difficult to use because it gave no tactile feedback, and the Type keyboard less elegant and still somewhat awkward.

Surface Pro came next, and while it was more useful thanks to full Windows 8 and an Intel Core i5 CPU, it was disappointing, with battery life issues and a tendency to stay on in your bag, overheating and wasting battery. There were other niggling issues.

The big disappointment of Surface for me is that even with full, Apple-like control over hardware and software, the devices have not been trouble-free.

Another issue today is that Windows 10 is not designed for touch in the same way as Windows 8. Therefore you rarely see Windows tablets used as tablets; they are almost always used as laptops, even if they are 2-in-1 devices. The original kickstand design is therefore rather pointless. If I got another Surface it would be a Surface Laptop or Surface Book.

Of course they are not all bad. It is premium hardware and some of the devices are delightful to use and perform well. They are expensive though, and I suggest careful comparison with what you can get for the same money from partners like HP, Lenovo and others.

What about this one? Key specs:

  • 10″ screen, kickstand design
  • 1800 x 1200 (217 PPI) resolution
  • 8.3mm thick
  • USB-C 3.1 port, MicroSD, headphone jack socket
  • Intel® Pentium® Gold Processor 4415Y
  • Windows Hello camera supporting face-recognition log in
  • Up to nine hours battery life
  • Intel® HD Graphics 615
  • Display supports Surface Pen with 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity
  • Signature Type Cover with trackpad supporting 5-point gestures
  • Windows Hello face authentication camera (front-facing)
  • 5.0 MP front-facing camera with 1080p Skype HD video
  • 8.0 MP rear-facing autofocus camera with 1080p HD video
  • Single microphone
  • 2W stereo speakers with Dolby® Audio™ Premium

It sounds a great deal for £379 or $399 but you will pay more, for three reasons:

  • The base spec is minimal in terms of RAM and SSD storage and you will want the higher model
  • The Type Cover is essential and will cost – a Pro Type Cover is $159.99 and this may be a bit less
  • The Surface Pen is £99.99 or $99.99

This means your $399 will soon be $550 or more.

It could still be a good deal if it turns out to be a nice device. The Hello camera is a plus point, but where I would particularly recommend a Surface is if you want Pen support. Microsoft is good at this. Unfortunately I do not get on well with pen input, but some people do, and for artists and designers it is a real advantage.

Notes from the field, tech, windows

Notes from the Field: dmesg error blocks MySQL install on Windows Subsystem for Linux

I enjoy Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows 10 and use it constantly. It does not patch itself so from time to time I update it using apt-get. The latest update upgraded MySQL to version 5.7.22 but unfortunately the upgrade failed. The issue is that dpkg cannot configure it. I saw messages like:

invoke-rc.d: could not determine current runlevel

2002: Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

After multiple efforts uninstalling and reinstalling I narrowed the problem down to a dmesg error:

dmesg: read kernel buffer failed: Function not implemented

It is true, dmesg does not work on WSL. However there is a workaround here that says if you write something to /dev/kmsg then at least calling dmesg does not return an error. So I did:

sudo echo foo > /dev/kmsg

Removed and reinstalled MySQL one more time and it worked:

image

Apparently partial dmesg support in WSL is on the way, previewed in Build 17655.

Note: be cautious about fully uninstalling MySQL if you have data you want to preserve. Export/backup the databases first.

Notes from the field, tech

Notes from the field: Windows Time Service interrupts email delivery

A business with Exchange Server noticed that email was not flowing. The internet connection was fine, all the servers were up and running including Exchange 2016. Email has been fine just a few hours earlier. What was wrong?

The answer, or the beginning of the answer, was in the Event Viewer on the Exchange Server. Event ID 1035, only a warning:

Inbound authentication failed with error UnexpectedExchangeAuthBlobCheckForClockSkew for Receive connector Default Mailbox Delivery

Hmm. A clock problem, right? It turned out that the PDC for the domain was five minutes fast. This is enough to trigger Kerberos authentication failures. Result: no email. We fixed the time, restarted Exchange, and everything worked.

Why was the PDC running fast? The PDC was configured to get time from an external source, apparently, and all other servers to get their time from the PDC. Foolproof?

Not so. If you typed:

w32tm /query /status

at a command prompt on the PDC (not the Exchange Server, note), it reported:

Source: Free-running System Clock

Oops. Despite efforts to do the right thing in the registry, setting the Type key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Parameters to NTP and entering a suitable list of time servers in the NtpServer key, it was actually getting its time from the server clock. This being a Hyper-V VM, that meant the clock on the host server, which – no surprise – was five minutes fast.

You can check for this error by typing:

w32tm /resync

at the command prompt. If it says:

The computer did not resync because no time data was available.

then something is wrong with the configuration. If it succeeds, check the status as above and verify that it is querying an internet time server. If it is not querying a time server, run a command like this:

w32tm /config /update /manualpeerlist:”0.pool.ntp.org,0x8 1.pool.ntp.org,0x8 2.pool.ntp.org,0x8 3.pool.ntp.org,0x8″ /syncfromflags:MANUAL

until you have it right.

Note this is ONLY for the server with the PDC Emulator FSMO role. Other servers should be configured to get time from the PDC.

Time server problems seem to be common on Windows networks, despite the existence of lots of documentation. There are also various opinions on the best way to configure Hyper-V, which has its own time synchronization service. There is a piece by Eric Siron here on the subject, and I reckon his approach is a safe one (Hyper-V Synchronization Service OFF for the PDC Emulator, ON for every other VM).

I love his closing remarks:

The Windows Time service has a track record of occasionally displaying erratic behavior. It is possible that some of my findings are not entirely accurate. It is also possible that my findings are 100% accurate but that not everyone will be able to duplicate them with 100% precision. If working with any time sensitive servers or applications, always take the time to verify that everything is working as expected.

asus, gadgets, microsoft, PC, tablets, tech

Asus Project Precog dual-screen laptop: innovation in PC hardware, but missing the keyboard may be too high a price

Asus has announced Project Precog at Computex in Taiwan. This is a dual-screen laptop with a 360° hinge and no keyboard.

image

The name suggests a focus on AI, but how much AI is actually baked into this device? Not that much. It features “Intelligent Touch” that will change the virtual interface automatically and adjust the keyboard location or switch to stylus mode. It includes Cortana and Amazon Alexa for voice control. And the press release remarks optimistically that “The dual-screen design of Project Precog lets users keep their main tasks in full view while virtual assistants process other tasks on the second screen,” whatever that means – not much is my guess, since is the CPU that processes tasks, not the screen.

image

Even so, kudos to Asus for innovation. The company has a long history of bold product launches; some fail, some, like the inexpensive 2007 Eee PC which ran Linux, have been significant. The Eee PC was both a lot of fun and helped to raise awareness of alternatives to Windows.

The notable feature of Project Precog of course is not so much the AI, but the fact that it has two screens and no keyboard. Instead, if you want to type, you get an on-screen keyboard. The trade-off is extra screen space at the cost of convenient typing.

I am not sure about this one. I like dual screens, and like many people much prefer using two screens for desktop work. That said, I am also a keyboard addict. After many experiments with on-screen keyboards on iPads, Windows and Android tablets, I am convinced that the lack of tactile feedback and give on a virtual keyboard makes them more tiring to work on and therefore less productive.

Still, not everyone works in the same way as I do; and until we get to try a Project Precog device (no date announced), we will not know how well it works or how useful the second screen turns out to be.