Ten More things I’ve Learned about Windows 8

Having spent a bit more time on Windows 8 I now know 10 more things:

1. It runs fine on an Acer Iconia Tab W500. Note that I did not discover this by rushing out and buying one in a fit of pique after realising I should have tried harder to get to Build and obtain one of the lovely Samsung prototypes they were giving away. Definitely not.
2. If you do happen to have an Acer tablet, you need to boot from the distribution DVD to wipe the machine and install the 64bit version of Windows 8 on it. This is because for some reason the Acer is shipped with the 32bit version of Windows 7. The 64 bit version is the one you really want to use, because that is the only one that comes with the SDK. And when you do this you find that you only have 1.5G of main memory, because the system (presumably the graphics display) has stolen half a gig. Not that I’ve had memory problems yet.
3. You can install the 64 bit version of Office 10 on Windows 8, but only after you have uninstalled a 32bit version of PowerPoint viewer that is pre-loaded with the Windows 8 distribution.
4. If you use Office 2010 it loads up Word really, really, fast. I mean really.
5. The IE 10 browser works fine, but I can’t find a way of getting Flash to work with it. I kept being referred to a release candidate of version 11 of Flash, which installs and doesn’t actually do anything.
6. However, Chrome works fine on the device. It is nowhere near as fun to use, but it plays videos like a good-un.
7. Don’t worry where all your programs have gone when you press Start. You don’t get the little menu that you are used to popping up, you get the whole lot on big tiles on the Start screen. After a while you get used to this.
8. If you want to drag things around your Start screen just press and hold,and then start dragging. It doesn’t seem to do much to indicate that it is draggable.
9. Setting a PIN number in addition to the password makes it much easer to get back to the machine.
10. I’ve got a proper tablet with Windows 8 on. Not quite ready for primetime, but I’ve got the box for my iPad out of the loft so that I can sell it on eBay when the Windows 8 beta comes out.

Ten Things I’ve Learnt about Windows 8

Ten things I’ve discovered playing with Windows 8 over my lunch break.

1. You need a dual layer DVD to make the complete system with development tools, it is over 5G. Scott Hanselman has some cunning things you can do with USB drives here.
2. You don’t need to boot from the distribution DVD, you can just run Setup from it.
3. If you do the install and say “keep nothing” it actually retains your old Windows settings in Windows.old.
4. It works. Really well. Runs quickly on my Packard Bell Butterfly Touch tablet.
5. It defaults to US keyboard, but you can change it to UK (in fact there are loads of keyboard types).
6. When it started all I could get was a green screen with nothing on it. Seems to have been something to do with the dual monitor settings (and I was seeing the wrong half of the screen on the tablet). I went into external monitors and turned something off and it works fine now.
7. The browser is wicked fast.
8. I tried to install the Windows Phone SDK and it didn’t end well. The system tried to install .NET 3.5 and then tipped over. Oh well.
9. There is an option to “refresh” Windows 8. This is supposed to knock it back to how it was when you received the machine. If you do this it will delete all the files on the device, including any old versions of Windows you were pleased to find still there after installation (see step 3).
10. I want a proper tablet with this on.

Windows 8 Keynote Fun

Windows 8 looks really interesting. And I mean really. This evening I watched the live keynote streamed from the Build conference (you can find a video here). Worth a look, behind all the marketing hype is a system that is a proper step forward. It was lovely to see something that puts touch interfaces to the fore.

For me the great thing is that it provides a user interface which is very similar to Windows Phone. The “Metro” interface which launched on Windows Phone 7 is now being rolled out onto Windows 8. Furthermore, with Live Tiles and a XAML powered front end it looks like any skills that you might have picked up making Windows Phone programs will map very nicely into Windows 8. In fact the new Visual Studio 2011 seems to make it possible to move applications between the platforms very easily.

Lucky delegates at the Build conference will be getting Samsung tablets with a developer preview of Windows 8 pre-loaded. For those of us not out there in LA Microsoft will be making the software available tomorrow for anyone to download and play with.

Windows Phone Winner

..another satisfied customer..

Michael came to see me today and pick up his Windows Phone prize, having showed an impressive set of Marketplace download figures for a game that was written, tested and marketed without having access to an actual device. Good work.

Apparently the phone is now running the latest version of Mango, which was quick work.

Cable Tied

There should be a special place in hell reserved for camera manufacturers who use strange cables to connect to the computer. These are the wires that instantly hide themselves amongst all the other, normal ones, that look like the might fit, but won’t.